Humans are a Puzzlement...

"Never say you know the last word about any human heart"

— Henry James

And as for the human mind… Of course, this is what makes communicating with each other so difficult, whether in person or in writing. And not only do we not know what's going on inside of someone else, we don't even know ourselves, and I'm not talking about repressions or neuroses. I'm talking about how the way we're built literally shuts us off from things about ourselves that are perfectly obvious to everyone else.

We don't know what we really look like. For one thing, all we ever see of ourselves is in a mirror.

(NOTE: This is a plot point in Agatha Christie's Funerals Are Fatal.) And when we do see ourselves in a photograph or a video, we're often shocked, shocked, shocked at what we see! Not to mention how we often carry around an image of ourselves from some time in our past. For example: I hit my current magnificent height of 5'5" when I was in grade school, and one of my best friends did too. We towered over everyone around us. And ever since, I've seen myself as tall. So it came as a shock, back in the late 1990s, to hear someone describe me to someone else as "kinda short". Kinda short? KINDA SHORT??? And then I realized that I had to look up at almost everyone around me. Damn. Still getting over that one.

We don't know what we really sound like. We hear everything we say from our own little skull's castle of flesh and bone and various fluids. Now I have always known that I have a very deep voice for a female (an alto or a baritone, not sure which, but I have been told that it's "sultry") because in grade school I often got cast as a boy in the school plays. I also have an odd combination of a Southern California and Kentucky drawl. (BTW, I can do a dead-on impression of Mitch McConnell.) I never heard a recording of myself until I was in almost 20, and I realized that I sound sarcastic even when I'm saying "So, how's it going?" Sultry and sarcastic: sounds like the subtitle on my future detective's card.

We don't know what we're feeling, and we don't know what to do with whatever we're feeling. Seriously. Ask any toddler, teenager, parent, or boss who is having a complete and utter meltdown. If they can breathe long enough to talk.

Kat Dennings doing a GREAT teenage girl freakout in The 40-Year-Old Virgin

I know I did a lot of Alternatives to Violence Project workshops up at the pen where the inmates couldn't handle most negative emotions, and rather than face boredom, sadness, frustration, anxiety, or fear, they would explode into anger. And of course, you can't just say, "oh, gee, I'm angry" and calm down. As many inmates - and others - told me, "You know how it is. You get disrespected, you gotta react. You can't let anything go, because then somebody's gonna f*** with you, and it's only gonna get worse." BTW, sadness often led to isolating, cutting and/or attempts (or success) at suicide.

Now that might sound like adolescent behavior, but studies have shown that a large number of people are first arrested as juveniles, with over two-thirds of those in state prisons having a first arrest before age 19, and 38% before age 16. So where and how are they supposed to grow up?

But then, I don't think humans do a very good job of teaching emotions. (Lately I don't think much of our skills at teaching reading, writing, history, science, civics, and arithmetic, either, but that's for another blogpost.) You want to see some real unbridled, spit-flecked meltdown rages? – go online, where the ubiquitous Usernames, Gamertags, etc. go after others the way Jack the Ripper went after his victims on the foggy streets of Whitechapel.

We don't know how to share any of this with others, because... We think they see, feel, hear, know what we see, feel, hear, and know, and oh how wrong that is.

Here's an example. I used to teach a community ed writing class back in the Reagan years. And the first thing I started with was talking about words, and what people see when they hear or read a word. So I told them, write down the first image or emotion or memory that comes in your head when I write a word on the board. And the first word was always "Apple".

Answers: red, yellow, green, Apple Music, Apple computers, 1980 Apple IPO, apple tree, apple scent, apple pie, sliced apple, whole apple… all of those were among the answers given.

So, every time we write what we think is a very obvious, simple description... it's not. We know what we see in our mind when read / hear it, but we have no idea what's firing off in other people's minds when they read / hear it. It's a wonder anyone understands anything. But then I'm the person who found the first five chapters of Moby Dick hilarious.

We don't know why we do at least some of the things we do. Because we assume that how we were raised, the food we ate, the way it was cooked, the way the clothes hung in the closet, the way the laundry was done, the way the garden (if any) was planted, the way we dressed to go out (if we went out), that was what was normal. And then you meet people who don't live the way you did... Obviously, they're doing it wrong. Or maybe you finally meet the people who are doing it right, but don't know how to imitate them.

