A Comprehensive and Encyclopedic Dictionary of Human Experiences
I seek to articulate my experience. I, and many others, have many different experiences that spiritual people may describe as “fractal”. I associate fractals more with kaleidoscopes, and not experience itself, but I get the misconception. Herein I will attempt to index, with great pleasure and authoritative presence, a number of different experiences, their respective qualia, and my humble “take” on them. Keep in mind that I am a meager, white American 25-year-old male with feminine characteristics and no formal education other than life itself. But you could say, I guess, that college is more about the experience anyway, rather than the actual “going-to” college in itself. Without a further do, I will begin.
Cowering (v) - Cowering is an experience which involves an expression of total fear. Those found cowering are often behaving reactively to some perceived or real threat. Depending on where you cower, people may come to your aid, or simply sit in the other room and wait for you to cease cowering. For example: A desperate ex-boyfriend may react to his recent ex-girlfriend alerting him that she is going on a Hinge date with a long hair gentle guy who owns “knitwear” and who “likes wading in rivers” by cowering. In this situation, the cowering is usually perceived as manipulative or pathetic by both parties involved. Cowering may be seen as more honorable or reasonable if the cowerer has just witnessed a horrible train incident with plenty of “untimelies”.
Making a Neutral-Positive “Frumpy” Smile Face at People in Public (v) - When you’re in deep emotional pain and you go outside into the world, it’s common to see other people, walking around, living their lives, working at cafes, et cetera. Depending on how lonely you feel, you may find yourself interacting with these others in a uniquely desperate way. Making a “neutral-positive frumpy smile face” at another person is an effective, if not a bit desperate attempt at connection. For example: A young, tender artist who just moved to a big city gets dumped in a huge, horrible way. He goes outside to “feel something.” He plans on taking the train to Williamsburg, feeling hopeful for the future, despite an aching pain hiding in his chest cavity.
“I’m going to be a great writer,” he thinks.
“I am a remarkable prose-stylist,” he thinks.
Seated in a spotless, Danish-Modern beanhouse, he still feels listless. His coffee is lukewarm and lacking sweetness, much like his recent relationship. He gives the room a once-over, and there it is, in all its glory: The Neutral-Positive “frumpy” smile face. A woman in a bright pink puffer jacket seems to already be emitting this experience to another person, but when his watery, infantile eyes meet with hers, he sends it right back. They look away from each other. His heart is incrementally fuller, and he truly believes, just for a moment, that he can go on.
Hot Bath Every Night with No Bubbles (n) - If you know anything about modern psychology, you will know that any good therapy model will recommend the user a seemingly unending and completely helpless list of “coping mechanisms” which are micro-experiences formulated to specifically deal with the effects of anything ranging from stress, grief, panic, depression, and even joy. Joy can be unhealthy, too, you know. If someone gets too happy they might start celebrating by using illicit, clarity-increasing drugs such as “psilocybin, ketamine, LSD.” These people may unknowingly unravel the fabric of their lives by eliminating their fearful egos from the equation. A healthy amount of tolerable discomfort and suffering is needed to keep a population from devouring itself in an orgiastic ecstasy. This brings us to the very enjoyable and safe experience of a hot bath every night with no bubbles. It may bump up your water bill a bit, but at least you are giving yourself a chance to recover from your emotional or physical ailments in a hot tub of Earth’s most abundant natural resource. You don’t even need bubbles, the hotness of the water is enough to physically stimulate you and distract you from serious pain. And remember, you can experience this every night of your life, as long as you have a house with a bath and a job to pay for the house. Your housemates and family members will understand the bill increase, because they know they are getting a better version of you. A hot, calmed-down human with no bubbles all over them.
