{"id":563,"date":"2025-08-11T21:34:06","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T04:34:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/?p=563"},"modified":"2025-08-11T21:56:26","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T04:56:26","slug":"how-do-i-love-thee-sonnet-43-by-elizabeth-barrett-browning-1806-1861","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/11\/how-do-i-love-thee-sonnet-43-by-elizabeth-barrett-browning-1806-1861\/","title":{"rendered":"How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806\u20131861)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In learning about my sensory processing world (which should be uncontroversial, and just a normal part of getting old\u2013I’m almost 60, and I feel like I’m just getting started), I’m learning that ‘spacial thinking’ is just not an accepted part of everyone’s operating system or language. In recognizing aphantasia (inner blindness to visual memory) as part of my sensory punchcard of blindnesses that open other windows, I’ve also recognized that I have a deep memory and skill information stored in my bodyandmind spatially. I can’t visualize my mother’s face, but I can imagine myself sitting in the skating rink in Klamath Falls OR in 1978 and point to all of the features there, relative to my position. I can imagine myself in my mother’s apartment and point to all of the rooms and some of the things (not all of the things: there are a lot of things in my mother’s apartment). I can’t see them, but I can point to them, spatially.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So anyway, this is just a quick note to say that some of us think spatially, and try to describe the world that we see spatially, and that in doing what is perfectly normal for me, some folks experience a cognitive load when conversing with or reading me. And some of these folks experience this cognitive load as “ryk being difficult.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pause for a moment, and imagine a whole lifetime of being told that you’re difficult, just because you’re trying to work with the operating system you’ve been given. And then consider giving a difficult person a big ol’ hug. I could use a big ol’ hug a lot of the time that I’m being asked to filter my experience through someone else’s operating system. It’s a whole process. Hugs all around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, it’s notable and refreshing to be affirmed by examples of spatial thinking from history. Please give someone a hug, and enjoy the depth and breadth and height of this example of spatial thinking (or spatial feeling, actually, if thinking and feeling are different for you\u2013they’re not for me).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Elizabeth Barrett Browning<\/strong> (1806\u20131861)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.  
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height  
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight  
For the ends of being and ideal grace.  
I love thee to the level of every day's  
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.  
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.  
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.  
I love thee with the passion put to use  
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.  
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose  
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,  
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,  
I shall but love thee better after death.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
may all beings recognize their true nature
every day is neurodiversity awareness day<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In learning about my sensory processing world (which should be uncontroversial, and just a normal part of getting old\u2013I’m almost 60, and I feel like I’m just getting started), I’m learning that ‘spacial thinking’ is just not an accepted part of everyone’s operating system or language. In recognizing aphantasia (inner blindness to visual memory) as … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[29,27,28,8,14,26,16,15,9,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chronicle","category-didactics","category-ethos","category-literature","category-neurodiversity","category-personal-narrative","category-poem","category-politics","category-reflection","category-zen"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paor1p-95","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":413,"url":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/23\/the-middle-way-hub-or-hollow\/","url_meta":{"origin":563,"position":0},"title":"The middle way: hub, or hollow?","author":"Ryk Groetchen","date":"June 23, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Imagine a conversation about a trip to a museum between a person whose instrument of recall includes a detailed cinema projected onto the back of their eyeballs and a person with no access to visual formations at all. 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Astrology, Enneagram, Meyers-Briggs, Chinese medicine, naturopathy, homeopathy: having passed through these modalities, none of them made me feel seen in the ways that they were implemented by the particular practitioners who applied them to me. To be fair, I may have met\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "chronicle"","block_context":{"text":"chronicle","link":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/category\/chronicle\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":458,"url":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/21\/neurodiversity-journey-recognition\/","url_meta":{"origin":563,"position":2},"title":"neurodiversity journey: recognition","author":"Ryk Groetchen","date":"July 21, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Now that I am coming to understand my own neurodivergence, from the inside, (my punch card is getting full! It's pretty clear I have autistic traits, in addition to ADHD, aphantasia, and proprioception hyposensitivity. Hurray!), I understand some of my differences as gifts. My inner blindness reroutes my visual processing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "chronicle"","block_context":{"text":"chronicle","link":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/category\/chronicle\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/3F080A78-FE43-42DF-9B29-38214F5F8927.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/3F080A78-FE43-42DF-9B29-38214F5F8927.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/3F080A78-FE43-42DF-9B29-38214F5F8927.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/3F080A78-FE43-42DF-9B29-38214F5F8927.jpeg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/3F080A78-FE43-42DF-9B29-38214F5F8927.jpeg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/3F080A78-FE43-42DF-9B29-38214F5F8927.jpeg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":586,"url":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/13\/back-to-school\/","url_meta":{"origin":563,"position":3},"title":"back to school","author":"Ryk Groetchen","date":"August 13, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"What we should be asking of our administrators and educators as our children return to school: Being that the human species is a highly cooperative species, and being that the skill of cooperation takes practice to acquire, what models of cooperation will my child experience in this environment, and what\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "didactics"","block_context":{"text":"didactics","link":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/category\/didactics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":632,"url":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/10\/attentional-disengagement\/","url_meta":{"origin":563,"position":4},"title":"Attentional Disengagement","author":"Ryk Groetchen","date":"September 10, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Thesis: the attentional disengagement family of predispositions is a healthy and strategic set of adaptations within a species or community with strong tendencies to cooperate. 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