SEEING WAS BELIEVING
I have learned over
time that my memory is a confabulation machine. Am I a mountain nymph skiing gracefully
down the mountain, slaloming to and fro--as I remember? Or could that be me-- ass
out with ski poles wildly flailing-- as the damn video shows?
Could my sister be
right, that dad was cremated right after he died, or was my trouble-making dad
poised like an angel in his coffin, as I angrily recall? One of us is wrong,
right? My memories are so unreliable that I've ditched the phrase, I remember. In truth, I'm a figment of my own
imagination.
Ask my husband who I am. My husband might describe me as an
impatient and once- attractive politician. My daughter, as a mostly loving,
patient mom. My political opponents describe me as a biased, retrogressive
jerk, and my supporters, as realistic, fact-based and honest. Clearly, I exist
differently in the eyes of the beholders.
I even experience
myself differently. On Tuesday, my pink blouse is the perfect pick du jour
but on Wednesday I hate it. Of course, I am physically in constant flux—I have
37 trillion cells and 86 billion neurons that conduct some 37 billion billion!
chemical mind-changing reactions per second—and I just went to the hairdresser and became a "L'Oreal Medium
Ash 7a Blond."
To increase my
confusion, I no longer believe what I see. When I look at a
flower, I see a beautiful bright-yellow face. When a bee looks at that same
flower she sees a pattern. Whose eyesight is right? It's a trick question. We
are both right because what we see is determined by the visual equipment we
have.
Some of us are blind. Some of us are color blind. Some of us–with
synesthesia—might experience color as taste. My visual system has 3 cones. I see red, green and blue. But some of you have four cones
enabling you to see who knows what?
Yikes!
I'm in a self-doubting tizzy. Nothing is real. What to do? What to do? Hmmmm.
I think I'll go shopping for a scarf that matches my new blond hair.
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