Having a job (v) - This one is going to be a bit more speculative, seeing as I don’t have a job currently. But I have had jobs. My coworkers were everything to me, but clocking in every day began to feel repetitive and got old quickly, leading to a decrease in my desire to even come in at all. I started calling out sick, smartly using my autoimmune disease an excuse, which they bought for a while. But one day, they walked me down the aisle towards my employment divorce, and sacked me. Martin, who wore a green-hat and loved films, waved me goodbye as I exited the work building. Graciela passed a smile of pity onto me, knowing that I was going home to nothing. If you don’t have any money, your loved ones will eventually fire you, too, just like your boss will if you don’t go to work.
“I’m breaking up with you,” my partner of six years said to me as I cowered in bed, hiding from the world.
“Oh… my… god….” I said from underneath the covers. After a few minutes of quiet sobbing, I shot out like a slippery fruit exiting its peel and b-lined it for the bathroom. Hot bath with no bubbles incoming for me. My happy place. I stayed in there for hours, my housemate and ex patiently waiting, eventually leaving to pee elsewhere, until I could face reality. But what if there was another experience waiting to be articulated for me? A form of personal, experiential transcendence, I thought from inside the tub. Something that could trump all other experiences. I once heard someone on a podcast say something about “Dying while you’re alive” in regards to something, but I forgot, but I remembered that it sounded cool. “You have to die while you’re alive,” I said to my friends at a bar, receiving back quiet, contemplative looks from my chums. I felt satisfied then, but now: I had to act.
Stopping moving entirely and seeing what happens to your life when you don’t move anymore forever (v) - From inside the bathroom, I become completely resolute to try out something few people, if any, had ever attempted. I would simply stop moving and see what happens to my life if I don’t move anymore. At first, I assumed, my housemates and ex would be worried, which is the last thing I wanted. I quickly scribbled on a piece of toilet paper using some poop from the toilet as a crude marker.
“I am not dead, sick, or mentally ill. I am simply trying out a new type of experience in which I don’t move anymore in my life. I give you consent to move me, but please do not try to get me to move, because I am completely resolute in fulfilling this experience. Sarah, I love you. I’m sorry I wasn’t enough for you. I hope you and that knitwear guy from Hinge end up happy and pop a few spring chickens out of the oven in the next five years. Michael, you were the best housemate a guy could ask for. Remember when we watched all of those movies? That was incredible.” I drain the water from the tub, and drape the note across my exposed lower-region, so Michael doesn’t have to see my unmoving cock.
Sarah and Michael seem to be out at the bar or something, considering it’s already 1 a.m. I feel lonely in the empty tub. I get tired after a while and fall asleep. A few hours later, I awake to a clamoring in the night. Sarah’s wasted. Michael says goodnight to her and walks to the bathroom, opening the unlocked door to my silent, completely still body.
“Chris? What the fuck? Are you okay?” he asks, assessing the situation. I say nothing, remaining completely motionless. He squints his eyes to read the note and after reading it, scoffs and rolls his eyes. I’m glad he knows I am alive and not mentally ill. My housemate thinking I’m a mentally ill dead person would not be a good experience.
“Sarah, come here. Chris is in the tub and isn’t moving, but like, he’s okay I think,” Michael says. Sarah barrels down the hallway, blitzed on Dirty Shirleys, her favorite.
“God fucking damnit, Chris. Get up. This is so horrible and manipulative. You can’t do this,” she pleads. I stare forward, unmoving.
To save you the unpleasant details, I will summarize. They dragged me to the couch (Sarah put me out) and tucked me in and I fell asleep and awoke in the morning. Realizing that I wasn’t going to move an inch, I could tell they were worried. They called other people over, eventually alerting my family members. One family member of mine came over and said something terse and conservative, which my more liberal housemates found unhelpful.
Frillux, my interesting therapist, suggested that I was experiencing a sort of experientially absurdist manifestation of a delusion. Knowing that I wasn’t prone to psychosis, he assured my loved ones that I was not hallucinating being dead, or even that upset.
