Mood:
smellyI don't have any set topic for this post, so let's just amble off and see where we end up.
First of all, many apologies for the long gaps in updating DC and this blog. I've been living away from home for the past 3 months. My job contract got extended through October, so there's likely to be more nomadic living-out-of-a-suitcase and being-torn-in-two (a la Sam at the end of "Return of the King") until somebody, somewhere, decides to make a permanent decision. In this economy, I'm so grateful to be employed, but the commuting and separation has been hard.
A friend of a friend has agreed to let me stay in their house while they're up at Squam Lake for the summer. It's a fascinating house, Arts and Crafts style, built in the 1920s right on the edge of the Wellesley campus, and about a 30 minute commute from el workplace nuevo. It was built by a college professor for his wife, who was into the theater. The living room actually has a varnished wood stage, overhead spotlights, and a frame for a curtain, where they used to put on student Shakespeare performances. To the left and right, stairs lead up to an open balcony all around. You can see where this is going...I'm already fantasizing about getting a group of friends and fundamentalist protestors together and staging a mini version of Jerry Springer: The Opera. This is my House...Sitting...Moment!!
After touring the house, I had a dream later that night that I was in a modern production of Macbeth, where the rival gang leaders spoke in hip-hop slang:
"Yo, is this a Glock I see before me?"
and
"Bring it, MacDuff!"
There was also something about low-slung tartan, and the Three Ho's stirring Vial of Crack and Forty of Malt into their cauldron. I don't really remember, because I woke myself up laughing.
The subconscious is really a fascinating place, isn't it? There's an illuminating article in this week's New Yorker about various neurological syndromes. It touches briefly on synesthesia, a cross-wiring of the senses, which is a condition I've had all my life. I always thought it was perfectly normal to see numbers, letters, and days of the week in color. (But dag, those people who can smell symphonies and taste velvet are weird). For example, Sunday is yellow. I don't mean that when I visualize the word "Sunday", the letters look yellow; I mean the whole concept of Sunday literally is yellow for me. Whatever area of the brain gets lit up by looking at yellow, also gets lit up by thinking about Sunday. Similarly, Monday is blue. Tuesday is red. Wednesday is dark brown. Thursday is a sort of milky light brown. Friday is green. Saturday is black.
It's noteworthy that these sensory associations are all with primitive earthy colors; I never see letters or numbers as purple, pink, or teal, for example. I suppose if I had learned my ABC's later in life, letters would be linked to fancier Land's End catalogue colors, like "Navajo Pony" and "Carolina Plum". As it is, my mental map of the alphabet takes its palette from the Partridge Family bus.
The theory behind synesthesia is that it's genetic, a failure to prune the neurons connecting the corpus callosum with the something-something hyumpty-tump lobe (help me out here, psych majors). So that connections that fade away in most babies by the time they're 2, remain active in synesthetes. It runs strongly in families, and it also correlates strongly with poets and artists, and with a tendency for metaphor (since the unpruned neurons allow the brain to make more facile connections between disparate objects. Thus, Gangsta Macbeth). I know many of you fellow David fans love to write, either as a vocation or hobby, and I'd love to hear if any of you have the same condition.
Australia, by the way, is red. Married Life is blue. They just are.
