January, 2018


The sky was grayer than black and greener than indigo as I walked up and out of the subway stop. Clearly, it was not the city, and the sky was indeed visible, even at 8pm in February. Off-the-cuff and on-time don’t usually dovetail, but I knew I was in the correct vicinity; I just wasn’t sure without landmarks. Streetlights actually made things worse by diffusing the light, and this was happening all over the sky. Over-rubbing my eyes, or a big thumb smear on my glasses cause the halo effect when looking at streetlights (same for moist, misty evenings).

This happens occasionally (and confoundingly) descending interior stairwells, in certain retail environments and when out in the midst of a snowstorm on a large lake. Turned around and beside myself, but not out of it. In fact, very much in it, to the point that I can’t find my way out. This brought to mind Cezanne’s “little sensations,” which are probably different from Beckett’s undoing of boundaries version. His “unthought known” was like a strange (and strangely familiar) mood.

The French philosopher Camille Lotrimin reportedly suffered from dramasagnosia (commonly affecting people driving automobiles), yet routinely got lost navigating the environs of his own bathroom. This is different from pure topographical disorientation, possibly caused by a combination of personal velocity and cerebral magnetic dissonance. It is widely thought common compasses did not function in Lotrimin’s flat in Paris. When asked to comment on this disturbing condition, he once replied “Je me fiche de pourquoi; J'apprécie plutôt le sentiment de me perdre dans la salle de bain… “ (roughly translated “I enjoy the feeling of losing my way in the bathroom”) but lamented being tardy for a number of important lectures throughout his career.

This may conjur memories of semantic satiation, a term coined by Leon Jakobovits James, professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii. Semantic satiation is a psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose all meaning. The word is stripped down to meaningless sounds. I have personally experienced this when listening to music as well. Occasionally the rhythm of a tune becomes tangled in my ear and thrown backward. A snare drum backbeat becomes the downbeat and bass drum downbeat functions as the opposite. I, too, plutôt le sentiment and find myself enjoying the moment, even though I realize it is not correct.

Lotrimin is also reported to have experienced (or enjoyed, depending on how one looks at it) asteriognosis, a condition whereby the affected person is unable to identify objects by handling them, despite the fact that his or her tactile and thermal sensors are fully functional. His colleague Ferenc Homard once upended a bistro table, writhing in pain, when Lotrimin mistook his wrist for a baguette. A favorite snack of his, doigts de poulet, were especially hazardous for those dining with the talkative philosopher.

Having recently experienced a bad head cold (and consequent sleepless nights lying in bed) brought me back to my childhood, when, afflicted with an illness, I would often lie in bed and suddenly feel as if I were physically shrinking. For a kid that was terrifying, but now I realize it must be due to an inner ear malfunction. It wasn’t a dizziness, per se, but did happen only when my eyes were closed. At first the sensation was fun, but the smaller I got the scarier it became.