Nanni (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tiamatschild) wrote2012-06-29 11:50 am
tiamatschild) wrote2012-06-29 11:50 am
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It's not even the gender politics of the arrangements that get me.
Took my cousins to the Field Museum yesterday.
They have a much higher tolerance for early-to-mid 20th century wildlife taxidermy than I do, and Ashley really really really wanted to see the lions that hunted in the human camp in Tsavo, so we went through the Hall of Mammals to look at them. After going through What Is An Animal?
Okay, so, my problem with this kind of thing is not that I am standing in a hall full of dead things. That doesn't bug me. What I think ramps up my anxiety the longer I spend in this kind of place is the stillness. The stillness combined with the glimmer of light on glass - when I see it out of the corner of my eye, I think it's movement, but then it isn't. I'm in a long hall full of cases and cases of things that should be moving, are carefully posed to look as if they are about to move, but they are not moving. And, the longer and longer I spend in such a place the louder and louder some part of my brain starts to scream that something is not right, something is wrong, the world is not behaving properly and I should get the hell out of Dodge before something bad happens to me.
My rational, conscious mind knows what's going on, but that doesn't always help. Nevertheless, I was doing okay. I'd got them to the case with the young male lions, and I'd carefully not freaked out by focusing determinedly on the big mural depicting an artist's impression of the Rift Valley and blocking out glimmers of light from the sides while Ashley and Caitie ooed and awed.
So then I started to lead them out back the other way.
But all the other outlets were blocked because the museum staff were doing remodeling. The point at which I realized that I was going to have to turn back around and go back out past all those cases all over again was the point at which I started to panic slightly.
I am pretty sure I have never led Caitie and Ashley through an exhibit that fast. I shot out the entrance to What is An Animal, which is still a gauntlet of dead stuffed things with glass eyes, which I usually find only mildly worrying, because they're not in habitats or anything, but this time I was twitchy and - while not running, precisely - definitely using my long long stride to propel myself at a speed that probably would still have got me told off in an elementary school hallway. I fled to the grand marble staircase, sat down on the second step by the rail, and took deep breaths for three minutes before I could stop speaking in a register so high it was almost a squeak.
Caitie and Ashley were very sympathetic, although possibly also slightly pleased. After all, they've never seen me irrationally scared of anything before. Tired and consequently near tears, yes. Scared out of my wits by something dangerous they'd done and therefore in a tightly controlled incandescent rage, yes. Never that kind of wigged by something creepy before. And what's more, something creepy that hadn't bothered them at all, when what usually happens is that I am blissfully unbothered by all things viscerally distressing and they're hanging back uncomfortably.
I am sure it was, despite how kind they were, rather satisfying to their egos.
And then we went and looked at giant robotic bugs and the day was mended.
They have a much higher tolerance for early-to-mid 20th century wildlife taxidermy than I do, and Ashley really really really wanted to see the lions that hunted in the human camp in Tsavo, so we went through the Hall of Mammals to look at them. After going through What Is An Animal?
Okay, so, my problem with this kind of thing is not that I am standing in a hall full of dead things. That doesn't bug me. What I think ramps up my anxiety the longer I spend in this kind of place is the stillness. The stillness combined with the glimmer of light on glass - when I see it out of the corner of my eye, I think it's movement, but then it isn't. I'm in a long hall full of cases and cases of things that should be moving, are carefully posed to look as if they are about to move, but they are not moving. And, the longer and longer I spend in such a place the louder and louder some part of my brain starts to scream that something is not right, something is wrong, the world is not behaving properly and I should get the hell out of Dodge before something bad happens to me.
My rational, conscious mind knows what's going on, but that doesn't always help. Nevertheless, I was doing okay. I'd got them to the case with the young male lions, and I'd carefully not freaked out by focusing determinedly on the big mural depicting an artist's impression of the Rift Valley and blocking out glimmers of light from the sides while Ashley and Caitie ooed and awed.
So then I started to lead them out back the other way.
But all the other outlets were blocked because the museum staff were doing remodeling. The point at which I realized that I was going to have to turn back around and go back out past all those cases all over again was the point at which I started to panic slightly.
I am pretty sure I have never led Caitie and Ashley through an exhibit that fast. I shot out the entrance to What is An Animal, which is still a gauntlet of dead stuffed things with glass eyes, which I usually find only mildly worrying, because they're not in habitats or anything, but this time I was twitchy and - while not running, precisely - definitely using my long long stride to propel myself at a speed that probably would still have got me told off in an elementary school hallway. I fled to the grand marble staircase, sat down on the second step by the rail, and took deep breaths for three minutes before I could stop speaking in a register so high it was almost a squeak.
Caitie and Ashley were very sympathetic, although possibly also slightly pleased. After all, they've never seen me irrationally scared of anything before. Tired and consequently near tears, yes. Scared out of my wits by something dangerous they'd done and therefore in a tightly controlled incandescent rage, yes. Never that kind of wigged by something creepy before. And what's more, something creepy that hadn't bothered them at all, when what usually happens is that I am blissfully unbothered by all things viscerally distressing and they're hanging back uncomfortably.
I am sure it was, despite how kind they were, rather satisfying to their egos.
And then we went and looked at giant robotic bugs and the day was mended.