testing the perspicacity capacity.

It occurs to me that the µ unit and I may be operating from drastically different - framing systems? (yeah, no news *there*.)

I'm thinking of the 'Ask vs. Guess culture' idea again(see MetaFilter thread from Jan. 2007, http://ask.metafilter.com/55153/Whats-the-middle-ground-between-FU-and-Welcome), where one person operates as if others can read their mind, assuming that another person is privy to their internal dialog and somehow, magically, intuitively understands the intricate internal frame of reference this person is using to make their choices and which shapes their point of view.

This is Guess culture, and I've more than once wondered about a linkage between this and 'co-dependence' (which, by the way, I'm hoping is a 'fad' term that will soon die out - I think it's terribly un-useful) and other so-called 'dysfunctional' behaviors (which I think is another unhelpfully judgmental term that just ends up unnecessarily polarizing people and making things more black and white than they really are. And 'Ask vs. Guess' may be a likewise arbitrary framing - what's that joke about, "Two kinds of people in the world: The kinds of people who divide people into two kinds of people, and those who don't"? Anyway.)

I think I've always been an Asker - fairly direct, like to communicate as clearly, simply, straight-forwardly and directly as I'm able. To the point that it sometimes seems to grate on *some* people's nerves - so I've tried to temper it a little, learn to speak 'their' language to some extent - will probably never be fluent, but have enough of it to at least get by or 'pass' in Guess culture world.

So the encounter with µ yesterday seemed a case in point, and it suddenly struck me as we were talking (and this wasn't the fist time I'd *noticed* it, but may have been the first time I consciously gave it this 'label' as a way to help me deal with it): She really, truly believes that I'm somehow being wilfully obstructive by not just *knowing* what she means without me having to ask her any questions.

What became clear to me yesterday (some comment she made, can't dredge it up out of the cacophonous chaos that is the memory of the afternoon, yet) is that she somehow feels - shamed? by having to explain herself. That there's some *major* piece of - feeling? - for her that I'm *really not getting*, but to *her* it's so obvious that she's mortified to have to explain it to me. [sounds like it's gotta be a shame issue, on recursively editing this paragraph.]

I'm not sure I've got this right, yet (thinking out loud), but she seems to have this notion that merely the act of *explaining* what's happening is - shameful? As if she's justifying herself?

I really don't understand it. It's like going to another culture entirely and recognizing that there's some kind of communication going on all the time that's completely outside your experience, that you're sort of peripherally aware of, but don't give much credence to because it seems like so many random, meaningless gestures. I suppose it would be like seeing someone doing sign language without ever having realized that deaf people existed or that they might have developed a whole separate mode of communication to cope with their lack of ability to hear.

Something like that.