At home with the muses

by E M Hamilton

It’s a complicated family.
Aren’t they all?
Nine girls would be a handful for any mother.
Mnemosyne does her best, but she cannot be all things everywhere.
Their father has long since left and re-married their jealous step mother does not care for them, so they stay away.
Dad’s a little creepy, anyway.

Polyhymnia, muse of sacred poetry and grammar, is the eldest,
the enforcer of please and thank you,
of fold your hands, and bow your head,
of don’t say ain’t,
of there is and there are.
She is admired but often forgotten.

Poly picks at her sister Erato, muse of love poetry,
“muse of errors, not eros,” she snaps.
“Your shirt is too tight,
your skirt too short.
You stayed out too late.
It’s dangerous. You’re dangerous. We’re in danger.”
Erato rolls her eyes and sneaks
out the second-story window after dark.

Poly’s favorite is Tersichore, muse of dance.
She is the baby of the family,
whose easy smile lures her eldest sister out of her foul mood,
who wears gauzy blouses
who forgets her doctor’s appointments,
but remembers everyone’s birthdays,
who soothes and smiles and deflects Poly’s fury
until she forgets why she was angry,
forgets why the glass on the coffee table was such an offense.

Like Erato, Thalia, too, feels the weight of Poly’s rules,
but she fights back with biting satire.
Her sharp smile is set off by
black hair,
black nail polish,
black dresses,
black boots,
black lipstick,
and she carries her razor-wit in a sheath on her hip.
Poly hears her lectures played back to her in dramas
that leave her sisters in stitches, their sides aching,
but leave Poly lying in the dark,
tears drying in her hair.

Melpomene is Thalia’s twin,
they are rarely apart.
Mel is Thalia’s photonegative-
a bright smile dressed in a riot of colors —
dizzy red jacket,
flower t-shirt,
lime green skinny jeans.
She laughs easily at her sister’s bitter jokes,
when Thalia loses her voice,
Mel spins bloody tales of poetic justice.

Clio, Calliope, and Urania-history, epic, and astronomy-
have marathon study sessions in the library.

Euterpe is a loner, a daydreamer,
singing snatches of songs to herself.
She likes the color purple,
dyes her hair to match her dark nail polish.
She sits on the roof under the shade of a big silver maple just listening,
she comes in only when her baby sister begs,
“play me a song, Eu.
Sing to me;
I can’t sleep.”

Here rise to life again, dead poetry!
Let it, O holy Muses, for I am yours,
And here Calliope, strike a higher key,
Accompanying my song with that sweet air
which made the wretched Magpies feel a blow
that turned all hope of pardon to despair

— Dante, “Purgatorio”, Canto I, lines 7 to 12

*******

Urania, o’er her star-bespangled lyre,
With touch of majesty diffused her soul;
A thousand tones, that in the breast inspire,
Exalted feelings, o er the wires’gan roll—
How at the call of Jove the mist unfurled,
And o’er the swelling vault—the glowing sky,
The new-born stars hung out their lamps on high,
And rolled their mighty orbs to music’s sweetest sound.

—From An Ode To Music by James G. Percival

@DrL – the tricky one on page 1 was trying to discriminate limerence to any extent from *infatuation*. Potential future blog topic??

When one denies or battles with one’s own fantasies (when they do not cause any realistic harms), one is damaging and killing one’s 9 Muses and their teacher, Apollo — all hidden within one’s Unconscious — sources of all aspiring and fruited artistic, musical, crafty, scientific, and talented creations and inventions.

No one would be able to enjoy their favorite songs, music, paintings, plays, novels, poetry, sculptures, architectures, fashionable clothes, planes, 350 km/hour trains… if “crazy” fantasies and “lunatic” imaginations did not exist and develop…

@Sammy,

“I think the “trauma causes limerence” school of thought is incorrect. Trauma can bleed into one’s limerence, just as trauma can bleed into many areas of a person’s emotional life, but it doesn’t actually cause limerence in the first place. “

I agree with you that trauma hangover is not a direct cause of Glimmer/crush, but the subconscious desire for pair-bonding. But there is a period between Initial glimmer/crush and the beginning of limerence. People with traumas unknowingly wished/believed this glimmering LO could ‘heal’ their traumas or meet their unmet needs from the past, thus unknowingly, eagerly dial up the intensity of otherwise peachy honeymoon period. In this sense, a trauma hangover leads a big crash into an obsessive infatuation — limerence.