“He’s just deciding not to move or eat or get up or anything. He reached a breaking point and is now still,” Frillux said with a slightly disappointing tone. It did not feel good to hear that. This didn’t feel like progress, but I remained stone-like. Sarah’s knitwear boyfriend rubbed her back intimately. It had only been two weeks but somehow they seemed like they were in love. There’s no way they would last, I thought, she was just coping with a stressful situation.
Eventually I was put, as the Brits would say, “in hospital”, hooked up with feeding tubes, a catheter, the whole shabang. Nurses came to take my vitals and they left the television on. I avoided watching because it was mostly just stuff like Yellowstone and other right-wing-coded media made to stimulate the working class. Weeks passed. Friends and family members came by less and less, eventually just calling to check in on me with the nurses and doctors. My muscles had to be artificially stimulated so that they didn’t rot. At one point, a few months in, the staff decided to give me a haircut. They brought in a pediatric barber and made me look silly. For some reason they showed me myself in the mirror. My facial hair had grown out and I had a silly haircut, and I felt a sweet sadness about my predicament.
My internal mind visuals became vivid, as I began to keep my eyes closed when I woke up. I devised a sort of mind-labyrinth for my internal self to explore. I created imaginary friends, mentally “edited” essays and “watched” movies that I made up based on movies and experiences I had experienced in my moving life.
The first still birthday I had was honestly really difficult. Only my mother came. She cried and pet my head for about two hours. I felt like moving. I imagined coming back to the world, everyone forgiving me for that weird shit I was on, and getting a job and a new girlfriend or boyfriend. I comforted myself by thinking about how this experience wasn’t entirely different from any other experience. I had food, water, my mind, my nurses, and my breath. I was alive, albeit atypically.
The second year passed. Only a card from my mother, now. You have to move on at some point. I understood.
Time was mush. I didn’t really know what day or year it was. I eventually stopped thinking in English, just impressionistic images and mind-movements. I didn’t think about my self anymore, because a self was a linguistic construction that required confirmation of its existence through interactions with other selves. Nurses were just blue blurs. Doctors were white blurs. Blue. White. Teal. Yellow.
One morning, the sun peered in through my window in a particularly beautiful way. Yellow, poetic ocean spilling into my cube. The hospital dust glimmered like spectacular little molecules in the gleaming ray. I wanted to reach out and touch it. Chills sprayed throughout my entire body, down into my feet, bursting out of my toes. I became resolute to experience a new experience. All things had to end.
Moving (v) - Nearly collapsing, grabbing at walls, I tunneled through the hallways with only one goal: going outside. It took several minutes before a nurse recognized me.
“Sir! Sir! Wait! Calm down!”
“Chris is moving!”
Medical workers tried to catch up with me, but thanks to their own state of the art muscle stimulation technology which was thankfully covered by my insurance, my legs were as strong as ever. It was like that scene in Avatar, where that blue guy gets up and realizes how strong his legs are and runs outside and plays basketball. Except I wasn’t trying to play basketball. And I was just a white guy.
Reaching the lobby, I looked like a deranged psycho-type of guy. Aching, wounded ladies and guys hobbled next to each other, waiting for medical attention. Some looked up at me, but I couldn’t say hi just yet, I had to go outside and see the sun and the sky and the birds and stuff.
“Bzzzsshtt,” the sliding glass doors made a noise. I ambulated through them. Air, morning air enveloped my person. I shook around a bit, my butt characteristically revealing itself through my skimpy hospital gown. A little innuendo couldn’t hurt, I thought about my exposed rear.
The sun was as beautiful as I remembered it. I put on some UV-resistant John Lennon-style shades and looked up at it, drinking it in. I looked around the hospital parking lot. Ambulances. Boring trees. Some forgettable bird species. I was ecstatic. A woman from the distance walked by and I briefly locked eyes with her. I acted accordingly and utilized an important human experience, doing a “neutral-positive frumpy smile face” at her, to which she promptly returned.