02.19.2006
Goodbye, Darkness, My Old Friend
I’m still framing the political essay I am going to write, and my references are piling up to the point of dissertationhood. Soon, the entire project will collapse under its prodigious intellectual and moral weight, and I will be left writing about a game of Scrabble.
Last night, I played a game of Scrabble.
Actually, two games: one that lasted three hours and one that lasted about thirty minutes. In the first, I kept getting letters like T T T T L I Q. Indeed, I had that Q for the entire game without ever seeing a U or an opportunity to spell QAT or FAQIR, so I lost miserably; in the next game, I played different people and came in second. In both games, I broke a hundred points, which is significant. I have the largest written vocabulary of anyone I know (save one), but my Scrabble skills are so abysmal that I years ago developed a phobia of keeping score. I also can’t do crossword puzzles or speak a coherent sentence out loud.
My brain is wired wrong. Often I can think a sentence, or write it, but I can’t say it. Or sometimes I can’t think of a simple word except for the letter it starts with, and I’ll go to type the word but for some reason start typing with one of the other letters in the word and not the first letter. Or I’ll think of one word and start saying or typing another, completely unrelated word. I’ve actually typed entire phrases while actively intending to type completely different phrases.
I’m used to all of this, so it doesn’t bother me much anymore. More disturbing is that, for several days this past week, I had the same weighted, sinking feeling I used to live with on a continual basis before I started taking a certain medication a few years ago (and stopped taking it, in a twitchy fit of serotonin withdrawal, in November of 2004). It was actually just the lightest touch of that hopeless feeling—the dull tugging on the center-left part of my brain, down my neck, connected to invisible lead blocks on my hands and feet that made every thought and movement a colossal effort. It’s a sensation I had at once both forgotten entirely and recognized instantly with a terror unlike any I have felt in recent times.
I don’t think those dark days have returned. Indeed, I feel fine now (apart from a searing frustration that ttttliq isn’t a word). But it’s a humbling reminder that there are some things you can get past but never truly escape.
What turned that frown upside-down was a movie I saw on Friday night, called Transamerica, which I feared would be the boy-to-girl-tranny Boys Don’t Cry, starring an actress whose most renowned character drives me barking mad, but instead was largely sweet and oddly amusing. Expecting to be inconsolable afterward, I actually emerged onto the chilly streets of a world where people’s minds and bodies can betray them, often spectacularly, but where the confrontation and even celebration of these issues can lead to an unexpected, and unexpectedly satisfying, wholeness.
posted by
David at 10:57 AM
Wasn't Boys Don't Cry the tranny Boys Don't Cry?
posted by:
Brian on 02.19.2006 at 3:40 PM
Check out "Sports Night" for Felicity Huffman at her TV best. I like her housewife, but always feel a pang of sadness for the loss of SN whenever I see her anywhere.
posted by:
Adam875 on 02.19.2006 at 4:38 PM
Check out "Sports Night" for Felicity Huffman at her TV best. I like her housewife, but always feel a pang of sadness for the loss of SN whenever I see her anywhere.
posted by:
adam875 on 02.19.2006 at 4:40 PM
Brian: See, my brain is betraying me again.
Adam875: Her housewife makes me want to slit her throat. And I just heard an interview with F.H. where she says that she loves the character and it's her exactly, so there you go.
posted by:
David on 02.19.2006 at 5:31 PM
The layer of erudition that recently went away for me, in spoken language, at least, was subject verb agreement. What the hell, people?
Sometimes, I find that I have the opposite problem, and I can't think of a casual, regular way to say something, so I have to say something really elaborate and pretentious.
posted by:
Cara on 02.19.2006 at 6:51 PM
Yes, Trans America was suprisingly good. Not sure if I like FH, but she was good in that movie.
posted by:
Coffeedog on 02.19.2006 at 8:08 PM
it is my hope that, in those moments when you despair of ever effectively verbalizing (or scrabblizing, for that matter) what's on your mind, you can console yourself with the knowledge that you blog it exceptionally well.
posted by: mkf on 02.20.2006 at 6:25 AM
Should you wish to get really good at scrabble, get the Scrabble list book and you'll discover that QI is the only 2 letter word with Q and that QIS is the plural. Furthermore - should you (like me) wish to memorize all of the two and 3 letter words and be capable of playing one word right next to another, it can only improve your score - my friend and I average 300 a game each.
posted by:
Brendon on 02.21.2006 at 8:47 AM
Cara: People think that subjects and verbs must needs always agree. In fact, they are natural enemies
Coffeedog: She was good in that movie, but I think they should have had a real tranny in the part.
MKF: Bless your heart.
Brendon: Perhaps you should just possess my body during any Scrabble game I am unwise enough to enter into and save me the trouble of learning stuff. Ha ha.
posted by:
David on 02.21.2006 at 10:02 AM
Do i get to touch myself while possessing you?
posted by:
Brendon on 02.22.2006 at 7:40 AM
Is it bragging to say that yesterday when Dan and I played Scrabble, I crossed the 400 point mark?
Probably. But I did! :)
I will never play Scrabble again, after having been scarred, irrepairably, at what was supposed to be a friendly tourney. I was behind in points, and the two Scrabble maniacs with whom I was paired quickly left me in the dust of their Scrabble-off, sparring against each other instead. I had crappy letters all through the game, and it was all I could do to keep my head above water. Then, there it was! A golden opportunity, ripe for the picking: I had the V, and the Z, and, in the middle of the board was an I. It was surrounded by triple word score on one side, double on the other. AND, I would use all the letters I had! To glory, I thought! Alas, one of my fellows questioned my word, viz. I answered that it meant, "to wit" and that it was, indeed, a valid word. Oh, no my young friends, to the Scrabble dictionary we went, and being that viz is not, apparantly, Scrabble worthy, not only did I not get any trebled double score of 40 points plus the extra for going out with all my letters, I, in fact, was stripped of all these, actually creating a negative score for myself.
The fact that I didn't tip over the board right then and there is, I think, a testimony to my maturity.
posted by:
gregorio on 02.24.2006 at 7:58 AM
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