“People with no clinically significant experience of trauma can still develop limerence). 🙂”

Very true. No one claims that trauma is ONLY cause of limrence, but it is just one of plausible ones. (DrL)

“I saw a high correlation between limerence and infatuation, crush, OCD, addiction, low self-esteem, and insecure attachment”

While neuro-wiring could be inherited and insecurity attachment resulted in inadequate parenting, OCD, addiction, low self-esteem are more than often the consequences of traumas (mild ones included), especially addictions (we don’t see children and mammals naturally suffer any kind of tangible addictions.)

My memory works in very peculiar ways: while having forgotten most of factual events and details, I remember emotions, thus the first moment of Glimmer (LO #1, 4, 7) and my following girlish, intense longing for their unconditionally loving, indulging “parenting”.

Now in hindsight, I know for SURE such an un-crunchable longing is caused by the traumas in my early childhood, which then led to those short or long LEs — NOT glimmer and the crush stage.

I also wish it’s true, as you say, that 50% of limerence is love. It does hurt one’s ego and HEART badly to think/acknowledge limerence is all about “pathological”, helpless altered mind and some of us (like me) even “chose” to stick to an unavailable, dodgy LO for so long …

Exactly. Every limerent is “functioning” in his/her limrence in different ways, possibly vastly. Then how a bunch of standard questions could capture that? And assume/indirectly “guide” what we would/should think of feel about our LOs?

I understand the nature of a scientific enquiry — data, data, and date towards the same phenomenon. but questions, regardless scientific or psychological, always (mis)lead/manipulate people’s thinking in certain ways or towards particular directions…

No more survey for me, especially on emotional life.

Sammy, I thought I’d defend the “second group”. I myself answered that I’m not currently limerent, so I didn’t get the extended version of the survey.
However, as people here have described it (paraphrasing as I can’t be “arsed”, as Brits, maybe Aussies as well, say, to look it up in more detail)…
They were asked to list positive qualities of their LO and then “how do you feel about them?”. Then they were asked to list negative qualities, and then: “how do you feel now, ha ha?” (Haha’s my own)
So to me that sounds a bit oversimplifying and condescending in its view of how limerents function…

Why not try to spin the Apollonian tail 🐲 for a soar?

@Adam.

“I’d say that is the point of the questions. I noticed how defensive I got with the negative trait questions. But was more elated by the positive trait questions. I feel the survey was trying to gauge our bias. She’s not the perfect angel. Or is she? No she’s not. Wait is she?”

I think your brain needs to recognise that your LO does have good traits and she also has bad traits. Your brain needs to accept that “woman with good traits” and “woman with bad traits” is actually one and the same. 🙂

You’re almost limerencing over this woman while answering questions about her. Positive qualities = misty-eyed elation. Negative qualities = an angry defensiveness and desire to defend said woman’s honour. Not that anyone was even questioning said woman’s honour. 🙄😜

We could apply the same psychological insight to yourself. I.e. Adam has good traits and Adam has bad traits. The Adam with good traits and the Adam with bad traits is the same Adam. You don’t need to keep splitting yourself and/or other people into categories of all-good/all-bad. 😉

By the way, I finally got your joke about Frederico being a vampire. Quite some time ago, I said to Frederico that withdrawal symptoms from limerence can make one feel like a member of the walking dead. (Tired, irritable, apathetic, etc. Vampires are “the walking dead” and hence your joke. Ah-ha! Very good. Very clever, my friend. Although I wasn’t thinking about vampires, to be honest. Just to be annoying, I was thinking of … zombies … and hence my slowness in understanding your joke. 😆😁🙂