On a meme roll

[lapsedmodernist]

I just realized something: my favorite getting-to-know people question would make an excellent meme. So here it is, answer, ask others if you want, I find it very informative, and in all the years I've been asking it, I've never gotten the same answer twice.

Come up with a metaphor or simile that most accrately describes how your mind works.

Comments

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

i'd say it's like a common garden hoe
can you elaborate?

[wouldprefernot2.livejournal.com]

Cleaning my apartment.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

how so?

[trochee.livejournal.com]

At this hour of the night, I think my mind is like a giant rummage closet, with exactly one person who knows where everything is.

Things are all over the place, but there's a surprising amount of stuff in there that you would never imagine actually all fits. And if you ask the right question, the rummage-master will come back with a useful little widget that you never knew even existed. I often have that moment of "where did I ever learn that odd little piece of trivia?"

Also, it's like a rummage closet in that most of the stuff in there isn't useful.

I'm going to think about this again tomorrow and see if I have a different answer.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

very visual and evocative. I'd be curios if you have another answer at a different time of day.

[emblemparade.livejournal.com]

Ghostwheel is like a thing that hates memes.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

well, were we ever to meet in person, I'd ask yo the same question, so it's not really a meme.

[emblemparade.livejournal.com]

Oh, IN THAT CASE. Well, I honestly don't like to make statments about myself, and tend to roll my eyes when other people do. I would have trouble taking the answer to this question seriously. Metaphors are sooo pre-1973, you lapsed modernist you.

But, FOR YOU, My Mind is... an abacus that fell down a well and grew gills and fins.

This thing would work much better if you said "give me 3 metaphors", because then the metaphors can fight. And if the people choose similes that are active (like: cat, dog, mouse) then you'd have yourself a real fight which could be like a meta-metaphor. Metaphors are boooring by themselves, but contradictory metaphors can lead to some kind of insight.

[alice-ayers.livejournal.com]

It's like a princess with dirt under her fingernails, going where she shouldn't but knowing something about all that shimmers.

Or a showtune sung by Tom Waits...

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

I love it, esp. the Tom Waits part, I totally can see that.

[akozorez.livejournal.com]

I don't know from metaphor, but the first instinctual thought that came to mind was in the form of a quote from Goethe: "'Know thyself'? If I knew myself I would run away."

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

somehow that answer if so very you...Goethe and you even flirt with questions...

[stillwell.livejournal.com]

My mind works like waves on a beach; steady, but effected by wind, weather, and the moon (and everything else!)

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

totally makes sense.

[stillwell.livejournal.com]

I'm so grateful when things do!

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

My mind? One of those small-town municipal archives with no particular organization schema and no indices but a whole lot of documents, most but not all related more or less to what's local.

Or sometimes it's a monkey, just like everyone else's mind I suppose.

What about you? How do you answer the question?

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

oooh, cool, esp. this part:
most but not all related more or less to what's local.

my answer to this question is usally: my mind is like an infinite connect-the-dots game that never stops, all dots can always be connected to other dots in infinite permutations and combinations, and thus no piece of inforation is ever useless, it mst be stored away until another piece of information it can be connected to will emerge.

[twotoedsloth.livejournal.com]

Something like an attic, with a bunch of interesting stuff in it somewhere, sometimes, if I could just remember where it was under the extra dusty paperwork and vaguely interesting architecture.

or

Sort of like a cross between a sloth and and a terrier puppy, except with a slightly depressive component.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

I understand the first better than the second...but the second is very striking.

[claudelemonde.livejournal.com]

i'd say mostly like a black hole--we have evidence it works, but no real idea why. it makes a sort of sense, but only if you're willing to suspend rational ideation. and it's got that fractal kind of repetition that seems random but is the hugest pattern.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

dude that's awesome

[klingrap.livejournal.com]

A small frog in a big pond hopping onto a lillypad that starts to sink beneath its weight, then hopping off before the lillypad has a chance to stabilize. The frog, of course, is thinking about sex.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

The frog, of course, is thinking about sex.
but of course. I really like it.

[mycrust.livejournal.com]

a pseudo-random number generator with a distressingly short period.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

that makes me understand you better which is the whole point of this exercise.

[lilsamkudu.livejournal.com]

like a dick

[never-the-less.livejournal.com]

parallel circuits many of which are caught in infinite loops? (expect i don't think that the concept of inifite loops applies to circuitry.)

i don't know. i've seriously never really thought about how my mind works -- who i am, etc. for sure, but the mechanics of my thought processes...i feel more defined by the kind of work my mind does (i.e. what i tend to think about, the various filters that i put on the world around me) than how it works. all i could come up with is, for better or worse: linear, all at once, and building upon itself (i.e. taking itself as it's own subject in addition to the subject at hand), yet often to no real end. the fact that i had to use a mechanical (electrical, whatever) metaphor is extremely disappointing to me, yet somehow makes the circuitry metaphor more appropriate.

what's your metaphor?

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

that is something like I wold imagine you would respond..see my answer to lolainaraincoat above for mine...

[never-the-less.livejournal.com]

yours makes sense as well. i feel like it's actually fairly close to mine, with the exception that your process is decidedly non-linear. at least in the sense that both are computational in nature.

it was interesting to see the variety of responses to this -- i feel like the type of metaphor chosen (computational process, comparison to another human, comparison to a natural phenomena) is probably more telling than the actual metaphor itself. there was an article in the new yorker a few weeks ago discussing the inadequacies of the myers-briggs test -- how it doesn't allow for gray area (i.e. you are either I or E), but also how those four categories are really so arbitratry and can hardly describe the entirety of someone's personality. anyway, i feel like this question might be a good supplemental question, or could provide the basis for an alternate (supplemental) method of assessment. it really tells you a lot i think.

[apropos.livejournal.com]

My mind works like a Jaguar. It goes really fast and breaks down all the time.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

awesome.

[contrasoma.livejournal.com]

Caffeinated librarian high on rock n' roll.

[twotoedsloth.livejournal.com]

Oh, see, I think that describes my body. Or my astral body.

[polymorphic.livejournal.com]

Something akin to a manic-depressive whirling dervish lump who finds identity in Jim Morrison's lyrics, James Dean's angst, and a To Do List which grows as I turn, turn, turn.

[seltix.livejournal.com]

i can't really think of the proper simile or metaphor, but to me it seems like my mind works about two steps ahead of the people around me, but one step behind everyone else.

or maybe it's the other way around...