04 X 2002 - 18:14 - trivialis50

(added 7:37 PM:) You will please excuse my self-indulgence as usual, of course. This one's a bit longer than is normal, at least for the past few months...

I've been feeling rather fragile recently. I dug out the old Mahler 2 recording and nearly burst into tears during two passages:

the first from the fourth movement, entitled 'Urlicht' (Primal Light), at the section of the text which goes:

Da kam ich auf einen breiten Weg:
Da kam ein Engelein und wollt'mich abweisen.
Ach nein! Ich liess mich nicht abweisen!
Ich bin von Gott und will wieder zu Gott!

Deryck Cooke's translation (Cambridge University Press) runs:

I came upon a broad pathway:
An angel came and wanted to send me away.
Ah no! I would not be sent away!
I am from God and will return to God!

and the second from the fifth movement:

O glaube, mein Herz, O glaube:
Es geht dir nichts verloren!
Dein ist, was du gesehnt!
Dein, was du geliebt,
Was du gestritten!

Oh believe, my heart, oh believe:
Nothing is lost with thee!
Thine is what thou has desired,
What thou hast loved for,
What thou hast fought for!

Which leads us perfectly into my next topic. Today, during PE, and while I was trying very hard to avoid conversation with the person I've been calling Iskender -- not because I don't like him, but because I know my tongue will trip itself up -- I got into a discussion about synesthesia. ("I've never heard that word before!" she cried, when I know I made her proofread that entry for me multiple times). Apparently, she hears colors when she hears music, especially late at night.

So here goes: my take on synesthesia and hallucinations of other sorts.

I don't see things when I hear. It's funny: the sense that gives me the most information about the world, the one I value most, the one that I would rue losing the most if I were to be deprived of one sense -- that very sense is the one I am probably the least willing to trust. Of course, I probably wouldn't know it if there were hallucinations -- uncorrected, my eyesight quickly loses definition. It's nice, sometimes, to take my glasses off and watch the world grow softer...

strangely, this lack of trust means that my sight is probably the most reliable of my senses. When I first got my glasses, I would see movement at the edges, leading me to whip my head around to try to catch the runner who wasn't there. Apparently this is a common phenomenon for those who have eyesight like mine -- one eye is nearsighted, the other farsighted, and when both are corrected, the brain goes crazy trying to put the images together and makes up things at the edges.

By now my brain has learned to suppress the information from one eye, whether I have my glasses on or not. I see, for all intents and purposes, only with my left eye. My depth perception is little to nonexistent. I manage, somehow; compensatory mechanisms fill themselves in...

Next from the bottom comes smell. I almost never smell things that aren't there. Although I do have a limited recall for what certain people smell like...

Like Al, I sometimes experience synesthesia while listening to music; unlike Al, I'm most likely to begin to taste -- something -- as I listen, with preference apparently given to lemon and vanilla. It's not often that this happens, so don't ask me how tastes correspond to composers. It takes quite a bit of stress before my taste buds are willing to cooperate.

The penultimate sense, hearing. Of late I've been having auditory hallucinations. Actually, I suppose they're not really hallucinations per se -- I'm not creating something out of nothing. Instead, my ear picks order out of white noise, so that in the middle of the heater coming on at home, I hear quite clearly Iskender's voice saying something like "flying bananas." More frequently it will be the sound of someone calling my name that pops out of traffic, or, worse yet, incoherent mumbling as the water drops leaden from the showerhead. Nothing is there, of course, save white noise -- but just often enough for me to doubt myself, someone is there, and I'm proved wrong.

What I find amusing about this trend is that my brain is fascinatingly good at providing organization for white noise, it is not so good at providing organization to the rest of my life, so that I lose often things that are important to me (although, oddly enough, it is rare indeed that I'll lose school-related papers).

And now we reach the top of the catalogue of my senses -- touch. It's up here, not because I hallucinate touch with any sort of regularity, nor because I have as perfect a recall for touch as I do for hearing, but because it may be my favorite of my senses.

I'm not sure. Perhaps it is the sense with which I'm best at recall; perfect pitch goes only so far, and asked to recall the sounds of certain people, I find that I can't. I can get timbres and pitches for the instruments of the orchestra down, though. I know things should stick in my head -- for instance, the guy in my Latin class who, when asked to answer a question, looked puzzled for a moment, and then said, "It's awfully hot in here..." to voice what we all felt -- and I know the timbre of his voice in my head, but not as I hear the sentence, and I cannot hear him nearly as well as I have memorized the feel of his cool and slightly stiff shirt against my arm.

It's also this sense that I suppose I get the least of, from other people at least. I'm stuck in crowds for most of the school week, so despite my seeming invisibility (inaudibility, as well), seeing and smelling people isn't a problem. Tasting a person remains an abstract concept to me, so that won't count, and as for hearing -- I have conversations with my friends for that.

But how long has it been since someone has touched me because they want to be touching me? It's little wonder that I cling to hugs, that touch has gained an importance to me so much greater than is right by proportion. I do shrink from the impersonal contact of the mob, yes... but that seems to me something entirely different from the recognition of another person...

It doesn't help that a) most of the people at my school are quite not gay -- in fact, I'm the only 'out' student as far as I know and that b) considering my school's population, it is understandable that I be seen as the Other, not to be desired...

I've come to an understanding that I'm no prize, and wouldn't be even if I weren't Other. But...

A boy could get lonely, living behind a shield.