Hide Armor

Sometimes I'll glance down from an engaging activity to notice with surprise a trail of blood on my arm or leg, no memory of hurting myself.

Or perhaps I'll first notice a smear of blood on something I've touched before then realizing I've been bleeding. Maybe I'll find a bruise with no knowledge of the injury that must have occurred a few days prior.

I'm not a particularly careful person. I've come to expect some measure of bumping into things as I navigate tight spaces, of getting scratched as I brush against bushes and plants and artificial environments. It's so commonplace I don't notice when it happens. Small injuries so normal I tune them out, ignore the bits of pain and discomfort enough they never reach my awareness. Though I haven't made a conscious choice to be oblivious, I am.

Many sensations I might experience, I don't.

In this world of numbness and information overload, the ability to feel, my boy, is a rare gift indeed. . . . Cuz how do you know yer alive if you don't hurt?¹

Having no sense of smell is often a blessing.

I don't mind changing diapers. (Can't tell when a diaper needs changing, but can easily get rid of it once alerted to the need.) I'm happy to be stuck with litter box duty. (Not aware that our house smells disgustingly of cat, but I'll clean up after the felines.) Taking out the trash is no big deal. (Have to check with others to determine whether something is still safely food or has aged into waste, but once needed I'll toss it without issue.)

My wife is a supertaster. She needs her food flavors subtle and soft, and many common foods are too much for her. The ability impacts her olfactory sense as well. Her nose knows. The slightest odors overwhelm her.

Even as a child, before I knew what other options existed, I knew I found the food of my central plains farm communities boring and bland. The few ethnic restaurants we'd sporadically sample thrilled me. Once I discovered Tabasco sauce, I begged my mom to always have some in stock. I need my flavors strong and robust. Even when I could still smell them. I wanted all the flavors, as vibrantly as possible.

A college roommate once told me he could tell early on a date when he was going to "get lucky" because he could smell his date's arousal. That is an experience I've never known. I had a sense of smell, just not that sensitive. I used to know when a skunk was near. Couldn't stand the smell of mildew. Found trips to the landfill awful.

How quickly each feeling starts to fade as you recalibrate your expectations. Maybe that’s why your childhood could feel so intense, because you were steadily burning your way through a roster of firsts. The more you repeat an experience, the less you feel its impact, almost as if your brain is gradually tuning out the world.²

Growing up on the plains of Kansas, we took most of our vacations in the mountains of Colorado. That destination was close enough to reach with a one-day drive and provided a complete change of environment and scenery. I have vivid memories of first stepping out of the car after arriving and inhaling, savoring the smell. That smell was how I knew I was somewhere else. The crisp, clean, less humid air; the coniferous trees and the aspens; the altitude--I'm not entirely sure what exactly created that scent I experienced nowhere else, but it was pervasive and ubiquitous. It was an emotion. It was the smell of awe, grandeur, vacation, relaxation, escape. Elsewhere. Of magic.

I don't know what magic smells like anymore.

I could swim before I could walk. I jumped off the high-dive at 18 months. My parents directed a wilderness camp each summer, and nearly every day included swimming in the camp pool. The water was a second home for me. I competed on swim team through the end of high school and enjoyed swimming in triathlons as a pre-parenting adult.

Bleach has always been one of my favorite smells. A laundry room. Bathroom cleaners. They offer the scent of chlorinated swimming pools. They smell like the refreshment of diving into a cool pool on a hot, sunny day. Of floating weightless, graceful, eyes and ears dampened to fully focus on skin and muscles and proprioception. It is the happiest of smells.

Swimming pools aren't quite so much my happy place as they used to be.

Sometimes you reach a point when you can’t feel anything at all, just a ringing in your ears.²

My parents and doctors always said our family had "hay fever." We sniffled and sneezed, had itchy eyes, kept tissues handy. It was a fact of life. As an adult, I was diagnosed in more technical language with chronic sinusitis and allergic rhinitis and similar. I've had more sinus infections than I can count. Too many courses of antibiotics. In recent years things have improved due to allergy shots and two sinus surgeries, but too late to save my sense of smell. It gradually faded until there was nothing left.

The "smell disorder" of the complete inability to detect odors is Anosmia. The absence of the sense of smell.

I haven't smelled anything in nearly fifteen years.

The world is more dull than it used to be. Less vivid. Less emotional. I think, perhaps, less joyful.

Less.

It's easier now to be detached.

Allergy shots are more properly known as allergen immunotherapy, also known as desensitization or hypo-sensitization. Immunotherapy involves exposing people to larger and larger amounts of allergens in an attempt to change the immune system's response.³

Desensitization.

