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book/content/movement.tex

@@ -31,6 +31,7 @@ Take, for example, Orson Scott Card.
 There's a juicy one.
 \end{ally}
 Much to be said on him, yes, but take \emph{Xenocide} and \emph{Children of the Mind} as examples on this topic in particular. Take the World of Path. Take this supposed obsessive-compulsive disorder that plagues some of its inhabitants.
+\newpage
 
 \begin{ally}
 Is it wrong?
@@ -98,7 +99,8 @@ That's what it's called, but how would you get it across?
 \end{ally}
 Sobbing? Frustration? Humor? I had a whole comedy set prepared for it, in case I, for some reason, needed to do a stand-up routine.
 
-As you can see, I have a motor tick on my neck that makes me jerk my head to the side and do stuff with my hands. This is because I have transient tic disorder, or as I like to call it, tourettes with holidays.
+\begin{quotation}
+\noindent As you can see, I have a motor tick on my neck that makes me jerk my head to the side and do stuff with my hands. This is because I have transient tic disorder, or as I like to call it, tourettes with holidays.
 
 It makes work life interesting. I stare at a screen all day at my job. Or, well, I stare at my screen and also a point on the wall right about \emph{point} there. It's sort of a timeshare.
 
@@ -111,6 +113,7 @@ I actually learned about all this tic nonsense at work. It started back in 2012
 Now, this is mostly a motor tic. I don't have the verbal tics that folks associate with tourettes. However, it does make me stutter when it gets bad. If you've never stuttered before,I can tell you that it's infuriating, so, honestly, I didn't need a verbal tic to get me cussing all the time.
 
 So there's me sitting in meetings with other insurance companies, shaking my head `no' to everything they say, and when I try to correct myself, it comes out ``I mean ye-yes FUCK sorry''. I got really good at the whole FUCK-sorry combo.
+\end{quotation}
 
 And so on.
 
@@ -213,11 +216,25 @@ No.
 \begin{ally}
 Why?
 \end{ally}
-March 10, 2018:
+\end{leftcolumn}
+\begin{rightcolumn*}
+  \emph{March 10, 2018}
+\end{rightcolumn*}
+\begin{leftcolumn}
+\begin{quotation}
+  \noindent I stayed away from reading too much about my own mental health problems for a long time because I'm not a doctor, and have seen what trying to be smarter than one's doctor can do. In fact, I stayed away from reading most anything about these things for a long time, until I realized I needed SOME language to describe what was going on to my docs.
+\end{quotation}
 
 \begin{ally}
 And how did that work?
 \end{ally}
+
+\begin{quotation}
+  \noindent With a recent physical health problem cropping up, I decided that my embargo wasn't worth keeping up in that instance. Of course, almost immediately after, I suffered a crash and decided to do a bunch of reading on bipolar, and you know, it's a real shitmess.
+
+  I had thought I'd have a chance at normalcy, that I'd get better over time, that - and here I should've been tipped off to the impossibility of the scenario - I'd be able to return to some previous golden era of Madison.
+\end{quotation}
+
 \begin{ally}
 And the physical health problem?
 \end{ally}
@@ -442,16 +459,42 @@ I say `shortly after', when it was likely during that trip when I realized I fel
 
 I just learned the word for it shortly after, the name. And by naming a thing, hoped to gain some sort of power over it.
 
+\begin{quotation}
+  \noindent Alv pinned his ears back against his head as he stomped down the length of the block. His boots were too much for the drizzle that the weather offered, but it was that or his threadbare sneakers, and some tiny part of his mind had done the calculation without the rest of him knowing, and he'd tugged the heavy things on for the walk.
+\end{quotation}
+
 \begin{ally}
 Because of course you have a furry story about akathisia.
 \end{ally}
 Write what you know.
 
+\begin{quotation}
+  \noindent The air inside had grown too stuffy for the old fisher, or perhaps his eyes had grown too tired of reading, or maybe it was something in his joints, a feeling of too much space that needed to be compressed down. The solution, no matter the problem, was to move.
+
+  His third time around the block, knees and hips aching from walking in work boots that were never meant for the task, and Alv still hadn't figured out what it was that kept driving him out of the house. He'd walk, day after day, until his tail drooped and his feet started dragging. Sometimes, like today, he'd circle the block. Some days he'd drive the mile to the supermarket and walk aimlessly up and down each aisle, eventually picking up a drink or a snack, just to make the trip worth it. Other days, he'd just pace in his building's parking lot.
+
+  He didn't think.
+
+  Or maybe he thought too much. Maybe that was it. Maybe the fisher's every step was taken to crush too many thoughts beneath the soles of his boots, pressing the life out of them through the sheer weight of his restlessness.
+\end{quotation}
+
 \begin{ally}
 And you would, too. You'd walk and walk and walk, hoping that perhaps you could walk the thoughts out of you.
 \end{ally}
 Yes.
 
+\begin{quotation}
+  \noindent He didn't know what it was that, day by day, drove him to his feet, drove him to walk until he couldn't walk anymore. He just knew that if he didn't, that ache within him, that burning, that itch would continue to grow, and he'd start to feel like his heart was being extruded through his rib cage, like his fur was coming out in clumps, like he couldn't possibly breathe deep enough.
+
+  His wife, gone now these five years, had been fond of calling him a restless soul. He wasn't sure that he was capable of believing in a soul, nor that this increasingly restless state of being was confined to something so intangible. He was just restless.
+
+  \emph{Just. Only.}
+
+  That's all he was. There was nothing to him except restlessness. After Naomi's death, he'd slowly become less and less of a person, until all that was left was the urge to move, the terror over being confined to one place for any length of time.
+
+  His tail starting to sag, the fisher could feel all the calm he'd accumulated through the walk start to ebb, the tide of anxiety creeping in from the edges, from his fur inwards. One last trip around the block, he figured, was all he could manage before resting again.
+\end{quotation}
+
 \begin{ally}
 Write what you know.
 \end{ally}
@@ -462,6 +505,16 @@ Sure, but we've already been over that.
 \end{ally}
 Yes.
 
+\begin{quotation}
+  \noindent By the time he made it around to his building again, Alv was well and truly sore, knees and hips aching from the repetitive motion of stomping around the block. Still, he couldn't bring himself to head up to his apartment quite yet. The idea of being closed in such a space held negative appeal. Something about the thought of four walls was actively repulsive.
+
+  So he sat on the damp stoop and watched the trees across the street.
+
+  The drizzle had dried up---though he hadn't noticed when---and all that was left was the occasional \emph{pat} of drop on leaf as some bit of water got too heavy and sought a new home closer to the ground. There was just that gentle sound. Despite the hour, the street was empty of traffic, as though the shoddy weather had chased everyone inside.
+
+  ``Would that my soul were that calm,'' he mumbled to the bare street at last and levered himself up creakily, climbing the rest of the stairs to head inside.
+\end{quotation}
+
 \begin{ally}
 Write what you know. Write about the way pacing slowly moved from its status as nervous habit to a necessity, to an ache. Write about how there was no relief in walking, just a drive, an itch you could never scratch but were nonetheless required to try. Write, and cast those words upon something else, upon someone else, so that you can look on them and say, ``Ah yes, \textbf{this} is happening.''
 \end{ally}
@@ -558,6 +611,8 @@ It's not your fault either, you know.
 \end{ally}
 On an intellectual level, sure. I know. On some deeper level, obviously I don't. Or can't.
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