Previous - 116. Abusing QCD & synesthesia
Food dislikes
Here's the kind of thing the internet is so handy for. In "real" life I've ran into any number of people with odd (to me) food preferences -- a dislike of mushrooms is common, also of cilantro and green bell pepper -- but someone in my online group brought up foods people can't stand and the list amazes me.We had stumbled on avocado and raisins before, many people in the group detest both. Now we're adding olives, ham, ketchup & mustard. And today we've added cherries -- at first Maraschino and then all cherries -- and marzipan!!
Gustatory synesthesia! (Everybody downs a drink.) I shouldn't be surprised at any of this since my mother never tasted any of the items on this list -- though that puts her dietary preferences in an entirely different (not taste-based) category. But some of the items on this list I consider to be among life's greatest small pleasures: avocado, cilantro, real cherries, marzipan. And if you told me I would have to live the rest of my life without raisins or mustard I would not be happy.
My point is that these taste based differences are as striking to me as the more conventional forms of synesthesia. They are at least more comprehensible than the emotional synesthesia I wrote about last time -- someone pushing away a bowl of guacamole is puzzling but it also means there's more for me. Someone doing a good job but not being able to acknowledge that, or feel any pride in the accomplishment, is much harder for me to get my mind around.
An excellent example of this for me was that recent Women's March in Oakland I greened. As a "good dog" (in a previous life) I thrive on pleasing whoever is in charge. For that event there was no one else around for most of the day so I had to please myself, and I can be something of a perfectionist. I can nit pick any number of aspects of my work that day (and have done so) but I can also see that I did more than could reasonably have been expected of me, and I can feel pride in my work (while still keeping in mind a short list of things I would have done differently and will try to do differently if I'm ever in that situation again.) To not be able to correctly assesses my performance would be as scary as Oliver Sacks' list of freakish neurological conditions like being unable to recognize faces, or read words, or speak, or imagine color.
Sense and Sensibility
I'm watching the most recent mini-series version of this again. So delightful. This time, as I watch, I've been thinking of "parade." In the first of the three parts there was one instance of parade in the usual sense -- a funeral parade in this case -- but I lost track of the instances of parade in the other sense. (And yes, I have in mind Parade's End here.) We see the Dashwoods on parade first at the head of their establishment at Norland Park and then in their reduced circumstances at the cottage and at the home of their cousin, where we also see that landed family in welcoming parade. Every social visit requires a degree of parade.This would be hard to defend, but I rather think this degree of parade is related to the way people, within living memory, would dress up to go to town -- or go downtown. Gloves and hats. Dressing for church may be the last of this sort of parade. My (Boomer) generation was probably the death of all this, and I was never a fan of it in any case, but now one has to wonder if this was also part of the path that lead to Donald Trump.
Jane Austen's works are spiced with memorable minor characters (Sophie Thompson has nailed two of these parts), but one that I never thought of in this way was Anne Steele, until Daisy Haggard took her in hand. There should be special prizes for running away with a part like that.
I've finished my re-watch, and I would also like to praise Dan Stevens. I don't think anyone could play Edward Ferrars better than this. That penultimate scene where he has to play through the awkwardness of the Dashwoods thinking he -- rather than his brother Robert -- had recently married Lucy Steele was brilliant.
I would even praise Mark Gatiss. John Dashwood is one of the most thankless parts, as he is so weak and it would be so easy to turn him into a joke. Fanny knows very well what she is about, but John, I think, truly thinks himself to be a an honorable man. Mark gives us a character who is shallow and conventional, but decent in his own way. He truly believes the advice he gives Elinor.
And I'm sure I've written about this elsewhere, but I do prefer this Maryanne to the one Austen wrote. For one thing she actually grows as a character over the course of the novel, as a young woman of 17 ought to do, and as the written Maryanne (to my recollection) fails to do. Elizabeth in P&P, and Emma, and Catherine in Northanger all develop as characters. Even Anne Elliot grows a bit of a backbone. But Elinor seems to be perfect from the start. We will not speak of Fanny Price.
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