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Mental Health

If it isn't working apply more pressure

[ 5 minute read ]

'Trust in me' Kaa, the Indian python to Mowgli

On Monday, a plumber helped me to understand that I am not so feeble in mind than I was beginning to think I was. Right there is a problem, isn't there? If you think your mind is feeble then you can't believe yourself. If you think your mind is fine, then you can't believe it either because you are probably biased.

     'How are you?'

     'I'm fine; it's all those others out there that make things difficult.'

Oh dear! 

My neighbour surprised me last Summer when I handed his girlfriend/live-in carer an undelivered package that the post-person couldn't fit into his continental style letter-box; the type that is stuck to a wall and is only about four inches / 10cm deep. She is my neighbour too, but I am not sure if he sees it that way.

Gruffly, he said, 'The postman is too lazy to go through the gate and deliver it to the right address, even if he could be bothered to find my address. They don't care. They are just clumsy and lazy!' I snatched the little flat package back from his girlfriend. I didn't mean to, I was just 'in the moment' and assumed that she would understand that I needed it as a 'prop' in a demonstration. She understood and waved my apology aside.

     'It is marked "Do Not Bend" and your letter-box won't allow it to go in without bending it. The delivery person was being conscientious.' Cherry, his girlfriend, nodded and murmured an agreement, but more to herself and I suspect involuntarily. I suspect she didn't want my neighbour to notice her in that moment. Luckily, I think, he didn't.

Before my neighbour could start stubbornly braying again, 'Hee Haw! Heeeee Haw!' I turned away and went back inside my home.

That moment was seared into my head. It occasionally rises up and I run my attention over the memory, and feel for any new growth or appendages. So far, I have found none. However, it does form part of how I perceive my neighbour. And with that perception, comes a tiny glimpse of a distant reflection, in a muddy and partially shrouded mirror; that leans against a tree in a misty forest, which in turn is behind a circus, a funfair and an amusement theme park; of how I perceive myself. 

If the cap fits, wear it

I have done so much for all my neighbours... so much... so, so much. I have helped them and given them gifts, given them gifts, so many...but when I ask for their help they just shrug their shoulders and say they don't know what to do. I am not asking for their help. I can finish it myself. I was only testing them to see if they would help. 

If I add all the snippets of, unwashed and unsorted, weird but noted, recent episodes I have witnessed, into a tombola and draw one out, it emerges unchanged. By itself, it is only a jigsaw piece. If I set my imaginary tombola machine to let three, four or five pieces out at a time, I get to recognise, not the people in the episodes so much as I recognise myself in pseudo episodes, that resemble the past episodes. But, I am convinced my nearest 'strange' neighbour who hates the world, but really hates himself yet doesn't know that, is inadvertently using his spirit to wear me down and bend me to his way of categorising the world. Everyone is an idiot, right? 'Er....I think so?'

A while ago, I was stung by a wasp multiple times and I got an allergic reaction. I overdosed myself on anti-histamine so I could breathe properly again. I was on a long-awaited forklift course and there was no way I was missing any of it by nearly suffocating. The overdose made my mind simple. All the information I previously had was still in my head, but it was as though I was drunk; I made odd connections in my mind and because I believe myself, freely expressed my dopey opinion.

     'You're an idiot!' This was said to me with such confidence that the statement was true he did not expect a rebuttal. His sentence was deliberately constructed to mean exactly that.

     'An idiot?' I asked.

     'Yeah!' It was then that I realised that this guy was confident that I had heard people tell me I am an idiot before, in fact, many times. He was confident that I would just accept it as being fact simply because of the high frequency it had, in his imagination, been expressed. No-one had ever called me an idiot. But his observation stuck in my head, just as it should. Many people do think I am an idiot, and an idiot would not recognise themselves to be an idiot. I would certainly cross the road to avoid meeting myself, I know that! Yet, I was called an idiot by someone who thought that I was wrong to think my leather jacket was a leather jacket. 'It's plastic!' he cried. Plainly, the manufacturer mistakenly spelt 'plastic', '100% L-E-A-T-H-E-R' on the label.

The plumber said she would take a look at my bike with me. She is someone I have never had contact with before. She doesn't know me. She, with her weight on one side of the bike and me, with my similar weight on the other, wrestled with the front gear-set and pedal. You will get a kernel of an idea of how much weighted force we applied when you understand that I weigh 90kg /198lb or 14 stone 2 pounds in old money, and hear her response to my earlier question:

     'Do you know much about bicycles?'

