75 things

1. I compulsively tear at my fingers. My best friend Peter characterized it as "Dissassembling [your] hands." I thought that was very generous of him. Perhaps that kind of generosity is what makes a great friend.
2. There's a scattering of bits of picked skin across my lap. If that's disgusting, I can't really apologize in earnest. Sometime in community college years ago I decided I was too damn tired of hiding my bleeding thumbs, and that repulsion others may or may not feel to my self-destructive neurosis just couldn't be my problem. I don't fully believe that mission yet, but I'm stubbornly committed to it.
3. Last semester I learned that is called dermatillomania. A classmate related her family's history of trichotillomania. Dermatillomania was collateral damage learning [harr?]
4. Knowing the name for something doesn't change much.
5. I'm a fiend for etymologies. Insatiable.
6. I take that back. I'm a fiend for tabloid headline etymologies. Kinda cheapens the insatiability. You can keep the origins of 'intrinsic'. I want the dirty stories. Quarantine, the forty days a tainted ship was made to wait before docking.
7. Also, Berserk.
8. A couple images from my childhood exposure to TV really marked me. I expect more than these ones had some untraceable effects, but the old claymation lunchable commercials between Saturday morning cartoons disturbed me. And some hand drawn animated short film where a woman is sent to hell, and her descent is rendered as an alternating black/white flicker skeleton <-> human form spinning in front of an equally black-and-white spiral. I can't ever forget it, but I don't like it. Why has it stuck around?
9. Like learning language, whole chunks of my brain have been allocated to learning the system of user interfaces that permit me to interact with the internet, my phone, any technology. The locations of menus, the behavior of buttons. It's a vast, unstystemetized vocabulary.
10. I can't locate my appetite for anime any more. Strange to have satisfied an appetite in a past period of life, but still relish the memory or circumstantial encounter with it. God I loved it then.
11. I used to practice projecting a stream of spontaneously generated imagery in my mind before bed. The relaxed state that precedes unconsciousness made accessible. I called it 'image freefall' to myself, or maybe 'visual freefall'. I think the 'visual' or 'image' part was there in case I ever needed to tell someone else, but to me it is just 'freefall'.
12. Why did I think to name something I never thought I would communicate to anyone else?
13. Would a mute hermit name their pet?
14. Slippers are great when it's cold. You stab your feet into them and the comfort that encloses your most abused extremity overcomes all doubt; you believe in the human triumph over discomfort and nature.
15. Minutes later, you can feel the sweat between you toes.
16. Is it too much to think that slippers serve as an analogy for the rest of what we're up to?
17. Is it too much to think? Yes. So the let the rest fly, yeah?
18. I suspect the physical sensory part of the brain develops to accomodate the sensations its exposed to in proportion to its exposure. Or maybe the governor of our attention to those sensations. What I'm saying is, I can get utterly lost in the sensation of dissassembling my hands; sculptures form in my mind to represent the craggy landscape my sensitive fingertips report of each other.
19. The first two coming-of-age experiences I've really noticed have been (1) losing acuity in remembering words and (2) discovering aches that linger like poor guests. Neither is bad yet, so I flatter myself with my unperturbed "I'll be damned" reaction.
20. "etymology [word]" is my most common query
21. "define [word]" is the my second most common query
22. "15 minute timer" and "weather" probably share the bronze.
23. [redacted]
24. The other day I was talking out the back window with my dad. It was very cold outside. Aspen walked over and tugged at my elbow. "What's up, Aspen?" "Uncle Ben, you need to close the window. It's making me really cold." "Aspen, the rest of the house is warm. Why did you come over here by the window where it's cold?" "I really needed to tell you that."
25. I wanted to tell Aspen why that was funny to me, but I couldn't get my head through the puzzle of explaining to a kid why nonsense is funny when he hasn't yet had the distinction ruled into his thinking.
26. When you melt ice in very cold water, it gets riddled with holes and veins before it melts. I can't get enough of that phenomenon.
27. Fascination with phenomena has to be a common human trait, right? Isn't that the deal?
28. I would opt out of sleep in a heartbeat.
29. The elements of that sentence are sinister.
30. I derive pleasure from my brain confusing words and letters in a sentence. The opportunity to earnestly process alternative meaning and then fold the static meaning on top is delicious. Or it's just an accident, but that's sad and dismissive of the insightful antics your brain might be up to.
31. I love the discrete clacking sounds of a mechanical keyboard. Individuated stacatto sounds build an enthusiasm in me. Like castanets do for spirited dancing.
