Synesthesia and Lord Byron
Jun. 8th, 2018 07:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraAnnoying reminder yesterday of just what stoooopid bullies people can be. Cautionary takeaway: Never underestimate how expendable you are to other human beings.
Else?
I made money. (Not enough.)
I wrote. (Not enough.)
I exercised. (Not enough.)
In the afternoon, I went off to garden.
There was somebody else in the garden. An attractive woman with blonde hair, maybe ten years younger than me.
She looked normal, so I encouraged conversation.
But, as it turned out, she wasn’t in the least bit normal, and so, for 45 minutes, she prattled on and on and on – about her lupus; about her boyfriend – or was he her X-boyfriend? – who had lymphoma that, one day, miraculously disappeared; about the sister who had alienated the affection of her son and her grandchildren; about the horrible traffic accident that had happened just down the road – had it happened in 2004 or 2014? – and had forced her to go on disability. About her girlhood on a farm in Vermont.
I wasn’t half as irritated by her as I might have been because:
1. She weeded half my garden.
2. She had a really sweet and piquant aura. Yes, yes, I see auras. Not all the time. In fact, not most of the time. In fact, I can’t figure out why some people seem to have auras, and most people do not, but anyway, she had one. Auras are not colors exactly, but they have some sort of odd, synesthesiac correspondence to colors. Hers was purple and green.
By the way, some anthropologists believe that synesthesia is the reason why human beings began to think figuratively, invent metaphors, write poetry.
###
When I got home, Leslie Marquand’s three-volume Lord Byron biography had arrived! In perfect condition! I don’t think anyone had ever so much as opened the books!
So I spent a very pleasant evening reading up on Byron’s bizarre ancestors and his even more bizarre childhood.
The biography is every bit as well-written and engrossing as I remembered it being.
I am still feeling fragile this morning, collateral damage from yesterday’s encounter with Stoooopid Bully.
Am I really expendable?
I don’t like feeling expendable.
Else?
I made money. (Not enough.)
I wrote. (Not enough.)
I exercised. (Not enough.)
In the afternoon, I went off to garden.
There was somebody else in the garden. An attractive woman with blonde hair, maybe ten years younger than me.
She looked normal, so I encouraged conversation.
But, as it turned out, she wasn’t in the least bit normal, and so, for 45 minutes, she prattled on and on and on – about her lupus; about her boyfriend – or was he her X-boyfriend? – who had lymphoma that, one day, miraculously disappeared; about the sister who had alienated the affection of her son and her grandchildren; about the horrible traffic accident that had happened just down the road – had it happened in 2004 or 2014? – and had forced her to go on disability. About her girlhood on a farm in Vermont.
I wasn’t half as irritated by her as I might have been because:
1. She weeded half my garden.
2. She had a really sweet and piquant aura. Yes, yes, I see auras. Not all the time. In fact, not most of the time. In fact, I can’t figure out why some people seem to have auras, and most people do not, but anyway, she had one. Auras are not colors exactly, but they have some sort of odd, synesthesiac correspondence to colors. Hers was purple and green.
By the way, some anthropologists believe that synesthesia is the reason why human beings began to think figuratively, invent metaphors, write poetry.
###
When I got home, Leslie Marquand’s three-volume Lord Byron biography had arrived! In perfect condition! I don’t think anyone had ever so much as opened the books!
So I spent a very pleasant evening reading up on Byron’s bizarre ancestors and his even more bizarre childhood.
The biography is every bit as well-written and engrossing as I remembered it being.
I am still feeling fragile this morning, collateral damage from yesterday’s encounter with Stoooopid Bully.
Am I really expendable?
I don’t like feeling expendable.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-08 12:19 pm (UTC)People are so lonely! That woman must never have anyone listen to her (maybe because if anyone offers, she expands to fill all available space--therefore alienating people, resulting in people not wanting to talk to her, and setting up a vicious cycle).
**But our worth doesn't come from our importance to other people, and we can sure as hell feel expendable when we fall into the natural assumption that that's how to determine whether we are or not ... we can sometimes not-matter to people, and that sucks. At the airport on our way home, I got pulled aside for a random thorough inspection (you know, where they take everything out of your carry-on and do a body pat-down, etc.), and my husband said cheerily, "If you're a terrorist, I'm disowning you." He meant it as a joke; I knew that, but I felt in that moment, like I didn't matter much--you know? Maybe that's what you mean by expendable, in which case... yeah, maybe we **are** expendable, in other people's eyes. But fundamentally, we're not. We were created, and we matter. We're here, and so we were meant to be here.
.... LOL, now I've been like that woman. Give me an opening and I'll pontificate.
(You're not expendable)
no subject
Date: 2018-06-08 12:27 pm (UTC)Yeah, I think she was horribly, horribly lonely.
So, maybe I was performing a mitzvah when I was hanging out with her.
I agree that nobody is expendable, but I think we live in a culture that uses expendability as a marketing tactic: If you don't buy A, B, C; if you don't believe Q, R, S; if you don't look like X, Y, Z -- you are... expendable.
And when I'm feeling fragile, I fall for the pitch. :-)
no subject
Date: 2018-06-08 12:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-06-08 04:41 pm (UTC)Not a euphemism!
Get your mind out of the gutter. :-)
no subject
Date: 2018-06-08 09:53 pm (UTC)The thing that originally set me off was the way you bounced back from that with your sort of offhand comment about the blonde gardener. So my mind is TOTALLY in the garden. And on plowing and planting and fertilizing. And eating yummy produce...
no subject
Date: 2018-06-09 10:00 am (UTC)I guess in a strange sort of way, I'm crafting a kind of stream-of-consciousness flow - this diary does function primarily as a writing journal, practicing scales as it were - and I think that's the way people jump around in their thoughts. But obviously, anything that's designed to be read has to be framed.