From: feath@agora.rain.com (Feather)
Subject: bird on ice...  (LONG POST)  *>
Organization: Yale CS Mail/News Gateway
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 07:16:00 GMT

 
Outside the Rainbow Crow's RL window, it's cold, VERY cold.  Yet
R-Crow is nicely warm and tucked away in her room with her
friendly 386 computer.  But it's warmth only in a physical sense. 
Things are starting to becoming more and more serious for Feather's
other half, which means the small gray one is being affected too...
 
Back at Callahans, tiny icicles are starting to form on the tips of
Feather's wings and tail.  Frost now starts to show white on the rest
of her gray plumage.  
 
Incongruously, the small bird is not even shivering.  It's almost like
she has given up the effort to shiver long before.  She just stands
there, utterly resigned, letting it happen.  It's happened before to
Feath and her RL counterpart many times.  The cold is not from the
weather temperature in Portland.  It's from something deeper in her
heart...
 
 
---<---<@
An X-window opens.  A scene from RL from two weeks before. 
Place: the elevator in R-Crow's apartment building.  R-Crow is there
making small talk with woman in elevator.  Woman asks in greeting
"How are you feeling?"  R-Crow's custom is to reply with just a bit
more honesty than the usual "fine, how are you?"  R-Crow stops,
checks her insides for a report, and finds... nothing.  No emotion, no
feeling.  
 
R-Crow stands there and thinks about it, and is a bit surprised about
it on a rather intellectual level.  No feeling.  Lots of thoughts about
scary sorts of things have been going through her head lately.  Events
and developments have been occurring that should make Rainbow
Crow fear terribly for her own future.  She would feel it if she
COULD, but the emotion is just not there.  
----<----<@
 
 
Feather is almost white with frost now.  It finally occurs to the small,
gray avian that just *maybe* it could be a good idea to actually DO
something about this for a change.  This WAS Callahans, after all. 
With not much energy present in her tiny body, the small, gray avian
orders a hot drink from the bar and PK's it to the chalkline.  She then
plops down to the floor and *walks* to the fireplace.  Apparently
there is not much energy present in those wings either.  (Don't ask
how she managed to do PK under these circumstances.)  
 
Feather inspects her icy wings one by one.  She dispassionately
observes the fact that the fire in the fireplace is NOT having any
effect in warming her.  Even stranger is how the small, gray one
seems to regard her own transformation to a bird on ice with the
same kind of interest as yesterday's news.
 
Feather gulps her hot drink, which does not have much effect either.  
Feather contemplates the mug in front of her, and ponders for awhile
on a possible toast.  Finally she speaks in a low whisper, and gets her
PK ability in toss mode:
 
"To possibly breaking the chains of old hurtful life patterns."
 
<CRASH!>
 
Feather turns to the Callahaners.
 
We have a two-fold problem here...  it's immediate surface effects
and the long-time roots.  
 
First the surface problem.  R-Crow and I are a dangerous situation. 
R-Crow has perhaps 2 months worth of rent and food money to live
on.  She can't find the motivation to do much about it.  She should be
OUT THERE working her tail off trying to get a job or building her
new freelance business.  She should be using her creative powers and
her normally hyper energy to whip up a way to pay for her own
living expenses.  But it's not happening.  It occurs fairly often to her
that she should be screaming in fear for her own personal safety.
 
There is no emotion happening.  No emotion equals no motivation. 
R-Crow is just sort of staring at things as they go by.  I can't make
her move!  She won't look for a job.  And of course, because I am
her other half, it affects ME.  But I cannot do anything about it.  She
is the one who hold the key to motivation, and there is not anything
happening there.  
 
A LOT of negative stuff is occurring to the R-Crow just as thoughts. 
But they rarely, if ever, occur as feelings.  It's all happening as just
one big intellectual exercise for the Rainbow Crow.  What's weird
about it is that it doesn't seem to be a depression.  because R-Crow
has been through some nasty depressions and this does not feel like
that.  It does not feel at all.
 
It's happened before.  Like the time 5 years ago when someone who
she *thought* had loved her, cared about her in a deep way said,
"You are too crazy.  No one would ever be friends with you!" and
then left.  Anyone else would cry.  R-Crow didn't.  Her insides just
"nothinged out".  They became ice, and stayed that way since.  They
(her emotional insides) weren't that good to start with even before
then, so this situation didn't help matters much.
 
It's like this crying business is beyond her emotional ability, like a
computer that's missing a file.  
 
R-Crow has a good mind, and there seems to be a fairly good reason
for this emotional dynamic that Rainbow Crow CAN sort of figure
out.  Though she cannot remember much of her childhood, (I don't
blame her) there were a couple of incidents that shine through that
might indicate something.  
 
The most significant time was a certain morning when she was about
thirteen or so, and she was extremely depressed.  Par for the course
at the time.  R-Crow was acclimated with staying withdrawn and
letting the depression run it's course.  There was something rather
comforting in that; just not feeling, sort of a walking nonexistence. 
However was this one teacher, that kept trying to get R-Crow's
attention all morning besides the schoolwork assignments.  R-Crow
vaguely wondered why, but didn't dwell on it too much.  Then, in the
middle of the day, R-Crow was standing in line with a bunch of other
kids when she happened to look up at this teacher's eyes.  The
teacher gave our Crow a smile of deep caring.  The young R-Crow
immediately turned to the wall.  
 