We don't know why we're attracted to certain things, from the colors we prefer in our house (I've always been a big fan of cobalt blue) to people with a certain hair/eye color. Or why certain things repel us. I don't and can't wear jewelry, and never have, because back when my mother first put a little necklace on me (I mean, after all, I was a girl, and girls are supposed to love and wear jewelry), I smelled the most terrible smell... And it happened every time she tried to bejewel me. I have no idea why, and I don't WANT to know why. There's a nightmare there, and I don't want to have it.

We don't know why we annoy other people; nor why we are annoyed by someone else. And that we don't usually analyze. Obviously, they're jerks. See Robert Browning's

Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister

I	II
Gr-r- r – there go, my heart’s abhorrence! Water your damned flower-pots, do! If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence, God’s blood, would not mine kill you! What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming? Oh, that rose has prior claims – Needs its leaden vase filled brimming? Hell dry you up with its flames!	At the meal we sit together; Salve tibi! I must hear Wise talk of the kind of weather, Sort of season, time of year: Not a plenteous cork crop: scarcely Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt; What’s the Latin name for “parsley”? What’s the Greek name for “swine’s snout”?

To hear the whole poem, listen here:

Don't you wonder why our narrator is so infuriated with / about Brother Lawrence?

We are so strange, and we know so little, about ourselves and others - and that right there is the biggest set up for any mystery, any at all. That's being human.

Room of Ice

I have a new story, Room of Ice, and it appears in the new SleuthSayers' anthology Murder, Neat. The alcohol reference in the anthology's title is on purpose. All the stories in the book have a finger, or other, in a drinking establishment. A glass or two of my story is set in a London pub.

Story settings aside, drinking establishments are excellent places to tell a story. The social atmosphere, comfortable seats, warmth, and alcohol invites (nay, demands) story telling. When the wine comes in, the wit comes out. I mean, if you're sitting there with a group of friends, you've got to do something while you're drinking. And pretty soon, someone will be off and running with a tale, tall or otherwise.

Our desire to gather with friends somewhere warm and convivial, and tell a story, is innate. And it predates drinking. Many thousands of years ago, our caveman ancestors sat around the fire on dark winter evenings. The whole clan. The extended family. They'd spent the day hunting and gathering, they'd eaten. They sat there sated and sleepy, nothing else to do – drawing pictures on the cave wall was so last era. Someone said, "You know, a funny thing happened to me today. There was this woolly mammoth…" And off he or she went, running with a tale, tall or otherwise.

The invention of alcohol meant there was now something to do while the stories were being told. And that swiftly led to the creation of places to do all of this in: pubs, inns, bars, taverns, and so on. The public living room.

I digress.

So, what's my story (Room of Ice) about? Well, no spoilers, it's about two things: Hammer Films and perception.

Hammer Film Productions is a British film production company that had its heyday from the mid-1950s to the 1970s. They specialised in horror films with a Gothic flavour (e.g., vampires, mummies, Frankenstein). Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing were probably the studio's two biggest stars. According to Wikipedia, the studio made 295 films (between 1934-2019). In addition to horror, Hammer also produced science fiction, thrillers, noir, and comedies. I grew up watching Hammer Horrors (along with their American counterparts, the Vincent Price Edgar Allen Poe movies).

In my story, I imagine Hammer made a horror film in 1959 called Room of Ice.

My story is from the point of view of a middle-aged man – "Tim" – who, as a child, was an extra in that movie. Tim tracks down the movie's now elderly star, because he has, in later life, remembered something about the filming – something he saw. It isn't a spoiler to say that Tim is a blackmailer.

This is a story about perception. Something witnessed as a five-year-old, and then remembered at 45, with a now adult's perspective of the world (my story is set in 1999).

Room of Ice is about movies (I'm film mad, don't you know?). Making them, remembering them, worshipping them. And, as such, I made a trailer for the story to help promote it. And rather than do my usual, I made a "movie trailer" for an imagined re-release of the movie Room of Ice. You can watch the trailer here:

Well, I'm off to read all the other stories in the anthology. Should be a treat!

www.StephenRoss.net

The Way We Talk, etc.

Back in the early eighties, I dated a social worker who worked at a clinic dealing with hardcore juvenile offenders. Her colleagues regarded her as a walking miracle for her ability to connect with kids who had severe issues of all kinds: emotional, behavioral, learning, you name it. She could get them to talk to her and reveal information they wouldn't tell anyone else, and she often put them on the path to recovery.
I taught at an inner-city school where a lot of my students had the same problems, albeit to a lesser degree, and I asked her how she could do what she did. She told me about a book by Bandler and Grinder called The Magic of Rapport. I find that title by Jerry Richardson on Amazon now, and other books by Bandler and Grinder, but the book I read forty years ago seems to be out of print. I'm sure Richardson's book covers the same material.

