Against one perfect moment, the centuries beat in vain

I have conversations with myself. A lot.

Well, "with myself" being in my head with hypothetical versions of other people. This isn't re-hashing conversations I've actually had and wishing I'd said something different; this is complete new discussions on various topics or concepts. Sometimes they go on for hours, or even spread across multiple days - I can put on "on hold" one afternoon and pick it up again the following evening.

I also run a lot of "movies" in my head. Sometimes they're actual movies, where I'll re-watch (from memory) movies I like. Sometimes they're visual "movies" of books I've read. Sometimes they're just odd daydreaming-type scenarios that I stick myself (or others) into, just to see how they turn out.

I do this a lot. At almost any time of day, either a conversation or scenario is running through my head; I hesitate to call it daydreaming because I'm not distracted by it - it's just there in the background. I do it while driving, while working, even while having real conversations.

There have been moments when I've even had *two* running simultaneously, but that's just when I'm having one of my "hyper" phases. I suppose those deserve a little explanation.

I may have mentioned before that I'm hypersensitive in the physical sense - I've got a lower activation threshold than most people. This is probably related to the acronym soup (ADHD, AS, OCD, etc.), but under normal circumstances I can keep it under control: I can put a kind of conscious block on sensation so that, while I know it's there, I'm basically just ignoring it.

Once in a while, though - the last time was in Maui - I'll hit a period when it seems like my brain's on overdrive. If most people have a threshold of 5, and I normally operate at 3, it drops to 1 for these periods. I notice everything, actively, and it even feels like time slows down for the entire duration (which is usually the first effect I'm aware of being aware of).

One time, I was having dinner with Phil at a Hamburger Hamlet in Sherman Oaks when it kicked in on the drive to the place. Phil ended up commenting on it: I was anticipating actions and reactions so often that it started to bother him. Things like grabbing a glass just as he started to knock it over (my hand was on it just as his arm hit it), moving out of the way of people who were behind me (seeing them in the reflections of things), listening in on several different conversations and using that information with the waiter, etc., all while having a normal conversation with him (normal for us, anyway, which tends to be above the heads of most people). The rest of the night was the same way, where no matter where I was I picked up on a huge amount of detail for the environment.

It's very draining, so luckily it usually only lasts a few hours; I think the longest I was ever "hyped up" was a couple of days. It isn't just normal hyperactivity, either - I go that fairly often, and while I feel energetic I don't get the same time-slows-down type of effect or the added sensitivity.

Anyway, during these hyped-up phases I often have 5 or 6 active levels of thought going on (as opposed to the 4 that seem to be standard for me - usually two parts of me paying attention to whatever I'm doing, the part of me analyzing those parts, and a fourth separate piece that mostly just seems to map everything without critiquing but is generally the source of my intuition). I think, in general, it's whatever "active" thread that isn't busy that does the daydreaming, so that if I end up with more than 2 active threads I can have more than two daydreams going at once. Even meditating, there's always at least two of me with the "other" piece being the intuitive mapper in the background.

There are moments - all too brief and rare - when I can condense all the levels in my head into one single thought or thread. Interestingly enough, these also tend to happen in the hyped up phases, but I've had a few outside of that. For the lack of a better phrase, I usually refer to is as a "perfect moment" - something I stole from Terry Pratchett's book "Thief of Time" and, really, the trigger for this post since a friend brought up a quote in a conversation today.

Anyway, this has all been fairly stream-of-consciousness, and I'm not sure if it's relevant to anyone else. Not that that's ever stopped me.

(Random note - I can't find "imprementeur" in any dictionary, French or English, in any variation of spelling, and even yahoo and google only have three matches. Is it really that odd a word, or am I just horribly butchering it?)