(Blog)

This might not have looked exactly like this in person, but this is how I saw it. I’ve failed myself, and I’ve failed others, but I’m clearer now about my surroundings since my job evaporated. Through the haze, the stupor, the aimlessness, I can see something. Thank you, universe. My path has been illuminated.

One day, years ago, I wrote the following immediately upon waking:

She wore a robe of burgundy and gold, and her flaxen hair was all I saw. Her home was made of felt and porcelain, full of satins and ceramics. The house was too small, as if caving in on itself, and stuffy, though not suffocating. I felt as if I weren’t there.

The doddering old fool, I heard from my left. Out of a cupboard-like cubbyhole of a room to my right, a slinking hag emerged.

“Pot calling the kettle black, indeed,” she mumbled in retort. “She’s dropped her wishes,” the old woman continued, as if I knew her, what she spoke of, and its apparent importance. “Go on!” she continued, with more urgency, “pick them up, before she realizes she’s lost them. Do you expect to go to market empty-handed?”

Her words were confounding. Speaking of wishes as if they were physical objects? Going to market? None of it made sense, and this house was beginning to feel like an attic inside a dollhouse, and I had to get out.

I glanced down the hall and spotted a small staff leaning against a wall, delicately painted with golden symbols I could not read. Next to it, there was a pale blue robin’s egg. No, a stone with an egg-like appearance, with the same symbols as the staff. As the cupboard-dwelling hag vanished into the ether, the hall turned bright, and spring morning air wafted in.

From all around me, I heard, or felt, It was sunny, and glowing; it was Sunday morning.

Feeling these were the correct objects, I grabbed the staff and the stone. I wondered if these were the wishes the lady had lost, or whether they contained her wishes within. Perhaps they were the symbols. I wondered what story they told. She wore burgundy and gold, and held this staff and this stone, her wishes, and now she was gone.

Sunday morning tea and cake, everything methodically laid out, I heard whispered from all around me. As I ambled downstairs, that’s what I thought, as if the house or environment were thinking through me. On the first floor, I saw weathered oak chairs with pillows, an ornate teacup with a spindle used as a cover, delicately prepared pastries laid out on silver tray, and an enchanting view of a forest outside. Everything was indeed methodically laid out.

I sat down, ate a pastry, and drank the tea. I packed the staff and stone in a sack and decided to take the teacup, spindle, and the remaining pastries. I understood that I was to leave this house and seek the lady. Burgundy and gold, and flaxen hair, I heard and thought, picturing the lady of the house. I would make it to market, and find her.

I walked outside and turned to the west and entered the forest, for it beckoned me.

Almost exactly thirteen years ago, I found myself barricaded in my home behind pounds of aluminum, family members rushing about, the weather radio blasting a garbled play-by-play. Behind the fortress of galvanized aluminum and concrete and above the chatter, you could still hear the rain and the wind outside as clearly as if you were being completely quiet. At the outset of the heavy winds, the power went out, with the timing of a suspense film, because as we all know the suspense in every sound you hear increases tenfold when you can’t see the source of the sounds you’re hearing. And thus, for all the brutal force Hurricane Andrew had, I could see none of it. (more…)

At a friend’s request, I took a personality type test this afternoon in unison with that said friend. It turned out to be one of the Myers-Briggs tests based on the Carl Jung personality type model. This was familiar because I had taken one of these tests as an assignment for an business class a few semesters back. In a nutshell, here’s what these tests are all about:

Psychiatrist Carl Jung created a model wherein one could categorize personality types by three criteria: extrovert-introvert, sensing-intuition, and thinking-feeling. Later in the 20th century, Isabel Briggs-Myers refined the model with a fourth criterion, judging-perceiving, and throughout the century, various personality tests have evolved from this Jung model. They’re typically found in career centers at school, or in some relation to the workplace or job placement.

The first criterion generally describes where a person’s method of expression lies, externally, or internally. The second defines the way in which a person perceives information. A sensing person relies mainly on information gathered from the external world via the senses, and an intuitive person relies on information gathered internally. The third defines how a person processes this information. A thinking person uses logic to make a decision, and a feeling person uses emotion. And the fourth defines how a person uses the information processed. A judging person organizes this information into plans and acts according to those plans, and a perceiving person instead tends to improvise.

There are a possible sixteen combinations of these four criteria, each of which determines a specific type. Various types of tests based on the Jung model are floating around, and like the usual psychiatrist-written inventory, it consists of several questions about how you work in certain situations, your habits, and the like. Ahh, those predictable psychiatrists—if you’re quick, you can almost figure out what result you’re going to get by the time you’ve read the questions.

I got INTJ, the “mastermind”.

This means Introvert iNtuitive Thinking Judging, or in a nutshell, that I have the unusual capability of doing everything from creating a theory to implementing it in the real world. This is one of the more rare personality types (it describes less than one percent of the population), and seems filled with contradictions. This is because INTJ personalities tend to have a manner of thinking and point of view that is different from the rest.

According to one analysis I read on this personality type, my mind is constantly crawling the external world in search of information, and associating and ranking bits and sources of information, not unlike Google. As such, I’ve got a hard-wired knack for understanding concepts and recalling patterns from any source. Furthermore, I can compile this information into a plan of attack such that my ideas may lead to actual results instead of theories. Because of this ability to turn internal vagaries into external orders, and keen ability to strategize and see the big picture, I’m a natural leader. In spite of that, because I prefer the internal world, I remain in the background unless I absolutely must take over command.

On the downside, INTJs are so focused on their own internal world that all those social mores like falling in love tend to be forgotten until it’s too late. This page explains that for INTJs, “love means including someone in their vision of the world.” Obviously, as has been my experience, INTJs aren’t prolific lovers. Masterminds also tend to have a romantic archetype of a relationship in their mind, and “withhold their deep feelings and affections from the public and sometimes even from the object of their affections.” And when scorned, we tend to retreat back to our own world, and “lash out with criticisms of their former loved ones.” That cycle from falling for someone to hating them is probably descriptive of every girl I’ve met since middle school.

Now, about that friend I mentioned at the outset. I’ve taken this test before, but she’s the one who had me thinking about this whole Jungian model. She took the test, posted the results on her blog, and to my surprise, she also fell into the mastermind category. Now, if the lot of us add up to somewhere below one percent of the population, then the odds against us both being INTJ personalities are pretty numerous. All the articles I read about this personality type said nothing of what happens when two INTJs put their heads together. Look out!