Pages

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

quintessence of what?

So I've been asked many many times (sometimes not so nicely) what on earth does quintessence of snerrskinism mean. I usually just dodge the question because it is one of those things that is a cumulation of many emotions, thoughts, realizations associated with one event and its aftermath.

Here is the event. My maiden name is Skene and I have a friend named Melinda Snarr. Actually that's her maiden name but it is central to our story. We had a group for a school dance in high school and we were meeting a couple other couples at Applebee's (I think it was applebees, not sure though). We asked the hostess if our party was there yet and she said, "Are you snerr'n'skin?" We keeled over with supressed laughter. Anyway it became an inside joke and when I went on a study abroad to Cambridge, England, I didn't have email. Mindy decided to sign up for me because she was afraid (rightly) that i'd never sign up myself. With lack of ideas for username, or maybe just a moment of boldness, she used snerrskin as my username, adding quite tactfully that I could change it to whatever I wanted so long as I kept an email address with which to communicate while I was away. I just thought it was so funny that she signed me up and that she used that name that I couldn't in all good conscience change it.

So the reflections that have followed that event at the restaurant are many and most of them not at all deep, but it has often impressed me that people hear what they want, repeat things how they have altered them in their heads, and thus their version of reality imposing upon other people. So life is really just a lot of different realities clashing, bumping, melding, and imposing themselves on other realities. Reality, therefore, is not so simple as saying the word "reality" and expecting it to fit everyone. Reality is what you see, how you process it, how you impose your reality on other people, how they impose theirs upon you, and how you thus process and alter your own. Just a big cycle of illusion.

In twenty words or less: reality is subjective to personal perception therefore life is a quick succession of random perspectives/illusions strung together. was that less than twenty words?

3 comments:

Nicole said...

I have wondered where that name came from and what the story was behind it. Now I know.:) Hope you are doing well!

Dr. LaRisse Skene said...

NOw we KNOW!!! finally

nick

Spencer and Audrey said...

I always wondered! Hope you are feeling better and that all is well in your neck of the woods.