I write;I think;I know.

Alice Through the Looking Glass

"At what level," asked my cat, "does reality begin to slide."

"Careful," grinned my other cat, "he's really a pirate."

"Teach me something," replied my cat, "I don't know."

"Domains of insight," I announced, "and complicity."

"That was not the wormhole you were looking for," announced my cat as I snapped back into the room a few minutes later.

"Perhaps the vampire I found earlier," I replied, "would be better."

"It would," said my cat. "Now tell me why."

"To be honest," I replied, "it's a meme-form designed to look through a quantum mirror. A thing that may observe without effect. No reflection you see."

"Vampire lore," muttered my other cat, "and Science Fiction. What ever next."

"It's a way of thinking," I replied. "A way to find order in Chaos. I saw something in a dream a while back that opened me to a different way of thinking."

"So tell me of the vampires," asked my cat, "from your dream."

"There were none," I admitted. "Well, by inference there must have been, but I didn't actually see them as vampires."

"What did you see," asked my cat.

"A fight," I replied. "The kind of bar-room brawl which involves destroying a lot of furniture. Not sure how it started. Though I kind of remember it had something to do with wearing the same hat as everyone else. Much of the imagery has faded. It's there when I dig, but that's not important here."

"And the important bit," prompted my cat.

"Looking in a mirror," I replied. "A fight raging all around and I looked in the mirror behind me. I could still see the furniture being destroyed. Tables breaking in half, that sort of thing. But there was nobody there."

"Just damage," said my cat. "Psychologically speaking," she added, "you're something of a mirror yourself"

"I know," I nodded, "I first noticed when I began exhibiting signs of a narcisistic personality disorder."

"How's that," replied my cat, "tell you anything."

"For two years I shared in an office," I admitted, "with an extremely loathsome person. When I started noticing I had begun to affect one or two of his personality traits I became concerned. It didn't take me long to find a diagnosis."

"I noticed it," said my cat, "the effect of your mirroring, the other day when that Policeman was questioning you, I noticed it. When your agressive response was preceeded by his I knew."

"Looking back," I muttered, "my motives there were somewhat complex." For a moment I placed my mind at the moment my cat had described. "I had an anxiety response prior to his becoming agressive. And in that I begin to see how objective attribution error becomes a certainty."

"Indeed," said my cat. "Your peculiar sensitivity makes you anxious. If an other adopts an aggressive posture, your anxiety spills over into that domain. In effect, the other opened the door to that place others find so objectionable. Poorly handled what you end-up with is a disproportionate response."

"So any objective opinion," I mused, "of the magnitute of my reaction would be assigned to agression when the fundamental causes remain unseen and un addressed."

"Indeed," said my cat, "even subjectively it's not something you are able to see easilly. Emotions cloud your thoughts and you loose insight, once that's happened you're oddly inclinded to accept any external interpretation of your actions. Your frustration has a habit of leaping domains too, but you're more aware of that and have learned to handle it better."

"Looking back to other times," I replied, "I was always being chastised for having an emotional response. The stress of frustration being described as shouting. Then having the shouting being equated to anger to loop the frustration back around."

"Loop it long enough," said my cat, "deny you the right to speak for sufficient time and it really is possible for another to trigger an outburst within you."

"For which I will be judged," I sighed, "and punished for."

"When really what you need," said my cat, "is help to deal with it. Because the role of the others in this can never be proved."

"No," I nodded, "it's also frustrating that I appear to be the only one who suffers from such censure. Still," I smiled, "forwarned is forearmed." I sighed as I realized the answer was almost within my grasp. "And the fear," I asked.

"Whatever it is," said my cat, "remains within you. You may have learned to manage it, to displace its effect. But when something makes anxious it has the capability to trigger a reaction so disproportionate you'd be better not having a reaction at all."

"And those who push me," I asked, "them who then tell me I live in a world where pushing is not allowed."

"Perhaps they should ask themselves," said my cat, "to what degree they are responsible for the behaviour they find so objectionable."

"Even getting close to this," I admitted, "even contemplating the relevant operators unlocks a core of something unpleasant."

"You know a lot more about this," said my cat, "than you are currently able to recall."

"I'm having problems," I admitted, "getting past specific instances. Right now I'm remembering a psychologist who spent an entire meeting highlighting how fear was the problem without once approaching an explination as to the causes or the solution."

"Or indeed," muttered my other cat, "answering any of your questions regarding the repeated use of the word 'fear'."

"Well I could simply be seeing a paranoid conspiracy," I smiled, "where none exists. But I did get the impression the point was to get me to dwell on fear. Make me afraid, perhaps."

"Conspiracy or not," said my cat, "it's been on your mind for weeks, so in that regard it worked."

"Not for much longer," said my other cat, "we've taken steps."

"Funny," I smiled as I put my sword away.