At the very beginning, there was Ratopia. Then, there's ratology. In ratology, we observe whether psychotic and neurotic people could amount to something. Then came the spinal disc herniation and impingement, bringing forth the stage of physical disability. Could someone like me go anywhere or amount to anything is the question. After the official ending of the second psychotic episode lasted for five years, I am ready to move on to the next phase of Ratology- as the solutions unfold.
Just realized today that this professor of mine 余德慧 has passed.
Still remember vividly when he made this comment, "偏見，偏見，沒有偏哪有見“ (bias (side view), bias (side view), how can you see the whole without viewing it sideways).
A class skipping undergrad auditing his Hermeneutics class.
A comment that, interestingly, has a profound meaning in my life given the nature of disordered thoughts.
Found some liking to this quote and thought I'd share it with ya!
"If the artist does not perfect a new vision in his process of doing, he acts mechanically and repeats some old model fixed like a blueprint in his mind." (John Dewey, Art as Experience, 1934)
Just watched this movie 陣頭 (Leader of the parade )... A very "earthy" (鄉土) movie with Taiwanese expressions I have never used before and 陣頭- a folk culture indigenous to Taiwan. Following is a parade I came across on Mother's day, 2012...
Back to the movie 陣頭 (Leader of the parade ), I find it very inspiring. Apparently, it was based on a true story of 九天民俗技藝團.
What I find most impressive about this group is that many of the team members were once dropouts from school and might event be juvenile delinquents. However, this group helped them to find a niche for themselves and start a new life.
Following are some clips I found about the movie 陣頭 or the performing group 九天民俗技藝團.
A clip someone took when the team members were practicing.
The group apparently just had a performance in Lincoln center on August 3, 2012.
A TV program made after the group took 三太子 to a marathon across the Sahara desert.
"Telepathy" itself is not a symptom, I guess, since maybe there really are people who are telepathic. The world is large and nothing new under the sun. However, "telepathy" in my case has always benchmark the opening of the gated doors to the cuckoo's nest.
In addition, when "telepathy" comes out, in place are symptoms already there.... It's an addition.
Some thoughts I drafted concerning telepathy back a couple days ago in my private blog to share with ya...
Why the emergence of da telepathy thing? Well, cutting the dosage down to less than 10 mg of seroquel within 6-7 months from 300 mg for the purpose of being functional to perform work, which requires the usage of brain power.... that of course would do it since- duh, disordered thoughts are part of the thinking process! lol sigh
Need to continue using my head to do work with da "telepathy" thing while getting it under control on 100 mg only.... That is amazing grace!
MONDAY, AUGUST 6, 2012
Telepathy etc
An interesting discussion occurred during my meeting with the shrink...
I told him about the telepathy and thought insertion thing...
He said, "Thought broadcasting and thought insertion."
Well, I figure that he understood what I was talking about...
Not quite sure how thought broadcasting is defined... thought it meant that thoughts in my mind are being broadcast to everyone.
What's the difference between my aka "telepathy" and thought broadcasting?
Sure, the symptom of being "telepathic" is simply a combination of thought broadcasting, self-reference thoughts, hallucination and psychotic symptoms otherwise not specified in thought and physical formats.
Yet, the sum of the parts seem to be qualitatively different from the parts themselves.
Granted, the addition of the thought broadcasting itself will add even more stress to a head already handling the commonplace psychotic symptoms.
But, in the "telepathic" state, all symptoms are united into one.... if not integrated (amazing grace that while I can't get to da integration thing after all these years, symptoms can get themselves to do the synchronous dance so very easily. Sort of like... so speak my psychotic self... "What's all the fuss about integration? I get your integration done in a breathe all the times except for you keep on trying to disintegrate me? You don't even have to make any effort!" 8-O lol)
In this state, not only are one's thoughts broadcast to the world telepathically... Other's thoughts can broadcast automatically to one's mind... And, the back and forth of broadcasting here, broadcasting there, and broadcasting everywhere paves the unterwegs zur cuckoo's nest easily in no time- not to mention the noises contributed by oddly synchronous events here and there.... Like me thought of taking a trip to see the Pyramids this afternoon and saw one of the cartoon character going into a pyramid early this evening.
Also, da thought insertion... the feeling that something forced thoughts or visions into my head. Also institutionalizable grade kinda symptoms. Although, the phenomena of thought insertion actually precede telepathy.
