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<h1>Zk | 2013-12-29-on-ritual</h1>
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<p>type: post
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date: 2013-12-29
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slug: on-ritual
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title: On Ritual</p>
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<hr />
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<p>First of all, let me state that I’m feeling pretty good as I write this. I feel
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the need to state such because a lot of my tweets and a lot of my previous
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entries could be construed as worrisome, and probably legitimately so, because I
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have the tendency to vent freely. If I feel bad, I write, and if I’m not at a
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computer, sometimes that ends up on Twitter. It’s never my goal to freak anyone
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out, so much as to simply cope with what’s going on. Writing, putting things in
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words and stringing those words together into some form meaningful to others, is
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a good way for me to cope with what’s happening in my life. That said, although
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I try to be frank about symptoms, I know that some are disturbing taken at face
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value or to their logical extremes, so I promise: I’m feeling pretty good now!</p>
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<p>I’m torn.</p>
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<p>I feel as though one of the most important things in my life is ritual, process,
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or repetition. It’s not so much that these things are comforting in isolation,
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as that there is a certain feeling of being tethered to reality in them that
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comforts in its own way.</p>
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<p>I’ve been asked what I mean by reality, or what I mean when I say “that makes me
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feel real” or “it’s important to me that I feel real”. A lot of my response
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must, by necessity, rely on analogy, by its very surreality - there’s no way I
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can describe how I feel without using metaphors and similes.</p>
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<p>In short, it’s part of life that we sort of perceive the world around us as a
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spatial, temporal thing. There are three axes of movement, one axis of time
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(though sometimes it gets a little twisted up), and that’s just sort of how we
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interface with much of the world. The feeling of surreality, then, is a
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pulling away on some fifth dimension, a cocooning, a means by which one has or
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has been made to withdraw from the rest of reality. From the inside, it feels
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like being wrapped up in cotton. Senses aren’t dulled, as that might imply, so
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much as that all connections through reality, all input must pass through a
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high-latency barrier that introduces its own artifacts, requires its own
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decoding. Again, it’s not that I can’t <em>hear</em>, it’s that the words that are
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coming in must be run through an additional filter to associate them first with
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meanings, and then to tie them back through the perception of reality (the rest
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of which must, of course, go through its own decoding process).</p>
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<p>This surreality is, of course, nothing more than anxiety. I talk often in terms
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of bandwidth, and that’s rather applicable here. If I am spending all of my
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emotional and intellectual energy on cycling over counterfactual universes that
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I’ve constructed in my consciousness, then I have little energy left to deal
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with the one I’m actually living in. My doctor insists, and I heartily agree,
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that I not think of this as anything other than anxiety and panic, which I’ll
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get to in a moment.</p>
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<p>I said that I’m torn above because the result of this is a desire to get back to
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reality. The problem is that the anxiety gets in the way quite a bit. I think,
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“There must be a way back to clarity and reality, there has to be some sort of
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path or action I can take.” That, too, is anxiety, but it’s as yet too subtle
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to recognize as such unless I’m holding still and doing very little else (which
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is hardly productive).</p>
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<p>As a result, a lot of my day-to-day life is spent focusing on the idea of
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ritual. Ritual is the one thing that my mind has latched onto as some sort of
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way through or way out, and I think it plays a large role in the events of my
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past, though I was less conscious of it at the time - such is life, when it
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comes to any sort of personal advancement. I ritually check the stove to make
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sure it’s off. I check the doors and windows. I get up once a night and check
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on JD and the two pups to make sure they’re inside (just in case Falcon has
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rappelled out the window and is terrorizing the neighborhood - seriously).</p>
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<p>It’s not just checking that drives me, though. Anyone who has been to my house
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knows that it’s not cleaning, of course, but, well, it all comes back to the
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audible aberrations that I’d mentioned before.</p>
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<p>For a few months now, I’ve been ‘hearing’ voices, but I’m always careful to
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mention that they’re not audible hallucinations. They’re not. They’re what’s
