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Talking to myself

The self is an uncharted territory when you get old. I can still remember times when, if I wanted to talk to myself, I didn’t have to use my name to be sure of who was being addressed. It was understood just who was in charge and who had the right of first refusal; there was no need for the I and thou stuff then. I suppose after so many years, things get confused though. It could be that part of my brain is hard of hearing, but I’m beginning to suspect it might be more than that. Nothing serious, I don’t think, but occasionally useful perhaps.

People once wondered if there was a little homunculus sitting behind the eyes steering the legs and stuff: a little person who oversaw body business like a crane operator at a container port. With time and evolutionary pressures though, other duties were assigned to it, including good-natured cajoling of the parts it was maneuvering. And then, as seems the fate of all successful companies, it was taken over by the brain conglomerate and the little homunculus became a mere cog in the machine.

Apparently Paracelsus, the famous Renaissance alchemist, is credited with the first mention of homunculi and how to make them (De Natura Rerum, 1537), but it sounds pretty complicated. I rather doubt I could have made even a passable homunculus when I was a mewling infant; after all, teddy bears came preassembled at the store in those days; there was no need for my mother to teach me how to make one for myself. But even the idea is intriguing, don’t you think? It goes a long way to explaining what’s in there pulling the levers.

It also explains (sort of) why I can laugh at my own unsolicited witticisms, or be amazed at my unbidden, yet clever observations: they’re not mine. When my own voice, unprompted, makes me swear at some unyielding fool who won’t let me cut into his lane in traffic, I suppose I have little reason to feel guilty; and the middle finger he uses to threaten me if I proceed, may not be in his control either. Maybe, unbeknownst to us, we have all been infected with homunculi (or, pretending an unwarranted affectation with the spirit of the times, it usually prompts me to use the non-gendered ‘THEYmunculi’). But, I fear I (or they) am/are digressing: we are merely speculating, we are only suspicious…

Now at this point perhaps I should be clear: I neither hear voices, nor do they instruct, or even in the case of clever observations, control me when they arrive. The words, and indeed the thoughts, just bubble out from somewhere using my ordinary talking voice -no doubt a clever evolutionary exaptation: using whatever materials are at hand (sorry, at tongue), for different purposes than originally intended. At any rate, they only surprise me –amuse me; I am not frightened by them, even though I have not given them permission to use my tongue, let alone my lips as I have to the purpose-built swear words that occasionally stumble over my teeth.

So, where do these thoughts come from -or, more importantly perhaps, why? Are they simply words that were held captive within rogue plaques somewhere on my teeth and liberated by too vigorous flossing? Or were a few of those thoughts trapped behind my aging neurotangles which somehow managed to wiggle free when I exercised?

I’m not even sure whether I have to be alone when there is an escape. True, I notice them more when I’m by myself, but of course I’ve had a lot of practice with that over the years. Still, on occasion, unintended words sometimes arrive at my mouth like (blush) burps when I engage in social intercourse. People usually manage to laugh them off as the neologisms of a neurologically challenged elder who couldn’t for the life of him remember the appropriate contextually acceptable expression in time to finish his sentence, or as the extemporaneous ramblings of a someone unduly enamoured with non sequiturs.

But I’m not actually referring to those gaffes, however embarrassing they may be at the time. No, it’s the thought that arrives unannounced at the inner door to my mouth and manages to slip out when I’m looking the other way; it’s the word that surfaces suddenly like a seal I didn’t notice staring at me from the water. It’s the unexpected idea that quietly announces itself, like the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle I notice lying on the floor under the table: the gift.

I hesitate to admit these things at my age though, for fear of being enveloped in the shadow of the Home: you know, the place where they feed you, but lock the doors in case you wander off. Or medicate you to stifle any inner conversation with your theymunculus. Quite frankly, after knowing it for all these years, I would feel lonely without it. I never know what it will come up with next, or where it might take me on my Life’s journey.

And yes, I realize I’m just fantasizing that there’s someone in there who doesn’t even pretend to understand me the way most of my friends say they do; someone who thinks outside (or is it inside) the box and feeds me interesting ideas. I know on some level that I am likely the only one living in there, but all the same, it’s nice to imagine there’s someone inside with a sense of humour that I, for one, appreciate: the little homunculus (sorry, sometimes I get a little tired of the theymunculus thing) watching the world I walk through and from time to time, telling me it sees things a little differently than me.

Maybe most of us have one of them inside, but hesitate to act on their messages -or at least decide not to verbalize them to anybody. Fine, I accept my idiosyncrasy -okay, make that plural- but after all these years, I’m beginning to understand that he (sorry… they) make me who I am, warts, curls, homunculi and all, and I wouldn’t change it for the world… Actually, I’m not sure if they told me to say that.

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