     'Do I look like I cycle? I hate exercise!'

The situation did not change. We had applied substantial force and still the front gear-set and pedal resisted. 

     'WD-40', we agreed. Yup. Lubricating oil that has a freeing effect as well. Now then, she didn't call me an idiot, but she did ask me how much the bike would be worth once I had spent £32 for new parts on it.

     'Nothing,' I said, 'Maybe £32 if I never ride it, but I would never get that, though.'

I can't help thinking I need to apply a 'most robust' approach towards my bike. As it stands, it is an unworkable piece of scrap metal that, deconstructed, may have some useful parts. 

     'I am right, I know I am. It is all those others who are wrong! So many others, so many.'

     'Lie down, neighbour. Tell me what is troubling you. You don't mind if I take notes, do you?'

All my posts: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551

or search for 'martin cadwell -caldwell' Take note of the position of the minus sign to eliminate caldwell returns or search for 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser.

I am not on YouTube or social media

[ 9 minute read ]

Weaving, Sieving, 3D Printing, or Doing Jigsaws?

Without exception, I write blog and forum posts without planning anything or editing such as changing sentences or moving paragraphs: I don't have to heavily edit; I can write blog posts from top to bottom without really knowing what I will write, even though I have forgotten where I started (not quite). I ramble on until I remember where the beginning is, and then I love to make the whole writing journey circuitous by finishing where I started. For me, it is fun. Only the subject is important, and despite me just now saying I can't remember where I started, I always remember the subject, so I chuck anything in that vaguely adds to the point I want to make. I never remove anything I have written either. I start writing and then stop when I have finished. I only change typos, spelling and grammar. Absolute truth. Do you know how I can do this? I talk in a very similar way. I know what subject I should be on and I know what has been said and I am listening to any questions that arise from both, what hasn't been said, and what has been said. I only want to stop talking when I, or we, get back to the beginning. For me, that is the best conversation ever!

Of course, I am an Open University student and so I am somewhat constrained in what they want me to write, you know, for assessments and how they want me to write (essays or creatively). Like most people, I struggle because I don't know the subject well enough to use a sieve technique of making an essay. That is how I talk and write, like using a sieve, though many people might say 'using a filter'. I am not unique in this: Men talk differently when women cannot hear them, and women reciprocate. Adults don't swear in front of their bosses or children, etc. So, I have just highlighted what results we get from using a filter. But before the filter is applied, sieving must be done. 

       'Wait! What?'

My lexicon is fairly large and I have to select just one word from a collection that are similar in meaning (choice). Incredibly difficult, because it has to fit the context. Everybody does it, though. The point I am failing to make is that a whole stream of sentences are arriving in our heads simultaneously, and we have to get them to fit the previous one if we hope to make sense to someone listening. However, we don't have to make any real sense and random sentences and digressions are not usually trimmed out beforehand. That is how people talk. They expect the recipient to do the sieving. 

       'Here is a whole bunch of junk with some good ideas thrown in. Be a good chap and extract the good bits, would you?'

I don't think I do that as much as many other people. I do a lot of the sieving before I speak. So, I pre-think. People say to me, 'Why do you talk like that?' or 'I knew it was you because of the way you talk.' even though they don't recognise the sound of my voice. That means if I know a subject well enough I can just write stuff on a subject, and THEN edit it to fit word-count parameters. Job Done! So what? I bet you all think that is what we all do, Huh? I don't think so; because I have been thinking, and when I think, y'all better adapt. 

There are other ways to write posts, blogs, and stuff.

Weaving

On a loom there is the warp and the weft. The warp are the parallel pieces of string that traditionally go from the machine towards the machine user or weaver, and the weft is the string that follows a shuttle thrown from left to right. The weave is the pattern made by how the warp and weft strings interact. 

Most of us know how weaving is done on a loom and can imagine that a piece of cloth is woven much as an old printer printing line after line of ink on paper. If I just held one finger down on a single key on my laptop keyboard a repeating series of the same letter would, on my screen, go from left to right and then automatically go to the next line down and go from left to right again, until something else happens. It would just be a normal weave like a 'sheet'. No-one would read it. Lifting only some of the warp strings on a loom would simply be like pressing a different key on my keyboard. But more broadly, in weaving we can create a picture, with different coloured strings and by lifting different warp strings at different times. Yet, we are still working from the beginning to the end of the woven product until we need to stop. The important thing, to focus on here, is that there must be a plan and absolutely no changes can be made after the weave of different coloured strings and the lifting of the warp strings at different times has been completed, or really at any time during the process. 