It remained damn strange that... I was all the way up to 300 mg of Seroquel last year while I do not recall the occurrences of thought broadcasting and telepathy. Da 100 mg Seroquel, this round, has strangely kept them symptoms mostly under control- meaning- I can better getting the propensity towards such thoughts negated.
The occurrences of the symptoms and the dosage I can handle... tres buzzard...
Don't know, though, whether it is the same thing for the rest of the psychotic populations... the equivalence of insertion, thought broadcasting and telepathy as well as unterwegs zur psychiatric ward.
Since I am unterwegs zur Seroquel, let me entertain yet another question-- oops... forgot...
Let me select one question randomly then... were they already there throughout the past few months except for I was too sleepy to get them entertained?
Nope. I don't think so... they grew exponentially this past month as I was becoming more and more awake in comparison to the months past.
At the same time, simply my mindless mumble jumble.
"On the other hand, the so-to-speak breakdown in the self-controlling mechanism is manifested in one’s inability to make appropriate adjustment to one’s interpretation about events, provided one’s self-monitoring capacity remained intact.
In plain English, I might agree with the notion that there is some impairment in the controlling component of the metacognitive model when I can not change how I interpret my experiences despite of my awareness of the biases and irrationality in my frame of references.
However, is this really impairment in my metacognition?
I don’t really think so. But, of course, that is but my really tired and loco interpretation."
Quote 2
"At the same time, as I have elaborated in previous postings, just like Rome, delusions are not built in one day. At the micro-level, as time goes on, it is inevitable for the delusional to develop a propensity to attribute observations in a way that is deviated from the norm. As a result, provided with the same environmental cues, delusionals might gradually develop a pattern in attending and interpreting environmental inputs that is different from that of a normal person.
In other words, both the normal person and the delusional are capable of performing metacognitive tasks, namely, self-monitoring and self-controlling.
However, a context is required for one to exercise his or her metacognitive skills and the context contains both the environmental inputs and one’s past experiences. Given the same environmental inputs, provided adequate ability capability of performing metacognitive tasks for both the delusional and the normal person, I feel it should be one’s past experiences that result in differential experiences, rather than the impaired metacognition."
From where I stand today I would say, I agree and disagree with these comments- though it is sort of difficult to agree or disagree since some part of the texts seem a bit ambiguous to me.
Starting from the second part of the quote, past experiences do not necessarily destine one to think in a particular fashion although learning does promote the strengthening of cognitive pathways, as per cognitive processing doctrine, and this is why old habits are hard to break- especially in the context of automaticity. In the context of the discussion, what is missing is the component of the present. For the normal, there is one set of reality and the limited numbers of hypotheses to entertain. For the psychotics, there is more than one set of reality with them realities entangled. As a result, there are far more hypotheses to be entertained while hypotheses beget more hypotheses- and this is why psychotic like me live a living trying to not get drown in the sea of hypotheses. 8-O lol sigh
The notion of da sea of hypotheses brings me back to the first quote...
Am I still in agreement with the comment that I don't have metacognitive impairments as per "Is this really impairment in my metacognition? I don’t really think so"?
I disagree despite of the word "really" in da quote. Coming right out of, if not still coming out from, a state of institutionalizable grade of psychotic symptoms bench-marked by telepathy (i.e., the sum of thought broadcasting, thought insertion and I can read you mind), I can tell you for sure that there are huge problems in the "control" department.
This is not the "let go of control" or "illusion of control" kinda control I am speaking of... (or is it the same thing? 8-O)
It is the phenomenon of, given the equal strength of verbal and non-verbal stimuli in the background, you brain is biased to attend to and interpret the inaudible verbal stimuli despite of your attempt to focus on the non-verbal stimuli such as music in the background.
That is an impaired department of "Control."
Regarding monitoring, well, though possible to achieve, the one major confounding variable would be simply- How do you tell what is real and what is real? Sounds like a chicken and egg question here... 8-O lol
At the same time, it appears to me that when it gets really "positive" (amazing grace that I could outsource 100 mg of Seroquel and a whole lot of rest to save myself my the cuckoo's nest while still kick at large), a huge part of the department of control seems to go on a vacation, possibly went on to Mars with Curiosity- leaving only an understaffed division working with the exponential increase in "biased observations." Sort of like.. I guess.. the scenario of the arrival of Fallen and them excessive number of Decepticons when Optimus Prime was "on leave" in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen? 8-O lol
(Oops... hope my symptoms don't get aggravated by my describing them as decepticons.... 8-O 8-X lol)
“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." Albert Einstein
and this pix...
