rinue: (Cathedral)
rinue ([personal profile] rinue) wrote2007-01-28 02:19 pm

Shapes

When somebody says "diamond shaped" I always picture a Brilliant instead of the standard slender rhombus. "Star" is a toss up between the five-pointed cowboy star and a four-pointed, well, almost diamond. (And if I'm honest, this star that I picture is three- rather than two- dimensional.) As for triangles, they are never equilateral. Usually, they are isosceles and human-proportioned. Sometimes, they are scalene.

All of this makes me suspect I missed an important part of pre-school or kindergarden - the part where your symbols solidify, and you understand that a house has two windows, a door, and a chimney, and a bird looks like a black "m." I also place the breaks between colors in culturally odd places - I'll call something orange that is red to everyone else, or say something is purple instead of blue, or brown instead of yellow. The line between green and blue is a difficult one, and so I have a huge "turquoise" category. I also think "pink" means something different to me.

This is one of the reasons I use precise names for colors - "carmine" or "vermillion" instead of "red" - so that I can know that I mean the same thing as other people. With shapes, I don't have this shortcut, and I'll be halfway through a story or an explanation before I realize oh, that diamond. It's not that I'm wrong, or that other people are wrong, but I am perplexed by how it happened, this naming difference. The world is bewildering, and many things that are easy for other people are hard for me, and vice versa.

I feel fussy lately, and embarrassed about my thoughts, and silly and pompous when I try to explain them to other people. Please don't make fun of me for thinking this, although it is fussy and silly and pompous and embarrassing.

That said, I am doing very well and feel beautiful all of the time and loved and smart, if unsettlingly odd. (Unsettling to me probably more than to other people, who either don't understand the scope, or else don't realize the degree to which it is accidental.) I have discovered that PBS has a cable channel for kids (can they even do that?) and there is something called "The Good Night Show" which thinks it is for kids but is really for insomniacs and is the most wonderful gift - it makes me so happy and sleepy and I can stretch into the shape of a triangle or hold my arms in a circle and sing songs about my best friend Sagwa (who is a cat living in ancient China).

P.S. Your body makes thousands of new cells every minute. Isn't that amazing? I heard 130,000, but can't say whether the source is reliable. I feel affectionate toward naked people, and want to give them soup. I wish I could have a pet mitochondrion, one that was big enough that I could pat its head, or the end that I would designate as its head. Instead, I will have to pat my arm and hope that my trillions of tiny pet mitochondria understand what I'm getting at.

Lack of societal influence.

[identity profile] bluezybunny.livejournal.com 2007-01-29 08:29 am (UTC)(link)
I can totally relate to what you're saying. I affectionately refer to it as "Uncommon Sense". Certain things trigger in my head as awkward that other people don't notice right away if at all. For example, when my father first told me "anything is possible", it never settled well with me. Around five years of age, I came back with, "But if anything is possible, is it possible for something to be impossible?" There are other things, such as "Never look a gift horse in the mouth," (yes, it worked great for the Trojans), and the fact that we have many sugary candies and sodas designed to simulate the taste of actual fruits. It seems unreasonable to me that these sorts of things are so widely overlooked as to become standardized into our society. And yet, when I wore black back in school (to be best prepared for combat or stealth operations), that's the first thing that would trigger to other people as being awkward.

Neither is more right than the other, as you've stated. I also have trouble pinpointing when exactly this "Uncommon Sense" occurred since I've been utilizing it as early as five years of age. I suppose I've never had the time nor the need to identify with any social standards, which has granted me a unique perspective. It would be interesting to study, but I haven't found many people (test subjects) who can relate.

As for colors and shapes, I tend to see a broader spectrum of colors as well. Several people have asked me how I can see the text on my monitor (in blue on black). How am I supposed to answer a question like that? I don't do anything special, I just see it! With shapes, I have a difficult time imagining two-dimensional objects. It's easier for me to think of a triangle as being either a cone or pyramid form. Perhaps our eyes and minds were specifically geared (evolved) toward certain tasks?

-Bluezy Bunny