Where the heck you been, boy?

First off, I want to thank everyone who has kept faith with me through my silence, who has checked back to see if there's been anything new here. Particularly those - you know who you are - who took the time to drop a line to ask, in one form or another, WTF is going on.

Well, TF has to do with filters. Mental filters. It's something we all do: We all filter, we all filter constantly. We can't function if we don't. Did you ever have the experience of jumping at a sudden sound but then not being able to hear it - until you realize that what had happened was that the air conditioner or the refrigerator or the furnace or whatever had turned off? And that what you reacted to was not a sudden sound but the sudden absence of a sound? The sound itself had, of course, been reaching you all along - the sound waves entered your ear and vibrated your eardrum, which in turn jiggled the bones of the inner ear, and so on through the process of hearing until the nerve impulses reached your brain. Upon which your clever, amazing brain filtered them out of your conscious awareness because there was no need for you to pay any attention to them. When the sound stopped, however, it was a change that might call for some response - so that was passed on.

I actually came up with a tool for meditation based on that: I try to break down that filter by first listening for the faintest sounds I can hear, ones that had been filtered out of my awareness, while ignoring those louder. Then, focusing on those previously-ignored sounds, I can sort of backtrack through the more and more obvious ones until - rather quickly - it all becomes a buzzing, even a calming, even a centering, mix of white noise. The point here is the fact that we do not spend all our time wandering in a haze of white noise shows how adept our brains are at picking out sounds that may be relevant and banishing others from conscious awareness - that is, at filtering. Try it sometime: You may be surprised at what you had been hearing without "hearing."

It's not just sound, it's all our senses. What's your left little toe feeling like just now? If you think about it, you can tell, you can be aware of that sensory input. But were you aware before I asked? I feel safe in saying that, barring unusual circumstances, you weren't. That information was reaching your brain, you just were filtering it from your consciousness because it was irrelevant.

Not having that natural filter can be devastating: One of the ideas about autism is that autistic children lack the ability to filter, or at least their ability to do so is inhibited. The result is, for the most severely affected, they are unable to regard anything they hear or see or otherwise sense as more important, more relevant, than anything else they hear or see or otherwise sense. Their consciousness is overwhelmed, flooded, with sensory data and it's a constant struggle to make sense of it. They, if you will, go through their lives in a kind of a "haze of white noise" which they can penetrate and organize only with the greatest effort.

And even for those of us who are "normal," there's a limit to how much our conscious mind can handle at any one time. We constantly shift things in and out of our awareness, so easily, so quickly, we rarely even notice we're doing it. Kind of like a biological version of a computer's page-flipping. Just what the limit is, is a matter of some dispute but it's interesting to note that there is a method of inducing hypnosis that's based on it: Supposedly, the limit to the number of things of which we can be aware simultaneously is around seven or eight. The method involves repeatedly directing the subject's attention to different things while encouraging them to be aware of all of them - knowing that after several, some will drop out of awareness. So when the hypnotist refers back to them the subject can become confused by all the mental juggling needed to keep up, with the result that the suggestions for relaxation and trance that are mixed in slip by without critical consideration.

Filters. Filters on filters. We all do it. We even filter political events and issues, we focus on "the story" (or, at least a story or three) and even remark on attempts to distract us from what's important with a new "story" - as several have done about Snarl Rove's latest attempt to smear anyone to the left of John McCain as some kind of terrorist-loving traitor: Various bloggers have suggested Rove deliberately made an outrageous remark to change the subject from the Downing Street Memos. None of us can keep up with everything, none of us can manage everything. We even joke about "outrage overload."

So what does all this have to do with my latest disappearing act? My own sometimes shaky ability to filter events.

Some years ago I coined the phrase "the world is too much with me." (Well, in a way I did: I discovered later that others had used it before me to refer to a similar feeling, but at least I coined it in my own little piece of the universe.) It's meant to describe those times when, for whatever reason, my sense of the level of pain, suffering, injustice, and simple indecency (and I do not mean that in its sexual connotation) in the world becomes almost literally overwhelming. I am simply aware of it in a way, to a degree, with an intensity, which I'm normally not; it clings to every bit of news I read, every commentary anyone writes, it can haunt me even as I'm sitting by the water looking at the stars.

It's a debilitating, demoralizing, experience that makes every effort seem hopeless, every action pointless, every opinion irrelevant, even as it drives a feeling that something has to be done about it. I have to do something - but nothing I can do will make any difference. There is simply too much to be done. What's more, taking up anything means ignoring other things equally if not more important, paying heed to any cry for help means ignoring other, perhaps more desperate cries. It's paralyzing.

Sometimes it passes quickly, sometimes it doesn't; sometimes it just fades away, sometimes I have to fight my way through it. And the world has been too much with me for a week now. So consider this part of the battle.

I have seriously thought about abandoning the blog. Not for the first time, either. I just wonder what it is that I'm actually contributing here - indeed, if I'm contributing anything, period. If there is a point. Yes, yes, I know I've gone on about this before, in fact as recently as three months ago. It doesn't change the fact that the feeling and the concern both continue to exist.

Part of it, I admit, is traffic - or rather, my lack of it. Or, rather, to be even more exact, my lack of repeat traffic. My hits per day have picked up some, hardly to any impressive numbers, but still up some - but my return hits haven't. People drop by, take a look, and for whatever reason aren't impressed enough to come back. Which leaves me, again, wondering if I'm doing any good.

What can I say that others with much louder voices are not already saying? What can I address, what can I reveal, what analysis can I present, that others with much greater reach are neither addressing nor revealing nor presenting?

Yes, there is some ego in this: Some degree of recognition in the form of traffic would be most pleasing. I've said before that I don't dream of becoming an Atrios or any of the other sites whose daily hits total in the five digits. I don't even want to be that big. But I do dream of having maybe, I dunno, what the hell say 200 regular (defined as maybe two or three times a week) readers who find something of value here. If I can't achieve that - and after more than a year and a-half I'm far from it - I have to wonder if I'm really serving any purpose here.

There's a saying I came across a long time ago for which I've been trying to find the source - without success. It said, in the form in which I originally heard it, "No man can live with the terrible knowledge that he is not needed." The principle would seem to apply with even greater force to political blogs. Or, at least, via my own convictions, to mine.

Over this week, I've made some decisions about the future of Lotus, which will play out over the next few months. In the meantime, well, the battle goes on, yes?