Someone that I used to know, said that 'The GI is like Limburger cheese, it takes a while to get used to him, but when you do, and you like him, you really like him. He is an acquired taste." I replied that I had wished they had used a different, not quite so stinky type of cheese in their analogy, but that, the in the main, they were probably right. I am an acquired taste, and one that takes a while to acquire.
Limburger cheese has an aging time of between 2 and 3 months, and it, like us humans ages daily, to acquire me probably takes a bit longer, mainly because everyday contact with me is not something that very many people either want, or can stomach. The bacteria that, after three months, gives Limburger cheese its pungent aroma is the same bacteria that is responsible for foot odour, so you can see why I wished the person in the quote above had picked a different type of cheese to use. However, they picked Limburger, and I have to be faithful to the quote, even if the quoted is no longer a fan of Limburger cheese. I am not sure if you can just 'go off' of a certain type of food that you've acquired a taste for or not, an expectant mother I know has said that she had gone off of avocados, but then again her body is a hormonal battlefield, and I figure once she births that baby her love of avocado will return.
I suppose once you go off of Limburger is it probably at least a semi-permanent type of thing. I suspect that even if you, after 6-8 months of no Limburger, could probably only return to it in small doses, and even then it probably isn't ever going to taste quite the same, or quite as good. These are just my random guesses, because proof of this is as thin on the ground as nuns in Chinese whorehouses. I also suspect that unlike cheese or any other type of food, I have a small say so in the matter of if you can return to the cheese you used to love.
And therein, dear readers, lies the rub. I am not Limburger cheese, sadly I am a human being. Not a particularly good example of the species, and a fairly rotten person, but a human nonetheless. With all the attending problems that a human poses and possesses. Those tricky little things that you lot like to call feelings, I still possess. I have, after a fashion, been stripping my feelings away like a man peeling an onion (which is the other main component of a Limburger cheese sandwich), and have tried my best, (which is rarely good enough) to dispossess myself of having those troublesome things called emotions. It has been a struggle, and overall I have probably failed (as I do a lot), but I like to think that I am as emotionless as I can be, and still be human.
The problem is the few emotions that remain, are the survivors. The hard to reach, the hard to root out, types that just won't go gentle into that good night. Even after considerable effort, and a lot of willpower on my part. These emotions are the diehards, the fanatics that just won't admit defeat, and remain in the citadel of their creation defying the siege of my army of the unemotional. These emotions are the ones that generally only come out at night. The ones that like to wreak havoc, like Lawrence of Arabia blowing up a train track to annoy the Turks. These emotions are the ones that make my inner self a battleground, much like the mother ship I know, though for her at least the end is in sight, and there is a pay off at that end. For me, well not so much. There is no end in sight in this daily relentless battle between the powers of emotion, and the armies of the unemotional. They are not compatible, and realize that the success of one depends on the complete eradication of the other.
It makes for some wild times, and it makes me realize that while I have stripped away a lot of feelings from my make up, and it is hard to hurt my feelings, that when you do hurt my feelings two things happen. First, they HURT, badly, like a wound that just won't heal, won't even scab over, it is a constant source of pain, and one of the reasons that it just doesn't pay to be a thinking man. Secondly, once my feelings are hurt they stay hurt. They just don't hurt for a couple of days, or months, but they go on hurting like a bad tooth that you just cannot afford to have pulled. That exposed nerve that just keeps throbbing like a disco ball in your head, that makes a lot of other things seem way less important. When my feelings are hurt, it takes a lot of effort, (and beer) to dull them enough to become functional, if I ever managed to be functional in the first place.
Entire seasons come, go, and come again, and my feelings remain hurt, the memory just refuses to fade, the pain decides that 'hey I think I like it here, and will stick around'. The emotions have won, and they are not generous winners. When they realize that they have found a home, they generally make it an armed camp that would make a Roman proud. Throwing up battlements, and setting traps worthy of the name in order to keep what they have so dearly won. The armies of the unemotional are relentless, but sometimes they are just quite simply over matched. Like a Swedish basketball team against the dream team of '92, the armies of the unemotional are going to get their clocks cleaned, and it is not going to be pretty to watch. The emotions will do anything to stick around, they are a resilient lot, and are not above using any type of weapon that comes to hand. Chemical warfare is one of their favorite toys, but instead of mustard gas, they just merely bring out a well aged Limburger cheese, and the battle is won.
No comments:
Post a Comment