Do you See what I See?

"They say that an unlearnt ability (or liability) in human beings is their capacity to see one thing in another." (from page 157, Ch. 11, which is by Trevor Pateman, of The Self on the Page, edited by Celian Hunt and Fiona Sampson. Sorry for not using the proper format to reference that.)

Such an interesting ability, to see one thing in another. The Man in the Moon, the face in the swirls of the bathroom tiles (I could see a whole series of sea captains in the tiles of my Grandma's bathroom), the way particular colours make us feel. Is it a liability? Perhaps it's distracting. Who are the people for whom no feelings or visions are evoked indirectly? I met a priest once who'd travelled to a small chapel in the Vatican where a mystic/priest had prayed incessantly for years. I asked him what it felt like to visit the chapel, and he said well, of course it was very interesting. No, no, I said, what did it feel like to be there? Feel? he said. Yes, feel. What did you feel when you were in there? Nothing, he said, it was just an empty room with a bench.

Yuck. What a way to live, to be immune to the history of the space, to have so little imagination available to you that you only see an empty room.

On the other hand, maybe it's better for him, religious-wise, if he doesn't have any sixth sense. I don't know. I know that I did ask him what kind of an insensitive man he was, to not have had any feelings walking into a room so full of history...as usual, acting the diplomat...to which he said he thought he'd get another beer.

I don't know anyone for whom feelings are not evoked by this "capacity to see one thing in another". Maybe I don't know anyone who's completely literal (except my son, but he's six). It is my understanding that autistic people are extremely literal, but I don't know any autistic adults.

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I have been taking a lovely holiday, athough we have had a certain number of obligations during the festive season. Tomorrow we have no real obligations, although we might go downtown and see Madagascar 2, and do some visiting on New Year's Day, and on Friday FFS may visit, as he's here with his partner's family. Saturday we're visiting friends from grad school who've landed jobs at Gigantic U near here. Very exciting. Sunday is the day before we go back to regular life and work and playing catch up all the time. If it ever come to pass that I catch up with all the work, I won't have a job any more. Hmph. Luckily, the work keeps changing and we keep finding new applications and new ways of attacking problems and people keep thinking of new things to do when we are running around doing other things for other people. It's a pretty good life, this science thing.

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Wall-E is a cute movie.

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We have tickets to see The Sound of Music on January 10 in the big city. Someone I know can't go, and so we're going. Which of the family members is accompanying me? Not Hub, that's for sure...

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We are considering the Waldorf school for the children. We can't really afford it, but I am not thrilled with their current school, and you can't just switch to another one that looks nicer, you have to live in the area to do that. I don't think I'd be more thrilled with the public school that they could go to (they're at a Catholic school now). If you've attended a Waldorf school or know anything about it first-hand, I'd like to know more from your perspective. I can read web pages as well as anyone else...Google is my friend, after all.