Perceiving in Isolation.

When I was a kid I often used to get a sensation of something ugly and decaying, filling me with revulsion. It was similar to what you might feel if you encountered, say, a dead animal whose skin rippled from the activity of unseen maggots inside its body. The point was, though, there was never anything apparent to give rise to it, and it was never accompanied by any sort of mental image. It was just a sensation, a perception that came upon me suddenly and existed in total isolation of any identifiable cause. It used to confuse me because I could never pin down where it came from.

Latterly, I have a theory. I’ve heard it said that beauty is not an external phenomenon, that there’s no such thing as a beautiful object, person, piece of music, work of art, or anything else we like to describe as ‘beautiful.’ Beauty, it is said, is entirely a faculty of mind that exists continuously and is merely triggered by our reaction to some combination of form, colour, or other mode of expression. And, that being the case, the perception of beauty can be triggered at will without recourse to an external stimulus, if you know how to do it.

So, maybe my childhood perception of ugly decay was just a different version of the same thing. There are skills I really must work on from an early age in my next life. Maybe I should start a list.

Tell you what, this is far too serious a post for this time of night.