One Apple A Day #647 - words and periphery
"It is this way with all of us concerning language: we believe that we know something about the feelings themselves when we speak of trees, colours, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things – metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities." — Nietzsche
Sitting in silence, my mind was wandering among memories, fragments of conversations, words. There are days where I know what I want to share. I don't have to reflect or dig within in search of ideas. It's already there, right in front of me, perfectly on focus.
Other days I just wander until something captures my attention. It usually happens at the periphery of my attention, where things don't have a well-defined shape. It's more like a movement, something that my senses register, but my mind can't fully recognise.
And this morning that fragment was something about words and names.
A flash from my childhood and my hobbies of giving fantasy names to everything. A fuzzy memory of a dear friend telling me that we should create a new job title, the "name creators". People who go around and give names to things, so they become real.
And finally, that quote from Niche appeared. Or better, I couldn't remember anything about it, not even the author. It was only a thin thread, waving at the very end of my perception. I slowly shift my attention towards that thread until I found all the connections and the quote appears.
And I knew I wanted to share it and write about it. I wanted to write about an experience I had a few weeks ago when I learned the importance of giving a name to emotions. So we can recognise them and take care of them.
I wanted to do all of that, but then the time run out.
And what I'm left with is the feeling that I should explore more often the periphery of my perception.