In fact, so far, this is how I have been writing this post, weaving. However, because there is no pattern; I mean, I really have no desire to highlight any passage, so there is no pattern or recognisable shape; there is only a decision to only use certain colours at specific times in a rudimentary way; at the very beginning, in the middle, and at the very end. In this post, these are the paragraphs that follow headings.

While it is possible to write endlessly like this, sometimes I might get an itching to refer back to something I have already written to strengthen a point. Well, I suppose, make real, a bridge so strong that it becomes a feature. While texture can be created with weaving, and I suppose loops might be made (I think that is crochet or macrame), something more mechanical needs to be used to fabricate a post.

3D Printing

Like an olden-days ink-jet printer going back and forth from left to right and advancing one line at a time, 3D printers do the same, except they go over where they have already been. In an essay that would mean, when we first think of it, repetition, which we all know we shouldn't do. Perhaps, if we think a bit on it we might think of higher and lower planes, which would be areas of greater stress, focus, or emphasis. Making a bridge though is tricky for a 3D printer; it has to add temporary supports and make sure that those supports can be removed in the final edit, by the 3D printer operator. (came back here to edit in 'by the 3D printer owner)

What I am doing now is looking in my memory, while I write, for somewhere in the previous text for somewhere I can bridge back to from here, but I am having no success. Ah, I have it! The title! The word order in the title. Because I just now temporarily wrote about jigsaws in my head in such a way as to be islands of stress, focus or emphasis I can bridge forward. I ruined the surprise or the Wow factor, but I AM just writing as I plan (The only plan so far).

So, with 3D printing a layer of resin is laid, and then layers of resin are laid over each previous layer until the object has reached a certain height and is finished. I am imaging Tower Bridge in London, which to those who don't know it is the one where the span of the bridge lifts in two parts to allow ships to pass underneath on the River Thames. It is fairly functional looking, squarish really, and has an upper span that joins the towers on each side of the river. The first thing we notice that a 3D printer has done when creating a tiny Tower Bridge would be two square islands of resin. Later, these will need to be linked to create the spans of the bridge, or the road of the actual Tower Bridge. As far as I know, 3D printing has to create supports for all the spans. In an essay this is hard to do. Certainly, it would take considerable planning. I hate planning, so I am going to move onto the last section of this post and once done, come back and edit some former sentences in this bit about 3D printing instead. The link or 'bridge' will be 'islands'.

The two sentences in italics were edited in, in the final draft.

Jigsaws

When I don't know a subject at all, I have to take notes. These notes are really in a linear form. I can do mind-maps, but rarely do. Usually, for an essay I will write chunks of text that I know I will need to edit. However, the interesting thing is how we decide which pieces of a jigsaw we group together to make islands of colour and which bits make a frame for all the pieces, you know the pieces with the (normally) straight edges. When I do a jigsaw, like most people I find all the straight-edge pieces first, and link them accordingly, From the picture on the box we can find associated pieces such as the green for some tress, or pinks for the flowers, or something. These form the highlights of the picture on the box in terms of attraction, but in an essay are still as fuzzy as the edges of the islands of associated pieces. Doing a jigsaw means finding, first the obvious pieces, and then looking for connecting pieces. It is completely non-linear and a 3D printer would not be able to do this; one day they will be able to go from one island, or high-point, to another in a non-linear way, let's imagine multiple islands, but right now they have to follow rules that only allow linear movement. Laser cutters with CAD can do this and so can embroidery machines.

Conclusion

I probably use my jigsaw example in a first draft of an essay, but I don't have a picture to look at to tell me where to put the pieces. I suppose, I know where the edges are because there are parameters set by the question. To be honest, it has only just occurred to me to try different techniques. I am thinking that I might try to write freely all I know, sieving as I go, like weaving basic patterns that have areas of colour. This would not be like a jigsaw though, because it is entirely linear. Then, from that, I can see the 'picture', and I know the constraints so I can do a complete rewrite like doing a jigsaw, and then use my idea of 3D printing by going over the essay in a linear fashion, building on the islands of interest and making links and bridges as I go. Then, for the final draft, remove the supports in the edit (spelling and grammar and any superfluous linking sentences)