Because I always miss book club

Ladies and gentlemen of the internet, I - Erin Davidson Farmer - am in a book club. I'm in three book clubs in fact. I'm in three book clubs in which I read about 30% of 30% of the books that are suggested and read. But I am, still, in a book club.

Today was the fateful day in which I might have actually read a major portion of and attended an actual meeting of the aforementioned book club(s). As time and tide would have it however, I was sick. I figure that this might be the perfect opportunity to relinquish my thoughts upon the world in the same old way I used to: the good old-fashioned blog post.

Our book this time around was "An Anthropologist on Mars" by Oliver Sacks. I should start by saying, I love Oliver Sacks. I don't know anybody who couldn't love Oliver Sacks - I mean, if they tried even a little. He was a weightlifter, a writer, a neurologist, a great proponent of fruit and the British, and a lover of all things truly mysterious.

If I had gone to book club today, I would have spoken about the following quotation from our book; Sacks is referring to an experiment done in which colors were seen present in an image but not presented in the image at all (conjure up some memory of the blue/black or white/gold dress debacle and you'll have the picture): 

"These demonstrations, overwhelming in their simplicity and impact were color "illusions" in Goethe's sense, but illusions that demonstrated a neurological truth - that colors are not "out there" in the world, nor (as classical theory held) an automatic correlate of wavelength, but rather, are constructed by the brain."

That's right.

What we see as red, or blue, or any shade in between, is a projection of more than the anatomy of our eyes, but the desire, function, and fault of our brains.

So what does this have to do with us?

I think you can flesh must of it out from this other statement of Oliver's:

“Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination, "(Musicophilia). 

The thing I have been thinking about in reading this book is how very much that seems stable and sure, is really fold over fold of a thousand layers of assumption. These colors are like the layers of a tree, laid down year after year of perception, climate, and time. They come out bold at the end, strong and sure as hell - but nonetheless, like paper tigers.

Nothing is more like this than human relationship.

Once upon a time I dabbled in playwriting.

No, I am not making this up.

As part of a study for my playwriting, I spent a lot of time analyzing the way that conversation works. We think of all conversations as going something like this:

Person #1: Hey there!  How are you?
Person #2: Doing fine, how are YOU?
Person #1: Not too shabby myself. Hoping for a change in the weather soon.
Person #2: I know! Gray days are the worst!

But they really go something like this:

Person #1 & Person #2: Hey! What's up? Hi! How are you??
Person #1 (fumbling with phone and headphones): I'm late! I'm going over to a thing.
Person #2 (avoiding eye contact, avoiding lingering, sensing a rush): Yeah, hey, I know, all good...
Person #1 (interrupting) Yeah, catch you later! Sorry about all that!

One conversation is layers of understanding, layers of assumption, layers of color.  And most of it, most of the time makes no sense.

It reminds me of this scene from I Heart Huckabees:

The real way we know each other is the space between. Our relationships are composed of millions of decisions. Our decisions are based on color, smell, feel, and the basest of senses. We float towards each other and away one microscopic movement at a time. Who knows why this way and not that?

It is unfathomable. And it does take trust. It takes trust to believe that we have any control at all over who we are, what we see, and what we do.

I try to remember this when I feel like I am misunderstood or have misunderstood. It has taken a million steps for a perspective to be made. I am not the only part of someone else's perspective that matters. I am not the only part of that perspective that could change. I am not the only part of that perspective that might NEED to change.

What we can affect may feel like moving mountains, but it starts with what we choose to see. This shift in and of itself might be the biggest, and most important shift of all.

This to me, is a challenging thought, almost a dangerous one, but I like it. If I were to make a list of all of things that I choose to see that may not be real I'm sure the list would be long, and jarring (I know this, because I have made this list.)

I think these thoughts would taste a little better to the palate with some chicken chili.

Until the next book club meeting...

Unfolding.

“I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enough

to make every moment holy.

I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enough

just to lie before you like a thing,

shrewd and secretive.

I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will,

as it goes toward action;

and in those quiet, sometimes hardly moving times,

when something is coming near,

I want to be with those who know secret things

or else alone.

I want to be a mirror for your whole body,

and I never want to be blind, or to be too old

to hold up your heavy and swaying picture.

I want to unfold.

I don’t want to stay folded anywhere,

because where I am folded, there I am a lie.

and I want my grasp of things to be

true before you. I want to describe myself

like a painting that I looked at

closely for a long time,

like a saying that I finally understood,

like the pitcher I use every day,

like the face of my mother,

like a ship

that carried me

through the wildest storm of all.” 

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God