By Plisade

I read an article the other day. Twin sisters had committed suicide together. Apparently, they were well-known in a certain circle for their debilitating OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). They would take ten-hour showers to cleanse their skin, as an example of the OCDness. Their condition first became known at a young age when it would take more than an hour just to get their shoes and socks on – the socks couldn’t be wrinkled, the laces had to be tied just so. Et cetera. Ad mortem.

This reminded me of a regular occurrence of my youth, my last memory of it being before my age of 9. This occurrence would happen as I lay in between, temporally, having laid down to sleep and falling asleep, in the twilight betwixt wakefulness and blissful nocturnal coma. I would see, in my mind’s eye, an uninterrupted vision of crinkled grayness, the best visual analogy of that being a vast United States Geographical Survey topographical map of a mountain range of fairly uniform and frequent variations of elevation, complete with shading, but rather than the USGS-topo-white-background, a -grey-. This made me uneasy. Understand, the crinkled grayness made me uneasy. The crinkled grayness *alone and itself* made me uneasy. I would see this, this inescapable vision – for my eyes were already closed, and so rendered unable by any other means to block it out – and lie there ill at ease, unable to sleep. Eventually, however, the grey would noticeably smooth, and peace and sleep befall me.

In time, I knew that the smoothed grayness was inevitable, the crinkles surmountable, for I (must have) learned (through trial and error) a physiological way to hasten its coming along with its desired calm and slumber.

It’s been decades since I’ve had such an experience or even thought of it.

But now, this OCD article has reminded me of it. And my now-experienced mind interprets it thusly. Assuming an understanding of the significance of abstraction in (human) evolution and thought, like the ability to make beautiful burst-on-the-scene and simply elegant cave paintings, and the mind-blowing significance of at least the conscious acknowledgment of that significance, the crinkled grayness is an abstract representation of all things that need to be corrected before a living being can be at ease.

On the bell curve of the acquisition of humans’ crinkled grayness evolutionary trait, OCD would be on the far right, with far too much of it. Much as child molestation would be on the curve of the neoteny trait.

The crinkles are unformed arrowheads to be flaked, sharpened… stones and twigs to be removed from the ground for a better night’s sleep… hide to be scraped and tanned for a well-preserved pelt.

Conversely, the smooth is the landscape more easily cultivated. A friendlier sea to harvest. A peaceful sky to roam beneath. A path more easily walked. A line with only 2 points. A wall with but 4. A Fourier transform that is not merely the best approximation.

The mind deals in abstractions to make computation easier. The sense of vision is the human’s most dominant. The crinkles must be eradicated for survival. And somewhere in there is a good beer buzz on a deck in the southernmost hinterland of metro Nashville, TN