It seemed to be just an ordinary school day after that.  The teacher
sort of stayed away from her after that.  However that night, R-Crow
could not sleep due to the extreme turmoil happening inside her.  Up
until then, her understanding of human beings had a nice simple
algorithm: if you talked about fear or hurt to someone, you are going
to get hurt even worse by them.  An open heart was open season. 
Thus, if you can keep fears or hurts to yourself, you are emotionally
safe, you are OK.  
 
But what was this feeling now, this screaming, newly-awakened need
that the young R-Crow did not understand?  This wanting to run to
that teacher and...  and...  and WHAT?  Go and do WHAT?  She
could not relate to it.  Emotional safety came from in keeping *away*
from people.  This kind of caringness the teacher was attempting to
convey was something the young R-Crow had never known."
 
The small, gray avian gives a hard look at the assembled patrons.
Speaking for myself, as Feather, _I_ had no name for this caringness
essence until several months ago.  I learned it from here, this bar.  It
was then when I saw a post here on Callahans about how to be an
empath, and I realized that quality was called empathy.  I guess I still
didn't know, because I had to post a message here awhile back asking
what the difference was between empathy and pity.
 
Then there was the other time when the young R-Crow was watching
TV.  She saw one character who was all upset, traumatized and
hurting, who went to another character for emotional comfort.  The
young R-Crow wanted to yell at the first character: "You stupid or
something?  Ya wanna get hurt _worse_?" when the second character
reached out and hugged the first one with a lot of caring and let her
cry with him.  Young R-Crow just stared at the TV in shock, not
understanding what she was seeing.  And feeling a screaming deep
sense of need she did not comprehend.
 
Aren't tears supposed to be healing and all that?  
For the Rainbow Crow that assumption does not seem to compute.  If
you could consult her emotional reference points like an encyclopedia,
and looked up "Crying, experience of" you would get either a
cacophony of negative voices screaming rejection at her, or an
essence of an empty room with her in it that is just as cold and empty
when the saltwater quit flowing as when it started.
 
R-Crow has a fear that once anyone offered and she was "foolish"
enough to accept what SEEMED like sweet, empathic emotional
support, (R-Crow's bitterness is shining through here) it will turn out
to be... what is the word for it?  Some sort of fake... false... a
deception.  Anyone else, who she THOUGHT had cared, that she
THOUGHT had this unknown quality called empathy (which she had
no word for) did not really care much.  Cause and effect.  Splash water 
on yourself, you get wet.  Put your hand on a hot stove, you get burned.  
R-Crow makes mistake of acting upon any need to be hugged and treated with 
this unknown quality now known as empathy, she ends up with more hurt
than she started with.  It's been many years since she has ever
considered it."
 
Feather stops a moment, and a tongue of fire shoots from the
fireplace to envelope the small gray avian for a split second.  It is so
quick that you would have missed it if you blinked.  The small bird is
not burned, however, and most of the ice had sizzled off of her
feathers as a result.  Feather smiles an unfunny ironic smile, and says
to her unseen other half:  "Maybe if you can feel a tiny bit angry
now, you are not such an icebird anymore?"   The small gray avian
leaves the question hanging in the air, and continues her story.
 
"The fact is, Rainbow Crow now understands it all on a perfect
intellectual level.  She can even talk about it to another person as if
she can truly relate or something, and they would never know she
was only relating from the neck up.  However this sense of having
someone else really give a damn, hugging her, letting her cry, being
really WITH her in that moment...  that's beyond her experience. 
She's never known it.  
 
Rainbow Crow USED TO BE beset all the time with a screaming
need to feel that experience; to know what it would be like in the first
place.  That part of her, though, has been dead now for about 5
years.  I wonder if the warmest-hearted empath in the world can
reach her now.  That's how far her ability to cry has gone."
 
Feather shrugs.  "From MY point of view, I'd like to see the
Rainbow Crow be able to experience some honest, complete empathy
at least once before her life is over...  but that would have to be one
*very* caring empath...  
 
I wonder; can that much caring EXIST in another human being?"
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Silence.  
 
(The small gray avain stands there...
 
                                in silence... 
                                             for a long moment...)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Feather looks at everyone.  "I don't know...  Speaking for R-Crow
directly now, I just want a perspective on it all.  I never talked about
this before.  I have no one in RL that I can talk about this.  There is
no place in RL I can go to about this.  But I guess, this is a unique
Place..."  Feather smiles, "...to say the least..."
 
Standing now at the chalkline is a small, gray avian of normal
plumage, no frost.  Feather shakes herself out after such a long
speech.  She then flies to the mantlepiece to rest and to hear
everyone's answers and perspectives.  Feather especially looks
forward to the opinion of a feline friend that the small gray bird has
come to respect...
 
"Thyra, please talk to me..."
 
 
-Feath