When I wrote about it in the beginning, all I could call it was "that feeling."

[bironic]

Oh, whoa. I just got this feeling I haven't had in years. I don't know what it is -- actually, if anyone has a clue, please, please tell me, because I've been trying to define it for over ten years and have had no luck. It comes on out of nowhere, from stimuli I haven't been able to categorize. Just now, it was from looking at this photomanip (not really safe for work). Last time, summer of 2006, it was from listening to this song. Before that, from a dream about Armand, and before that, another dream with Ricardo Montalban's/Khan's bare shoulder and underarm. The first time was in high school; I was flipping channels and caught something about a hair metal band -- maybe Kiss -- some guy in leather doing something vaguely obscene with his tongue, followed by another channel with a very young Sissy Spacek playing someone called Pinky in a movie. It just washed over me, this thing, and I couldn't shake it off, until I went upstairs to my room and squeezed into the space under my desk, curled up with my back pressed against one side. Nothing like it had ever happened to me before.

It hasn't been that powerful since the first time. Instead, it's more like ... well, it's nonspecific. It hits me and it's uncomfortable but it's so strange that now it's closer to wonderful and I try to cling to it, but it always fades in minutes or seconds, and I can never quite grasp what it is that's triggering or why or what it's doing. It feels like deja vu, but it's more than that. It makes my pulse pick up and my breathing come faster, but it's not as intense as how panic attacks are described. It often feels like there's something about the stimulus that was disturbing and/or sexual, but it's not PTSD; I have no T to be S'd about. Prolonged or repeated exposure to whatever sets it off doesn't bring it back.

I am stymied.

.

p.s. No luck sleeping last night -- more anxiety, followed by the air conditioning no longer working -- but we did go out for sushi at lunch, and it rained hard this afternoon, and I'm settled in with fresh vegetables for salad and stir fry, waiting for SGA S5 to arrive in the mail for vidding.

Comments

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

Wow, I don't know what that feeling would be, either. I've had moments of depression that felt like happy relief; moments of disgust that resulted in the physical tightening of the muscles on my neck and jaw; and moments of sexual excitement that really produced the cliche stomach-drop thrill -- but I've never felt the feeling you describe.

Sorry about the lack of sleep. Could that have something to do with the feeling?

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Could be; dunno. Not enough data points.

Sleep will be had tonight -- I declare it. *nods*

[theonlymeyouget.livejournal.com]

I think I had it right before I wrote my most recent fic. I felt possessed...seriously possessed. I listened to the song linked in the fic and just got this *idea* and it rose gooseflesh on my arms and it wouldn't go away. The idea wouldn't get out of my head, I was writing bits of the god damn thing here and there as I could grab a few minutes at work, it was really creepy.

I can't define it with a word either, but I think there are certain things that tap into out base emotions, I mean the BASE ones, the ones that were there when our ancestors were painting on caves. Since those emotions aren't ones we usually access, at least on that level, it's both frightening and exhilerating when something triggers them to come to the surface.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

It does feel very primitive and pre-verbal. Part of me doesn't want to put words to it, wants to keep that special goosefleshy feeling you describe an unpredictable, inexplicable mystery. But the rest of me wants to know what it is!

That's cool that you were creatively inspired like that.

[theonlymeyouget.livejournal.com]

I think so, too, actually. I get inspired, of course, or I wouldn't write, but it's VERY rare to get inspired like that, at least for me.

What's stranger still is at the end of writing it, I felt some kind of relief that I hadn't felt before. I think it was some sort of emotion *I* was feeling that came out in words as I played with my House and Wilson dolls. Never quite understood "creative outlet" until a couple nights ago.

Sure glad I'm not alone in that depth of feeling though. Do you think this is something everyone experiences?

[topaz-eyes.livejournal.com]

Sort of like--it touches your soul?

[bironic.livejournal.com]

I'm not a soul believer, so I don't know, but I imagine it might be a little like when people who've been to haunted places describe feeling like a ghost passed through them. Only less creepy and more... reminiscent?

[ignazwisdom.livejournal.com]

Just from looking at the linked manip I'm going to guess that that feeling is "extreme embarrassment for total strangers"

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Oh God, that too.

[nightdog-barks.livejournal.com]

I've had some of those feelings (but not the exact feeling you're describing) on occasion, especially when I'm writing a very dark scene, or when I suddenly know the exact thing a character is going to say.

I hope you get some sleep tonight. *g*

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Thanks. :)

Do you like when it happens? I wish it happened more. Once every three years for less than a minute is hardly enough to savor.

