Blanket

Here’s from Greg Bear’s City at the End of Time:

” …  In most ways, she had lived her short life – perhaps shorter than she was happy to consider – in clueless ignorance, wrapped in the baby blankets of culture and surrounded by the poor theories of fellow travelers – all of that amounting to another kind of protective atmosphere, off which the smaller, plunging impossibilities bounced or burned away before reaching her. Consensus reality.” *

It’s my least favorite of the Great Bear novels I’ve read, a departure from the others, too much Tolkienesque fantasy and too little sci-damn-fi, but that passage jumped out at me. “Wrapped in the baby blankets of culture” … “poor theories of other travelers” … “consensus reality.”

Thing is, for all the noise I make about being an outlier, I still swagger off to greet each new day as wrapped in the baby blanket of my culture as any “Project Runway” fan. The main difference being that I think it makes my butt look big.

Yay me.

* Page 378, first edition