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called expansion: the inner dialog that goes on in our brains as we go about
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life is usually one that takes place in abstract images. In this case, however,
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that has broken down into something more simplistic, as though I’m telling
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myself a story. The voices have character and gender (though they’re usually
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boring), and hover <em>just</em> below the level of hearing, something closer to
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remembering that I had <em>just heard</em> someone say something.</p>
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<p>It’s fantastically hard for me to write about this in any sort of open way. I
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want to hide it. It’s fucking ridiculous. I hate it, and I want it gone, and
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it’s embarrassing. Embarrassment is, however, a primarily social reaction, and
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a harmful one in this case (after all, this is a health problem). That is, more
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than I want to hide all of this, I want to tell that embarrassment to get fucked
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and talk openly and freely about all this, because it’s even <em>more</em> ridiculous
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that I feel I can’t.</p>
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<p>Anyway, as I listened to someone drone on tonight about how I should cut my hair
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off, how it would hurt in just the right way, how that would be my penance, and
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that would be just what I needed to gain touch with reality again, I think I
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finally understood the tie to ritual. This was all I had to do. In fact, this
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was all these stupid aberrations were ever ‘urging’ me to do. It was this sense
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of ritual become words. When I feel as though I’m instructed to tease apart my
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skin like burlap cloth with a knife-point, to solve a cramp or a gas-pain with
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violence, to kill myself before an upcoming trip to London, that’s not just an
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expansion of some random, totally out there thought, that’s the feeling of
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ritual, the “there must be something I can do to stop this panic” sense expanded
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from an abstract concept back into language.</p>
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<p>I’ve been shifting wildly along the spectrum of following these rituals to the
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letter to outright ignoring them. As I said, I feel good: I’m not going to kill
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myself before London or stab myself with a syringe to ease gas-pains. However,
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I’m still getting up to check on the windows and doors and stove and dogs. In
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the middle, I’ve taken to trying to subvert the desire for ritual with other
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rituals: rather than tease apart my skin like lose-woven cloth with the tip of a
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knife, I use a pen and just kind of draw on myself. It offers enough catharsis
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for me to get to the point to realize that it’s actually really, really
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ludicrous; that I’m drawing symbols or lines of the utmost importance on my
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limbs with a pen pilfered from my bank. That’s usually enough to break through
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the panicked ritual and leave me just feeling silly (which is, while
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uncomfortable, still a million times better than that inner tension that
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required the ritual in the first place).</p>
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<p>Ritual is a salve. It’s an ice cube held against a burn. It’s something that
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provides instant relief, but only so long as it’s present. I can’t <em>solve</em> any
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of these problems by acting out a ritual. Checking on the dogs does not
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ultimately leave me satisfied that they’re all comfortably asleep, because then
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I need to make sure the windows and doors are shut to ensure that they don’t
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float away. That done, I need to check the stove to make sure that it’s off,
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because if it’s on and the windows are shut, how will we escape when the house
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burns down?</p>
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<p>You see, there’s no solution. There’s no ritual to make me feel good, or real,
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or better, or not-anxious. There’s only anxiety, and coping, and panic, and
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sleep. There’s reality, and that’s where I dwell, and then there’s my
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perception of reality, which drifts rather more than perhaps it ought. Cutting
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my hair wouldn’t hurt - it’s hair, for Pete’s sake - and it would not be the
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penance I need, the right amount of pain to bring me back to reality. It’s
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hair! I know that. That’s the case I argue to the voice demanding such.
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That’s what makes it panic, and not psychosis: ultimately, there <strong>is no break
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from reality</strong>. There’s none. I know these aberrations aren’t real; I know the
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dogs aren’t going to go carousing out the windows; I know, for sure, that
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cutting my hair is not going to stop any of this. I know it. The voices are a
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nuisance, the panic is a problem, but it doesn’t control me. There is <em>no</em>
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ritual that will solve anything: the ritual is a symptom. It’s important, yes;
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I live my life by process. But it’s a symptom.</p>
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<p>That’s why I’m torn.</p>
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</article>
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<p>Page generated on 2023-05-10</p>
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