Inner Monologue
Maybe it is just me. This incessant talking in my head. Though I believe Leopold Bloom suffered the same problem. I have lived much of my life alone, so maybe that is why I am blessed or cursed with this silent chatter – if it is just me, and Mr. Bloom, and other loners.
When it is not verbal it is a bit of music. And I know my mother and my daughter both share this 'earworm' problem. My daughter goes around the house humming. My mother did not; but did occasionally discuss it as a problem. Schubert was her worst offender; she became reluctant to sing the more beguiling of his songs, for fear of them lingering with her for a week. So, I can conclude that the musical version of the perpetual inner monologue is not linked to living on one's own, for Mother had a job and a household of nine, and Heather has a job and a household of five. Though, admittedly, even a school teacher will have moments alone; at a bus stop, in the bath, that moment while putting her key in the front door.
But talking to oneself, albeit silently, is rather different from listening to internal music. It has content. With a notebook, I could record my chatter, and analyse myself, as Freud (and Jung) did with dreams. Sometime I am arguing with someone, over and over, testing out my case. Recently, when walking slightly off the designated footpath, I found myself looking sharply round for the farmer who, at the beginning of COVID, had put up aggressive signs. Not that I have ever set eyes on him, nor anyone else, mostly, but it is as well to be prepared.
"Yes, I do know that the path goes slap across the middle of the field; and if this were grassland I would probably follow the path. But it is ploughed land, and when it is wet and muddy the path is most unpleasant." ........
"Well, I would be prepared to offer you compensation for damage done, but I do not think that walking on grass round the edge of a field does any harm. " ........
"Sir, for eighty years I have lived in the country and walked round the edges of fields, in preference to slap across the middle, as a courtesy to the farmer." ('Slap' is good! The 'past subjunctive' (were) is good. Because I can only guess at the farmer's side of the dialogue, it is hard to know if I am winning or losing.)
Over the stile, and I can shelve that anxiety. Sheep now, and I wonder, again, that they are all browsing. Browsing, browsing, browsing; all day long. Low grade food, I suppose. Remember that man who bet he could cycle from Land's End to John o' Groats eating nothing but grass? Grass with a sprinkling of sugar. And even at that age (was I fourteen?) I realised that the sugar would help.
"Can I tell the whistle of a kite from the mew of a buzzard? Hardly. But a glance at the tail is enough. Silly woman! Serve her right if I had bet her a pound to a shilling that it was a buzzard, for I would certainly have won the bet. The tail, long, and often forked! (Thank you, Dad. for teaching us that little bit of Freud! The long tail – though I do not see it as phallic. Silly old Freud!) And the 'aspect ratio' of the wing; very broad for the buzzard; rather tapering and 'fingery' for the kite. Somebody had suggested that buzzard- and kite-terrains cannot overlap, that the birds are incompatible. Well, we have both here within fifty yards of each other."
"I have often seen crows (or rooks) mobbing a kite, as they have been mobbing buzzards for decades, but I wonder if it is wise. There is a bundle of black feathers over there, strewn across the grass. I think an over-valiant rook (or crow) might have gone too close. I doubt it would have been caught by a fox. Sparrow hawk, maybe? I'll take the stile this time, rather than the gate. This is where we saw the fox, that time three years ago. "
"I shall take a notebook next time I go for a walk. I hope I do not turn out to be inexcusably aggressive or judgemental. I have worked so hard all my life at presenting myself as a rational and sympathetic person. Perhaps the real 'me' is beginning to show through. That would explain much."
