October 31
To someone with a fever, honey tastes bitter. It is not the honey that has changed.
Meditations VI, 57 (freely rendered)
Listening mode
To someone with a fever, honey tastes bitter. It is not the honey that has changed.
On an overfull evening, a favourite song can suddenly get on your nerves. Too many repetitions, too much voice, too much of everything. You switch it off and perhaps wonder how you ever enjoyed listening to it so much.
On another day the familiar pleasure returns. The first judgement wasn't dishonest; it simply belonged to a particular state of mind. You had reached a limit and briefly mistaken it for a property of the song.
With taste, this error is comparatively harmless. It becomes more interesting when, in such a mood, a whole person suddenly seems unbearable to you. Even then, something may genuinely be bothering you. Only the word “always”, which offers itself so convincingly just now, may know more than this evening has to offer.