You wish you could look around with fresh eyes, and feel things just as powerfully as you did when you felt them for the first time.²

I reference my Mennonite heritage somewhat frequently on this blog, as that background has strongly shaped who I am. (See here for a good example.) One of the veins of belief I would describe--though perhaps not articulate completely according dogma--is the calling to be a community apart. Based in the wish for life to be "on Earth as it is in Heaven," yet acknowledging the immensity of such a task. It starts with creating smaller pockets of faithful communities instead of engaging the main power structures. It is a withdrawal from common society, changing oneself and immediate surroundings instead of all of the earth. Creating new ways of being outside of the system, not reforming the system.

Last post I referenced an article, and I think this post has emerged out of further contemplation on it. Here's the relevant portion of the post:

This article resonates, both because it reflects my personal values but also takes the time to validate the authenticity and allure of Quietism, which I often feel on the verge of.

Everyday Philosophy: Is It Better to Debate People or Shrug and Drink Wine?

At its core, quietism means retreating from the active pursuit of truth or intellectual engagement, promoting instead a kind of serene acceptance of the world as it is. Quietism walks the thin line between apathy and calm. It still cares about the world and its people but tends to let everyone go their own way, focusing only on meditation, contemplation, and quietude. . . . 

It might be a philosopher’s fancy, but the entire point of discussing ideas with other people is to clarify those ideas and, we hope, move one step closer to something like the truth.

Your convictions are fine, and you might feel noble, but it is not the philosopher’s quest. Quietism is a form of capitulation. It’s giving up on working together to improve our ideas. . . . 

However calm and appealing the gallic shrug of quietism might seem, I do believe that we have to still engage with other people about almost all matters. This isn’t to say that we should always be looking for a debate, but I think we need to have them sometimes.

I take a "don't sweat the small stuff" and "pick your battles approach," responding to many things with quietism so I have the energy and capacity to properly engage with the really important things.

I constantly deliberate whether the detachment I aim for is a way of maintaining healthy perspective on the importance of events and my ability to influence them or if it is capitulation, a world-avoiding, life-sapping apathy.

Quietism means retreating from the active pursuit of truth or intellectual engagement, promoting instead a kind of serene acceptance of the world as it is. Quietism walks the thin line between apathy and calm. It still cares about the world and its people but tends to let everyone go their own way, focusing only on meditation, contemplation, and quietude.⁴

Often I'm not sure of the difference between serenity and apathy.

Is the ability to change diapers without sensory overload and instinctual disgust worth the loss of joy at smelling Colorado and chlorine?

The kaleidoscope of your emotions spun wildly throughout the day, all of it intense.²

Does dampened outrage and anxiety mean dampened joy and meaning?

It is said of thrill seekers, those who sky dive and bungee jump, drive too fast and look for constant opportunities for adrenaline rush, that they crave overstimulation in response to desensitization. They are non-tasters, opposite of supertasters, and need extremes to feel anything.

I regularly write about my constant quest to find magic in the mundane, awe in the everyday. (See here for a recent example, and here.) I don't just write about it, I seek it. I crave it. A longing to find beauty and connection. To find stimulation. To feel awe. To feel.

To feel.

What does it mean to feel?

Hide armor is made from the tanned skin of particularly thick-hided beasts, stitched with either multiple overlapping layers of crude leather or exterior pieces of leather stuffed with padding or fur.⁵

Recently I was asked to provide an introduction to myself for a new team at work. A part of what I offered, descriptors not part of the biographical details, was:

Idealistic

Cynical

Unintentionally aloof

Available

Unintentionally aloof.

I'm happy with my own company, and I've never been much for small talk. I often struggle to make conversation. Lately it's been bothering me, not so much because I worry about awkwardness and lack of interaction with others, but because my internal dialogue seems to be similarly lacking. I not only struggle for things to say to others, but to myself. My thoughts are quieter, and I'm not sure if that is a sign of serenity and contentment or of boredom and empty-headedness. Perhaps I've become completely withdrawn and vacant.

You understood that this intensity wasn’t going to last.²

Perhaps my hide has grown too thick, if I can't even tell when I'm bleeding.

I don't want to be aloof from the experience of life.

Some words from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows:

Etterath

n. the feeling of emptiness after a long and arduous process is finally complete—having finished school, recovered from surgery, or gone home at the end of your wedding—which leaves you relieved that it’s over but missing the stress that organized your life into a mission.

Norwegian etter, after + råtne, decay. Pronounced “et-er-rath.”

