Category Archives: brain research

SOCIAL MEDIA: It Was Supposed To Be A Party.

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Dear Social Media:

[The ones who haven’t hidden my posts.]

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It’s been 7 years. Is this the itch?

Here’s what I think of our relationship. (Like a good therapy patient, I’ve made two lists): Good Stuff and Not So Good Stuff.

Good Stuff:

  • Re-acquaintance with old friends, remote family, DNA determined ancestors, and former students;

  • New friends, some special and close;

  • Community Bulletin Board announcements, including:

          a.) “In a ‘relationship'”; b.) marriages, c.) births; d.) pet acquisitions; e.) deaths;

  • Photos and video of fine art, music, dance, soccer goals, and drama;

  • Promotion of performance based events;

Not So Good Stuff:

  • False picture of the social landscape in the real world;

  • Subconscious drive to “keep up with the Jones’s”;

  • Political proselytizing, not always fact-based;

  • Passive-aggressive verbal warfare;

  • Flat out braggadocio;

Consequently, each of us has unwittingly submitted to a cinematic characterization of ourselves that distorts public perception.

The Introvert, Extrovert and Ambivert: It’s a @#$% Party!

Introverts rarely post; they read, and draw conclusions. Extroverts enter one liners, then leave the house to actually go and be with their people. Ambiverts, caught between creating in print and communicating with intent, post excessively – leaving themselves wide open to extrapolation and interpolation, only to wonder why cliques shun them in public.

The Interpretation

We have come to interpret reactions to our persona on social media with far too much of the alternate angst, delusion, and regret. The Blocking Feature has been deadly, cutting off all hope of public reconciliation; it’s as if that 3 foot barrier in three dimensions has taken on an anti-gravity shield, distinct from any currently being employed by the alien civilization presently closest in proximity (sic) to earth.

And — how many of us knew it was just a @#$% party!?

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© Ruth Ann Scanzillo  9/30/16    – All rights those of the author. Thanks!

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Blessings in Disguise.

brain research, classical music, classical musicians, creative writing, gratitude, humor, musicians, mystical experience, performance, Uncategorized, WWII, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

 

 

Two weeks ago, inexplicably, or as fate would have it, or Providentially, or whichever persuasion suits the reader’s bent, I tripped over my Stability Ball and crashed to the floor. Tendering a bruise the size of your fist on my left hip and a swelling injury to the outer wrist, being a professional musician I did not take this lying down. Oh, wait. Well, you get the picture.

Wouldn’t we discover that, being forced to juggle a performing schedule, I would choose to push back one event by a month, the full length recital for which collaborative piano was my commitment and which was to have been presented two and a half full hours prior to call for another ensemble performance.

As the referenced weekend approached, the demand from the rest of the music – one Bach Cantata No. 4, for which I was to provide cello continuo – soon became evident; had I remained committed to the recital date as well, the mental gymnastics would have been excruciating. Neuroplasticity is not the forte of the post-menopausal, nor is any inclination toward proving feats of extraordinary finesse. Ask your mother.

Quite without warning, perhaps due to a combination of immediate attention to emergent need and a diathermic dinosaur complete with pallets for paws at the chiropractor’s office, the wrist healed within three days. The Bach, rumor has it, was exquisite.

Bach’s music is always exquisite. No respectable musician ever takes the credit. Oh; and, the flute student for whom the recital was rescheduled would reveal no small relief at a reprieve of several weeks. So, one full on resolution for the composition book.

Within days of the performance of the Cantata, I joined the Y.

Yes. That was an abrupt modulation. Middle aged women hold the monopoly. Tell your father. Having narrowly escaped a ruptured ulnar ligament, I’d call it gratitude.

Traveling light being the preference of the standard cellist, I arrived with application form completed and my driver’s license in hand, for verification. When it came time to head to the track, simultaneously discovering that I had no pockets outside of the jacket which would take its place on the wall of hooks, I reached down and slid the license into the elastic belly band of my yoga pants.

Two miles later, and eighteen solid months of support cushioned, sofa seated decompensation, my right hip flexor hit raging revolt. Off to the chiropractor, for round two.

He, being the intuitive by practice, rejected my presumption toward decompression and began to manipulate my lower appendages like a pretzel maker’s apprentice. The volume of vocalizations generated from deep in my diaphragm embarrassed all the men in the waiting room, but he would show no mercy. This is the role of the healer, after all; pain is proof.

It wouldn’t be until I’d been home for over an hour that any realization would come.

My driver’s license. was. missing.

In full celebration of advancing age, I searched the pockets of my coat. Then, the corners of the car seat, and between, and across the drive to the brick path leading from the house, and again. After which, the phone calls ensued – first, to the administrative offices of the Y, complete with reprimand regarding the absence of fair warning with respect to theft on premises; then, to the chiropractor, asking for complete search of the chair and examining table. Lord knows, the pretzel I had assumed that afternoon was convoluted enough to dislodge a gallbladder, let alone one flat, laminated card placed squarely beneath my bellybutton.

Earning nothing whatsoever except a round of apologies, I loaded my ammo for the email onslaught. No amount of ten plus years in the service industry would permit me any compassion toward any part time temp who cared insufficiently for my encroaching needs as a woman old enough to be everybody’s mother. I mean everybody. Give me the old woman’s shoe. I’ll make it my palace. What are you looking at?

The mind’s tricks are unfathomable. They lie in wait to deceive. The tactile memory of arising from the commode infiltrated like a stealth trooper, accompanied by fleeting contact between object and point of arrival. Inorganic object, to be sure; this was no common lavatory caper.

