Let's describe our bubble!

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And now the most difficult task! We all live in a bubble and it takes a huge amount of effort to maintain the bubble in good order, particularly at the borders. Getting out and reentering are the most difficult exercises. To survive we must know where the walls are, where the openings are, how they may be opened, when they can be opened, how long we can stay inside. Like the whales we have to surface once in a while to capture some air. That might be a metaphor for sociality. Our nutrients are inside the bubble, but once in a while we need to make a sortie in order to catch some social air, legitimization, some crumbs of social nutrients. We can only do this in haste, half- heartedly, with fear, because we cannot live outside, we risk constantly annihilation.

But now I would like to appeal for a common effort to describe the bubble. How are the walls, the windows, the furniture, the locations for food. These are all metaphors, but the bubble is a hard reality and it would be useful to have, at the end o the thread, something like a Handbook of the bubble: maps, different architectures, maintenance work. It will be a continuous forth and back between metaphor and reality. But we may start imagining a real house.


I have to get out now to get some newspapers. Are newspapers important? They are a very loose relationship with the outside world, and they are a habit, there is something ritual about them: concerning which newspapers, when to buy them, when and how to read them.

I felt for years I was imprisoned in a glass box and couldn`t get out into the real world. I wanted to smash it and break free, now I don`t mind being in here.

Interesting way of viewing things.

I would say that for me college classes are a window with a small slot to pass things through like a bank teller window.
Class time is for a limited fixed amount of time that assures a way out.
Participation, even though at a very low level, is mandatory for group projects and class participation.
I can use a recent quiz, or assignment as a topic of conversation when talking to other students.

Some difficulties is that there are so many people that I have to blank out many and maintain awareness on only a few or I get a bit overwhelmed. Again focusing on the class and lecture give me a island of solitude in this regard.

The first thing I can mention is oh my goodness i LOVE your avatar!

I don't really get this thread though. Would I be right in saying I feel like i'm just out of reach all the time?

Hi Paolo,

you gave interesting metaphors. My experience is the other way around, though. When I'm among people I'm not related to, I feel like I'm in a small bubble, it's hectic, crowded en enclosed. But there are some things in there that I need, "nutrients" if you will. On the other hand, catching air, being outside the bubble, in contact with reality, nature, space, normalcy, means I'm either alone or with close family.

Love the new avvie Paolo!

My bubble varies every day.
Sometimes it is a large bubble. It has windows and a mailbox, and a phone. It is almost a 'normal' bubble. People are welcome to call...but only while the bubble is large. Sometimes it is very small and I like it that way. It has no windows, no light, and is completely safe. No-one can enter and because it has no windows, no-one can see inside. It is wonderfully completely private. But after a while it gets boring.
Then I hear a noise outside. I ignore it for a while but eventually curiosity gets the better of me...time to venture a little outside the bubble. But there are so many people, so much noise! Eventually all the noise mixes together so individual sounds are unrecognisable, just a loud, unbearable cacophony. Time to hurry back inside the small bubble and bolt the door!

my bubble is green and wiggly with purple bits.

Am unsure as to whether you mean that we share a bubble due to our neurological category, or if you mean for each of us to say what our individual bubble worlds are like ?
In adolescence (around time of getting period, which was no fun) I came up with a big theory involving the bubbles people live inside. Was only dx'd in past few years as adult, so growing up I never knew what was "wrong", beyond the obvious fact that I was not fitting in. My bubble metaphor was based around how I felt emotionally, physically, and how those influenced each other. When it was "that time" of the month, I felt like my bubble had all this revolting gunk between me & others, my bubble was clouded & I hid to extent possible. Whether I felt fat, ugly, zitsy, or unclean, the bubble was my conception of the mental baggage people carry around (though I didn't put it in those terms then). Imagined life as giant bathtub in which some people make connections between their isolated bubbles, and why couldn't I ?
I could go on, but I stopped using the bubble notion not long after I thought it up. Nothing wrong w/using it as metaphor, just for me it was very particular & tied to certain painful time in my life.

My bubble is where I feel safe, where I can rest. Where I can make sense of a world I feel absurd and hostile. The odd thing is that I feel tranquil and even at peace when I am among people I don’t know, especially young people (I am old), workers rather than middle class. I don’t want to hear what they say because I know they say lies or rubbish (but I also lie and say rubbish, if I am forced to say something), so I prefer if they are strangers not talking my language. I like people who smile at me (they know me only as a gentle customer): I think I can detect if their smile is sincere.
Home, where I live alone, is a safe place. Some noises from the courtyard are pleasurable: now I hear birds singing.
But the bubble is not a physical place, it’s an area of security and reconciliation, a mental homely situation.

I have never been able to pay attention to lessons in school, to lectures, to people explaining me some problem. Even when I read a book for myself I often lose the thread of what I read. Now I realize why. It is because I am busy in the maintenance of my bubble. My bubble is not a solid and stable construction, it’s always, in way disintegrating. So I have to repair it.

under the sea swimming
like a dolphin
jump through hoops to get air
rather degrading so not very often
under the ocean
the drugs help

Here's my bubble map:

Paolo, that is such an awesome description! I've never heard it described like that before, but it totally sums it up for me.

When I was a child my bubble had a definite mapping. I slept and lived in a little room. On one side there were two doors which gave on my parents room and on a corridor. On the opposite side there was a window opening on the courtyards. I couldn’t connect at all with my parents, they were a source of danger. In the courtyard, on the contrary there was a free running life, kids playing, some unthreatening voices (unthreatening for me at least). I liked the courtyard and the border of my bubble was not the window but the two doors.

Questa... il avatar es molta bella, Paolo.

That's brilliant, the-over-analyzed! I have been trying to imagine my bubble as a physical map, but at the moment all I get is colours for the large bubble and black for the small 'emergency' bubble.