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Yu Yi

The Longing To Feel Things Intensely Again

The first note is always the loudest. The conductor snaps their baton, the strings slash their bows, and the symphony thunders to life before settling down into a reverberating hum.

So it is with every new experience. How quickly each feeling starts to fade as you recalibrate your expectations. Maybe that’s why your childhood could feel so intense, because you were steadily burning your way through a roster of firsts. The more you repeat an experience, the less you feel its impact, almost as if your brain is gradually tuning out the world.

But sometimes you reach a point when you can’t feel anything at all, just a ringing in your ears—until like Beethoven, you find yourself pounding the keys of your life, trying to make the ground thunder below your feet. It makes you wish you could look around with fresh eyes, and feel things just as powerfully as you did when you felt them for the first time.

When you were a kid, you could still get excited about things. You felt that pirate’s itch on the last day of school, the morning of your birthday, or the final turn toward your grandparents’ house. You could feel rich from the coins in your pocket or being offered a piece of gum. You remember how big the world used to be, how wandering into the next neighborhood felt like stepping into a foreign country. Adults swept over you like giants. Every rule was a decree, every sentence a life sentence.

Time moved differently then, if it moved at all, arriving in big scholastic chunks, and each arrival felt major. You’d start up the school year like a witness protection program, ready to be assigned new teachers, new skills, a new identity. In the summer, you could make an afternoon last all week long, riding bikes with friends or watching a trickle of water feel its way through the dirt. There were no phones buzzing in your pockets, no schedules, no hormones, no distractions—or maybe it was all distractions. Whatever it was, you tried to keep it going as long as you could, even after the streetlights turned on in the evening and you heard voices in the dark, already calling you home.

The kaleidoscope of your emotions spun wildly throughout the day, all of it intense. You could walk along howling or weeping or grinning like a goon. When you loved someone, you loved them openly and with abandon, squeezing hugs as hard as you could. When you found something funny, you could laugh so hard your diaphragm ached, your cheeks wet with tears, your temples throbbing. You could plunge into a book and come out gasping, stumble out of a movie looking at faces and colors differently, listen to a song on loop for weeks and feel it grab you by the throat every time. And you knew how to play, knew how to make your toys come alive in front of you, how to listen for their weird little voices.

But somehow, even then, a part of you understood that this intensity wasn’t going to last. There were moments late in childhood when you tried going back to play with your old favorite toys again, almost as a guilty pleasure, only to find you couldn’t do it anymore. They looked just the same, as you turned them over in your hands—but suddenly they felt like bits of fabric and molded plastic, with nothing left to say.

You’ll never feel same sense of peace you once felt, drifting off to sleep in the back seat of a car, only to find yourself teleported back into your own bed. You’ll never have friendships that occupy so much of your attention, spending hours together every day for months, which made even the slightest betrayal sting. You’ll never feel the mortifying terror of a middle- school bully or the heartrending agony of an unrequited crush. You should only hope that life never punches you in the gut the way it did then.

Still, every once in a while you catch yourself humming along to some silly pop song that once broke your heart at sixteen, trying to tap back into that feeling again. That was once your entire life. It was only a matter of time before the world took notice and turned down the volume.

The music is still in there somewhere, even if you can’t hear the notes. Besides, there’s some beauty left in echoes—in knowing you have a part to play and playing it well, in concert with those around you. And there are those rare moments when you can let yourself go, close your eyes and let your body move with the orchestra, the way that old trees swing back and forth in a windstorm.

You have to wonder what you’re missing, closing your eyes like that. No matter; keep playing. Play as well as you can, and let some other soul get swept away for a moment or two. Until like Beethoven, you look up from the keys and ask yourself, “Ist es nicht schön?”

“Is it not beautiful?”

Ancient Chinese 余忆 (yú yì), I remember. Compare the Mandarin 玉衣 (yù yī), jade suit. Before their burial, the corpses of Han dynasty royals were clothed in ceremonial garments made of jade—a stone believed to have preservative properties. Even then, thousands of years ago, people were trying to protect themselves from the ravages of time by becoming “jaded.” Pronounced “yoo yee.”

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Lisolia

n. the satisfaction of things worn down by time—broken-in baseball mitts, the shiny snout of a lucky bronze pig, or footprints ground deep into floorboards by generations of kneeling monks.

Italian liso, worn down, threadbare + oliato, oiled. Pronounced “lih-soh-lee-uh.”

The satisfaction of things worn down by time.

Broken-in. Rubbed smooth. Ground deep.

Worn down by time.

With satisfaction.