I looked down at the belly band of my yoga pants. And, then I remembered. Lifting it, I did what every bewildered existentialist did in the ’60s: I stared at my navel. I had no choice. There was nothing else there.

Convinced that I had flushed the driver’s license down the toilet, I made the requisite, illegal trip up the miracle mile to the DMV, declared mine to be the Story of the Week, paid the $27 fee, and drove legitimately back down the hill for home.

Then, just as my mother before me, and every other Daughter of the Great Depression (look it UP), I dug out the recently acquired, turquoise LED flashlight from the ValuHome dollar bin, and the scalloped foam Outdoor brand knee pad, also strangely turquoise, and made one, final, dedicated effort to search the depths of the car floor for the license.

Setting the pad on the driveway cement, I placed my dormant knees on the turquoise foam, crouched forward, and stuck my whole head of smelling henna under the front seat.

No generational equivalent of illumination could have prepared me for what that mini-LED wand would unearth. There, between, the seat and the gearshift compartment, lodged in that raw, steel Mechanism of Death, was a white, laminated card.

The Highmark. PPO. Blue. medical. insurance. card.

The one I’d blamed the local ER intake department for retaining. The last time I’d presented with migraine induced vertigo. That one. Don’t point. Pointing is rude.

Now, most west side Italian girls were raised Catholic. I’m an east side transplant. This is enough to skew all the statistics, baffle the bigots, and make the idiots really angry. But, I will thank the Patron saints, the ones who protect all those who travel and those who search, for listening, loving, and then teaching even the oldest woman in the room that blessings always arrive in the shimmering, brilliant, mystery of disguise.

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© Ruth Ann Scanzillo 4/16/16     All rights those of the author, whose name appears above this line. Thank you for your respect. And, please. Don’t stare.

littlebarefeetblog.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Indictment.

brain research, commentary, healing, human behavior, psychology, relationships, social behavior, social commentary, sociology, , , , , , , , ,

 

In little over an hour from now, “The Bachelor/The Women Tell All” will air on ABC. This is the point, in the grande process toward “The Final Rose”, when all the jilted bachelorettes get to descend upon their alleged suitor with every grievance and moment of humiliation he’d brought to bear on their public life in a rush of female vilification that approaches the attack of a flock of buzzards. I, for one, on a night like this one cannot wait to be a mere spectator.

My online counselor and I had just completed our session. I’d asked him to let me read aloud to him from one of my blog posts, “Pedigree”,  because I wanted him to know about something that had “happened to me.” To my mind, the incident about which I had written had happened to me, not because of me.

When I finished the read, I looked up at him. His face was contorted. He looked down, and shook his head. Then, he said that he felt like acid had been thrown at him.  He called me snotty. He said I sounded, no; he actually looked right at me, and said it: “You’re a mean bitch!”

” It’s no wonder”, he added, “that you have so few friends!”

He also kept rubbing his forehead. It could very well be that he’d had a headache even before I signed on. If so, I am certain that it was made worse by my session, a fact that I would give him by way of compassionate concession. But, I realized that now I would be spending the evening processing that somebody who got paid to counsel individuals in the realm of human behavior had just called me a snotty, mean bitch.

Perception sometimes informs the agony of life.

I repeat: I’d asked him to let me read the blog post aloud to him, because I wanted him to know about what had “happened to me.” ; the incident about which I had written had happened to me, not because of me. He, on the other hand, insisted that I had behaved very passive-aggressively by starting the conversation, and aggressively by writing the follow up piece.

The community of psychologists and their corollaries’ consensus goes that, deep within the tangled mess we often see when we go inside, a fragile, tender child resides. We are told to fully see that child, to embrace that child, and to accept that child. That child is innocent.

At that moment, I felt like somebody just tore the skin on that child and inserted a poisonous penetrant. Psychic pain is not lost on me; in fact, in my trek through the jungle toward self-realization, I have become quite familiar with the sensation.

Where does one go, and what does one do, when one is told that others see, in the self we are trying to accept, only a snotty, mean bitch?

My first impulse is to shut down. In moments of extreme trauma, rather than act out emotionally as is my characteristic wont I simply go unresponsive. I sit very still. The muscles of my face cease any movement. I hide in plain sight, hoping that any and all external influences will retreat from their threat to my well-being.

But, being a seasoned, post-menopausal woman, I do have other options. I could take a hot shower. I could eat something that contains heavy creme and organic unprocessed cane sugar. I could meditate on those whom I love, or those who, over time, have offered the sincerest form of love.

Indeed. Even a trained counselor can have moments of lapses in humanity. Even those whose livelihood depends on the trust of the precariously healthy can make missteps. Forgiveness is the most magnanimous of traits. Time to employ it, with fervor.

Denial is only a temporary comfort. There is no place to really live in denial. Defiantly insisting, particularly at the top of my voice, that I am NOT a snotty, mean person serves nothing and nobody.

Having recently confessed, also in print, my total failure as a loving human, I’m hoping for further illumination. Perhaps the belief that we bring our own misfortune, that we invite our own misery, is worthy of contemplation tonight. I’d thought that opening the counseling session with a preamble about never having been trained in the social arts would carry some credence; apparently, when one asserts oneself in print, all bets are off.

Here’s hoping that the study in sociology presented at 8:00pm will purge me of any and all notions of superiority over others that my writing implies. After all, if one stable, otherwise healthy guy from a loving, supportive family can handle the challenge and condemnation coming at him from 25 angry females, an aging, single woman who struggles to remain relevant among her peers can certainly survive the perception of one man.

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© Ruth Ann Scanzillo   3/7/16   All rights those of the snotty, mean bitch who wrote the piece. Back off, minions.

(there. I hope he’s happy.) (!)