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Jul. 18th, 2009 07:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badstarEarlier today, on the way up top Hunt Valley for some grocery shopping, I started writing a bit, and just now finished (I think)a short poem. I was thinking about depersonalization and the idea that I know it's all real if I touch something and it feels like I expect it to feel.
Well, today I came to the conclusion that the only of the commonly thought of five senses that can really, fairly concretely be trusted with this are touch and taste, because the others can much more easily be tricked or shut off, and they don't require direct contact (okay, so smell actually involves inhaling minute particles of whatever is producing a scent, but let's not get too sciencey here now :-P
So yeah....your eyes can trick you into seeing things that aren't there. Or you can see people on a movie or on TV- they're not really there. And you can close your eyes and turn it off. you don't put things against your eyeball to see them- that would be inconvenient. Similarly, you can hear, or you can think you hear something. You can listen to a recording- but what you're hearing isn't actually there. And you can stick your fingers in your ears to block it all out. And you can smell things, or you can think you smell things- how often do you stop and sniff around because you think you smelled something, only to realize you didn't? And you can turn it off by pinching your nose.
But you can't turn off your skin, and you can't turn off your tongue. They're much harder to trick, so they're a much better gauge of things being real.
And I wrote this:
I am one mind existing
as though inside another
unconvinced of my own reality.
I live, vicarious, through myself;
only touch and taste
as my fragile bridge
the only arguments
I've never been able to
shut down.
I'm here, half a step out of phase,
can't you see I'm fading out of the frame?
If you try to touch me,
you might only catch a handful of air.
Obviously I fake it really well
or you'd have noticed long ago
that I'm translucent.
Well, today I came to the conclusion that the only of the commonly thought of five senses that can really, fairly concretely be trusted with this are touch and taste, because the others can much more easily be tricked or shut off, and they don't require direct contact (okay, so smell actually involves inhaling minute particles of whatever is producing a scent, but let's not get too sciencey here now :-P
So yeah....your eyes can trick you into seeing things that aren't there. Or you can see people on a movie or on TV- they're not really there. And you can close your eyes and turn it off. you don't put things against your eyeball to see them- that would be inconvenient. Similarly, you can hear, or you can think you hear something. You can listen to a recording- but what you're hearing isn't actually there. And you can stick your fingers in your ears to block it all out. And you can smell things, or you can think you smell things- how often do you stop and sniff around because you think you smelled something, only to realize you didn't? And you can turn it off by pinching your nose.
But you can't turn off your skin, and you can't turn off your tongue. They're much harder to trick, so they're a much better gauge of things being real.
And I wrote this:
I am one mind existing
as though inside another
unconvinced of my own reality.
I live, vicarious, through myself;
only touch and taste
as my fragile bridge
the only arguments
I've never been able to
shut down.
I'm here, half a step out of phase,
can't you see I'm fading out of the frame?
If you try to touch me,
you might only catch a handful of air.
Obviously I fake it really well
or you'd have noticed long ago
that I'm translucent.