And I decided to look up some more pix of walking fishes... via google image with the simple keyword of walking fish...
When scrolling through them images, I saw a pix of my walking fish with the pix linked to a website unknown to me....
I was overjoyed... OMG... my fish is on a website!
My walking fish returned by google image search
The pix of my walking fish linked to article.wn.com
And I thought... how on earth did I recognize this fish?
Though I entertain the sources of visits to Ratology Reloaded not all that much- since, with a proxy, you can identify yourself from arriving from any location on this planet- as long as you don't ask me to ponder why anyone would go through such hassle- just my default psychotic protocol.
This month
This week
Today
Past 2 hours (Now)
Interestingly, I am getting quite a bit of hits from Russia and Taiwan.... as well as... manchmal... China...
Don't know whether the pages were ever retrieved successfully on the client side in China?
Trying to get a crown done for that tooth of mine that's been undergoing tooth canal. Ended up, as per the dentist, the height of the tooth is at around 25 percentile with only 25 percent of teeth in the teeth population shorter than it. Not enough depth.
At the same time, though the teeth not using the retainer were tighter than with the retainer right after I had my accident, nowadays, them teeth need da retainer noch ein mal. Well, though das body of mine can run not, my teeth do run fast...
So I say... not enough depth for the teeth while my body surely is fat enough... Can't run no more except for them teeth wouldn't stop running.
Surely all in the wrong places... though, still, some parts de moi have the depth and some parts run really fast... brava, brava, bravissima! lol
The last time I saw someone with due enthusiasm with the declaration of independence was in the movie... National Treasure.
Today, when I was, with due diligence, doing one of my physical therapy routine, I heard this gentleman, also receiving his physical therapy then, reciting the declaration of independence in the doctor's office in Taipei.
Wow... that was the first time I heard anyone reciting the declaration of independence from his head... Really impressive!
The last time I came across something related to the declaration of independence was possible when I watched the movie.... the pursuit of happiness based on the story of Chris Gardner.
So I decided to take a look up the Declaration of independence drafted by Mr. Jefferson... and saw it for the first time... I think... though in digital format.
Heard my mom talking about the Queen escorted by 007 on the news. Since I missed it on the news, I decided to look for it online... because it sounds sooooooooooooo cooooooooooooooolllll!
Had a great feast at a wedding banquet... with the unmentioned to and from the restaurant on the metro described by one word... "Pain." The thing about so busy being in pain is that all cognitive capacity was dedicated to pain perception and there was not much room spared for my psychotic symptoms. At points, when my head get a break from pain perception, I did find voices trying to sneak in though such occurrences was pretty infrequent.
Can't blame it on God this time since it was me who came up with the brilliant idea of trying to "jump" since I haven't been able to jump since 2007--- and that was not really even a jump. 8-X sigh
One thing interesting about this feast is that... at some point, I realized that many of my cousins are already grand parents.... that would make me the grand aunt to many.... Not to mention the aunt to many almost around my age.
As I was telling my father this finding, he told me that, among the part of the family that did not come today, he is already the great-great-grand uncle (太).
So I thought... yours forever 21 has been a great-grand aunt (祖) for some time... then? OMG....
Something I posted in my internal blog or my journal last night... realizing it is going to be 5 years since my broken chair accident.
That'd be it for my 5-year anniversary post.
Happy 6/19/2012, wherever you are!
Sincerely your crippling psychotic still at large on the road.
8-O 8-X lol
MONDAY, JUNE 18, 2012
6/19/2012
Almost forgotten, but, it happened.... 5 years ago... 6/19.
The time is off by a good 12 hours... between New York and Taipei.
Officially speaking, it would be a few hours after tomorrow this time that the seemingly nothing more than embarrassing accident occurred.
Yet, 5x365x24=43800+24=43824-- counting 1 leap year in between.
Even if I am off by 24 hours, the error rate of 0.000547645 is far less than the conventional .01 level... even smaller than .001.
Think I can handle it.
Regardless, about Where is 偏見?
After I made that posting, I thought... I am either absolutely insane or over-sedated.
Regardless, from June 19th of 2007, from 2005 or from even earlier on....
It's a long trip to Where is 偏見? though the distance is short.. with the only thing it took... time and the minor inconveniences in life here and there in between.
Good morning, 6/19/2012.