Briefly, people process information in one of three ways, and they prefer one over the others.

Roughly 75% of all people are VISUAL, which means they learn by "seeing" or "watching." Show them a diagram or picture, act something out, and they will grasp and retain what you what them to know. This is why teacher write on the board and why PowerPoint has become so popular.

Another 10 to 15% are AUDITORY. These people understand what they are told and can process verbal instructions well. Unfortunately, even though it's a small portion of the population, it's an overwhelming majority of TEACHERS, which is why you may have sat through classes with instructors who lectured you to death.

The rest of us are KINESTHETIC. They learn a skill by practicing it over and over and handling the objects in question, literal "hands-on" teaching. They may retain information by remembering the sensations during an activity: temperature, smell, or even their emotional response to what happened.

Thanks to that girlfriend whom I haven't seen in decades, I started experimenting with this information. Professional development workshops on the concept, called "Perceptual Modes," began to appear in my school system in the mid to late 1990s--fifteen years later.

You can see why the concept could be important in the classroom, but I use them in writing, too.

"How?" you ask with bated breath (I get this reaction a lot. I put it down to my dynamic presentations).

Well, people tell or show their preferred mode through their behavior. They way they talk, stand, or move all give you clues, and you can use the traits to make your fictional characters more varied and specific. The concept helps you create more personalized dialogue, too.

Let me SHOW you how (see the visual cue there?).

VISUAL people tend to dress neatly and have good posture. They look at you when you speak.

When they talk, they tend to use visual metaphors, too. They'll say "That LOOKS like a good idea."

Auditory people often tilt their head when they listen to you. They may speak more softly and they would state the idea above as "That SOUNDS good," or maybe even refer to music or harmony. These people gravitate to professions where listening is a valued skill: teaching, translating, sound recording, social work.

KINESTHETIC people are at home with their bodies. They may (not always) appear a little heavy, but they move gracefully. They value comfort and often dress more casually (I, for example, almost always have my sleeves rolled up). Many of them are dancers, athletes, or actors. They are empathetic (care-givers) and may touch you while they talk. Many of them hold an object to ground themselves. Remember Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny? I often unconsciously twirled my wedding ring or a ballpoint pen during class discussions.

Kinesthetic people can sense the atmosphere and moods of other people in a room. They're aware of senses beyond sight, often noticing the temperature or a smell that nobody else does. They will say "That FEELS like a good idea" and learn quickly from mistakes. They seldom read instructions, but they are the actors who can use "Sense Memory" and "Emotional Recall" to rehearse a scene or develop a character in a play.

Beth Shepard, Zach Barnes's girlfriend in my Connecticut series, is kinesthetic. She's gorgeous but prefers to dress casually. She's a former dancer and high school majorette, very in touch with her body. I gave her contact lenses because she's legally blind without them. Someday, I may let her have lasik surgery.

Zach Barnes is auditory. We know that because he's a good listener. One of my books hinges on his hearing a clue in conversation that nobody else "heard."

Zach's friend and and researcher, Svetlana Melanova Thirst, is kinesthetic, too. She's sinfully sybaritic, and a self-taught computer hacker. She learned by doing.

I also use this information in my dialogue workshops. If you have five people in a scene and they all are visual (the most common perceptual mode), you need more speech tags to help the reader keep track of who's speaking. On the other hand, if a man and a woman are visual, another man is auditory, and the last man and woman are kinesthetic, their speaking styles may be all you need.

"It looks to me like the butler did it." Tome leered at Pam's perfect latex ensemble.

"It seems that way, doesn't it?" Pam admired the cut of Tom's jodhpurs and winked back. ("Seems" is the passive version of "look," too)

"Sounds wrong to me," Walt said, leaning toward the window where he thought the butler and maid were eavesdropping.

"It doesn't feel right to me, either." Jack rubbed his fingers over the blood-stained carpet.

"Something smells fishy to me, too." Patty scratched her nose and walked around the room, picking up the various heavy objects that might have bludgeoned Mr. Corpus to death.

A few years later, I stumbled on The Art of the Possible by Dawna Markova, which expands the original concept to show how people use all three modes, but in different combinations. The writing is less than lyrical, but it can help you understand how different types of thought processes will develop an idea or behavior. That book was the first one that proved many of my apparent inconsistencies really make sense.

My wife still doesn't think that's true.

Now for the BSP: My story "Par for the Corpse" appears in the first April issue of Tough.

And congratulations to Art Taylor, who won the Edgar Award last Thursday for best short story.