Desert

[plumtreeblossom]

So the plan for California on the long weekend of the 14th is –- camping in the Mojave desert.

When asked how I’d like to spend the weekend, I needed say no more than "OUTSIDE! I’ve been inside for 6 months!" The camping idea hatched out of that conversation. We’ll stay overnight in Hollywood on Friday and get food and supplies, then leave early the next morning for the desert.

As I said in a conversation with B (who has been to the same desert) last night, I’ve never in my life seen a cactus that wasn’t in a little pot. I’ve never seen a Joshua tree except in photos. Never slept under the desert stars. Nor ever realistically expected to. Well, now I will. :-)

***********

I got an unexpected but welcome call from my brother Jim last night. Our lives flow in such opposite directions that our streams only cross if one or the other reaches out. We got to talking about how both of us seem to sense we are wired with over-amplified emotions and emotional responses. Joy, melancholy, love, fear, enthusiasm – both of us wondered if we feel all emotions, both positive and negative, more acutely and intensely than the average person expresses feeling them. Or perhaps most people are better at containing them than we are, or can bring themselves to baseline more easily. Our emotions are...how do I say...ungroomed. And probably ungroomable. We were verbally charting a matrix of the rollercoasteresque emotions in the early stages of romance. It was startling but reassuring to hear that he experiences many of the same ultra-concentrated, industrial-strength emotional responses that I do, that seem to go realms further than most people describe feeling under similar circumstances . Lately I’ve been feeling alien in my noticeable hypersensitivity to my brain’s own chemicals. Hearing that at least one of my own flesh and blood also lives in a world of overly-vivid emotional Technicolor made me feel less isolated in my wonder about it. I hope we’ll talk more often.

Comments

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

My elder sister and I have very similar brain chemistry, too. We've talked about this in a number of contexts, but the funniest one was when Jason had done something minor that really pissed me off (I've rarely been so mad--I threw out the sandwich, plate and all!) and I called Anne and told her the story and she immediately responded "Obviously he's never really loved you!"

Being understood is a great luxury.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to imagine what he did that prompted sandwich disposal!