Though, one thing I didn't have to worry about da mals... them damn zanzaras!
Where is 偏見?
Yesterday I spoke of 偏見 in Ratology at Heal, today someone came to visit Why post memo?
Synchronicity.
Someone else reading.
The reason why.
All things spoken already... alternatives to entertain.
If someone really reading, that someone or someones really know what has come out of my mouth better than me since I know it must have occurred somewhere in time just don't know when... 偏見.
Anyone if not anyones really reading all my internal blogs?
Good luck to him, her, it or them since I have no idea what the heck is coming out of my mouth most of times (the 99.99% principle)... let along what they mean... till it's time for the solution to unfold. 8-X
I decided to go to a museum which I thought is supposed to be close to 圓山別莊 though I forgot what the name of the museum was by the time I got to the metro station.
So I asked the lady working for the Metro where the museum of contemporary arts was and I got there with the direction of the kind lady and other people along the way... though I couldn't find 圓山別莊 near by.
Since, I landed in the museum of contemporaryart, I went for a whole afternoon's cultural tour with all due dedications.
Only to realize after I got home- just now- an entire afternoon's excursion later- that... it was really the museum of contemporary arts that I intended to go visit. 8-O lol
(This is cross-posted in Ratology- Handicapped at Large blog)
Been busy coping with God knows what I am coping with... Seroquel dosage going from 300 mg in November till 12.5 mg today just to keep myself being "functional" at work.
One word to describe the whole trip, "Inhuman."
Between the last round of dosage change and last night, 2 weeks time only... going from 3/4 of 25 mg to 1/2 of 25 mg?
The way it goes... what's gonna happen in 1-2 months? Out of my hand and I give it to the experts to handle it.
At a time when I don't have no idea any more about what the heck is going on with my body and mind (and when my family drives me up the wall), so I figure...
Who says a book is needed for me to properly introduce myself?
I am still kicking after all these years... and made a dime or two to feed myself. That is good enough for me.
I am nothing, to begin with. What can anything be taken from nothing? Nothing to lose? 8-O lol
As a result, I think I am gonna go down the street and shouting at everyone... "I am schizoaffective! I am schizophrenic! I am schizo-something! I am psychotic! Or, I am crazy!"
Just be acting in accordance to how I am "supposed" to act above and beyond I am still psychotic, I guess?
They were talking about this story of "ㄉㄢˋ 定 /dan ding/ 紅茶“ in the office the other day... a story about breaking up. Sort of.
When they first mentioned "ㄉㄢˋ 定紅茶“, I thought it was a new flavor of bubble tea kinda stuff--
蛋定 /dan ding/ 紅茶- black tea solidi-zed with eggs... turning it sort of like Flan or egg pudding... an image I formed instantly in my head. Yum.
Ended up, my mental model of ㄉㄢˋ 定 is not their mental model of ㄉㄢˋ 定 .... or ㄉㄢˋ 定非ㄉㄢˋ 定 。 8-O lol
The ㄉㄢˋ 定 they were speaking of is 淡定 /dan ding/ - not my 蛋定 /dan ding/ .
Afterwards, the phrase 淡定 /dan ding/ popped up left and right wherever I went... So I decided to google up some good definition
What
is 淡定? Essentially, it means calm and collected... so calm that even the sky
collapsed right in front of you, you don't get affected. Some said that
it is a phrase used in China.
The well-visited clip people came up with to capture the essence of the ㄉㄢˋ 定 /dan ding/ 紅茶story...
The well-visited clip people came up with to capture the essence of the ㄉㄢˋ 定 /dan ding/ 紅茶story...
(To view the English subtitle, please view the clip on youtube directly.)
Would also like to share with
you this impressive definition provided by someone with mucho expertise
in Chinese literature.... very impressive....
Whit
-
Whit sounds like wit and according to dictionary.com, it means
a particle; bit; jot (used especially in negative phrases).
I have changed not a whit. I do...
A dream: Backpacking
-
On my way back from NYC to Taipei in April, I managed to get myself an
extended layover (over 2 weeks) in Japan, landing at and exiting from the
Narita Air...
Ratprincess in Technology not lost?
-
Given my sick-in-the-headness, sometimes it's hard to trust my LTM. Did
Ratprincess in Technology really exist or was it my false memory?
As I was marv...
Traces of the past
-
A link I found that has been live online from the Down with Meds age.
Apparently, the past has always been there whether I knew it or not.
Posts