32. I love the sound of castanets.
33. If I give someoene a playlist, I must think I love them.
34. I believe everyone is a math person, everyone is a creative person, and that's the same thing.
35. I abhor direct physical competition and physical confrontation. I have an older brother. I put those things side-by-side (by-side).
36. Sealing up a letter to send it is a delightful experience. Opening sealed letters is a nuisance.
37. I can't stand music being played off tinny phone speakers. I'm glad the overlap of the arrival of streamable music and the dearth of passable speakers was so short.
38. My bed is lofted. I sleep well that way; I think I'd fancy living on a sailboat.
39. Minimalism is an empty goal, but when I'm pursuing it I'm usually happy with that choice.
40. I have a twin brother named Peter.
41. I don't really know what my own voice sounds like, because it's only ever getting to my ears through air and bone and flesh. When I hear my recorded voice played back I think it sounds just like Peter.
42. Except Peter's been living in Berlin for years, so now the pattern of pause between his words doesn't look like mine.
43. I don't know what to do with missing my brother who is happier far away from where I live.
44. My friend Nils helped me move into my fifth floor walkup in August. He also helped my partner Grace move in on the same day. All three of us, up and down for hours. I was soaked in sweat. Nils told me I'm a horse. I have savored that compliment for months.
45. I love when physical activity of any kind becomes engrossing or gross enough to displace social sensibilities.
46. In New Orleans, that meant doing anything at all outside during the warmer four-fifths of the year. Sweat, the animal equalizer.
47. I wish folks were more comfortabe touching one another. I wish I were more comfortable touching folks.
48. When there's turbulence mid-flight, I sometimes try to see how completely I can convince myself that we are going to crash. It's challenging and exhausting to maintain, like mental exercise.
49. ?
50. There's a black cat in the window on the fourth floor of the building opposite. I see it there often, in front of white curtains, peering down on the activity of the street below. It's an inverted theater.
51. Inversion seems non-convergent to me, except with T-shirts and socks, etc.
52. Microwave beeps infuriate me. That's hardly a random thing. Microwaves beeps infuriate everyone. Good test for baseline human relatability, perhaps.
53. Counting past 15 is almost always contrived.
54. I love standardization most of the time. Compatibility is elegant.
55. I love language, which depends on people having some shared sense of what means what. I further think it's pretty cool that there are lots of languages. Lots of separate standards. Uh-oh.
56. Contradiction isn't the devil it's made out to be.
57. I read out loud more often than silently. If I'm reading silently I forget to laugh or condemn. If I'm reading silently, I don't get to hear when my voice gets shaky.
58. I make lists all the time. They often comprise more than 15 items.
59. Many of my lists hold things I'll never get to. I used to get anxious that the list of things I would never get to was outpacing my getting to things. Like how more than one second is uploaded to youtube every second.
60. Now the trumpet I'm never going to properly learn to play is a totem of some parallel universe Ben. Same with dance, making film, opening a restaurant and a bunch of other things.
61. If there's a parallel Ben out there who has completed his list, fuck that guy.
62. All my tupperware stack. It's quart tubs, pint tubs, and the other one, all the way down.
63. Plus, the same lid fits each size.
64. Every hundredth ascent or so, I notice how many stairs there or on each flight up to my apartment. 7 I think?
65. Knives are great. Knives and hammers might be the two simplest tools. Of the two, I think the knife's purpose is more elegant: make two.
66. My laptop only charges to 85%, and I'm pretty sure it's been that way forever. There's something reassuring about technology that doesn't pretend at perfection.
67. I played soccer when I was a little kid. In Seattle, soccer season coincides with shitty, drippy, frigid season. An ice cold soccer ball with a film of wet sand-grit slapping into my young thighs might be the most hostile sensation I can remember from childhood.
68. Choosing not to shiver makes me feel a little alien.
69. Unmonitored, I stay up late. If there's someone with me, I'm more sensible.
70. Unmonitored, I tend not to break many rules. If there's Peter with me, I'm less sensible.
71. I love neighbors. I feel like neighbors are threatened right now, and I'm not sure what to do about it.
72. I feel least confused when I'm cooking.
73. The smell of wood will forever remind me of my dad.
74. I understand beaches are wonderful, but I am only interested in the rocky ones. Sandy beaches make a lizard of me, turn time to mush, and increase my chances of skin cancer.
75. The sound of garbage trucks' hydraulic lifts hefting and the trash cascading into their beds reassures me.