[nightdog-barks.livejournal.com]

I like it but it also scares me a little sometimes, possibly because it's coming from somewhere very deep down that's not really a conscious part of me. If that makes any sense.

It doesn't happen very often.

[black-cigarette.livejournal.com]

Mare here.

I think I kind of know what you mean because I think it kind of happens to me sometimes -- but it's rare.

It's as if you see and recognize something that already exists, in some form, buried in your mind. A symbol that has some kind of powerful meaning that's pretty much impossible to articulate, but it connects somewhere and releases a surge of electricity. Or something.

Once the connection is made, it's over; there's no more emotion/electricity/whatever to release, so the feeling doesn't really come back, but for me the symbols remain compelling, all the same.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

This:

It's as if you see and recognize something that already exists, in some form, buried in your mind. ... has some kind of powerful meaning that's pretty much impossible to articulate, but it connects somewhere and releases

And I don't know if it's some kind of primitive memory/trigger or something I've lived myself, but that's a great theory.

[purridot.livejournal.com]

LOL, I call it a Flash of Destiny -- when a song I think is somehow magical comes over the radio (this morning, it was "Jupiter" from Holtz's "The Planets") or I see a book that grabs me or a particular scene of a movie or similar. I realize that I have just connected with something on a visceral level, or on exactly the right frequency. It is a marvelous, wondrous feeling, makes me quite giddy.

[mer-duff.livejournal.com]

I know exactly what you mean. It's a bit like presque vu, but not quite. There's a scene in "Who Has Seen the Wind" that describes something similar, though not quite the same in degree of intensity. The principal, Digby, alludes to Wordsworth's "Intimiations of Immortality" when talking with Brian about it. I wish I had a copy of the book so that I could find the passage - it's a beautiful read.

[stephantom.livejournal.com]

A few writers come to mind, who've tried to describe weird and intense feelings that may be something akin to what you're describing. C.S. Lewis (talking about "joy" -- I can find you some neat quotes -- he thinks it's a sign from god though), Camus (talking about the "absurd"), and Cassirer (talking about mythic perception, though I understood that stuff less, since it was explained to me without my ever really reading it).

C.S. Lewis picked out a few moments in his autobiography that he remembered as odd feelings. Once was when he read these lines from Longfellow's Saga of King Olaf: I heard a voice that cried, Balder the beautiful Is dead, is dead--

"I knew nothing about Balder; but instantly I was uplifted into huge regions of northern sky, I desired with almost sickening intensity something never to be described (except that it is cold, spacious, severe, pale and remote) and then...found myself at the very same moment already falling out of that desire and wishing I were back in it."

It's like an intense stab of nostalgia for something you can't even really identify. I don't know if that's really what you're talking about though.

Actually, just thought of another thinker and term: Freud and "the uncanny." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny)

Anything sound similar?

Weird feelings are so weird. I love them. (As ideas. Discomfort, even fascinating discomfort, is uncomfortable.)

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Yes! Lewis's quote about Balder seems exactly to be it. Like we're tapping into some ancestral memory, or triggering a primitive circuit that no longer quite functions. Thank you for tracking it down and sharing it.

Freud's uncanny is different for me, though still unnerving. That was more along the lines of what I experienced when I heard a lecture about humanoid-but-not-quite-but-really-close robots at school this year, and also again when visiting one of the robots in a lab, the thing lax and still and blindfolded and small but with a huge head. The uncanny valley.

[stephantom.livejournal.com]

Ah, cool. I wish I could remember some specific instances of when I've experienced that -- I know it's happened, but not for a long time. I can remember some meta-y versions of it, where it was quotes that seemed to be about that feeling that triggered it, but it used to happen before that, in a vaguer and yet more visceral way. At any rate, here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sehnsucht)'s some more about what Lewis makes of it. Like I said, it's central to his conception of Christianity, and when I was a deist, it was a pretty big part of my faith too. Heh, if I still was, I'd probably bombard you with even more of his quotes, where he talks about humans being like fish who are intensely aware of being wet (so logically were once land creatures), and the existence of hunger logically pointing to the existence of food. The truth, I think, is just that we're bizarre creatures, with intensely complex minds. (But it was a fun thought to entertain for a while.)

[daasgrrl.livejournal.com]

I meant to comment on this - you know that Hitchhiker's thing where there's this... device? That shows you exactly your place in the universe or something, and freaks most people out? It sounds kind of like that.

I would say the only things I've experienced that produce something similar to that feeling were unequivocally wonderful, and not quite so... intense? It's also more or less reproducible - I can't 'make' it happen, but there are certain moments that are very conducive to triggering it, if I'm not overexposed to them. Or, you know, maybe not the same thing at all XD