Six Uninteresting Things I Love

I got tagged by my friend K. to name "Six Uninteresting Things I Love." Not so easy! Naturally things I love are interesting to me, and discerning what might be considered uninteresting in general seems a little tricky. 

Here's my list:

The house I grew up in after my family and I moved to the U.S.

The morning coffee I drink when I'm at home (AND the particular mug I like to use for it, which has on it a snowy Christmas scene with a dusk-blue sky in the background).

Children's art. I'd quibble with characterizing children's art as categorically "uninteresting;" I actually think it's very interesting. But then again, I took a whole course on it in graduate school, so I guess you can't go by me. I think love of children's art might strike some as similar to the fascination of watching a sleeping child: very enjoyable if it involves one's own, but otherwise, no doubt, singularly dull to most folks. I happen to think my son's cats are fabulous, though. :)

Notebooks and journals. Empty ones. Filled ones. Old ones. New ones. Love 'em.

Supplies. School supplies.  Art supplies.  Artisans' tools.  Pictures of artists' supplies. This is Kyoko's reed-making stuff; other examples of images I've enjoyed perusing include those of old medical kits, dancers' pointe shoes, a row of cellos just waiting to be played, writers' desks...that kind of thing.

Storefronts and doorways. This is the French book shop at Rockefeller Center.

(These are K.'s six things. You can find more examples of beloved "uninteresting" things at Simply Natural, Sixpence and a Blue Moon, Mimi Charmante, and Beach House.   Anali has a variation of this up on her blog too - "Six Unimportant Things That Make Me Happy.")

This meme got me thinking about personal taste. What accounts for it? What possible brain mechanisms could there be to cause one individual to like the color turquoise while another prefers chartreuse? 

There's certainly nothing rational about our aesthetic loves. I'd like a biophysical or biochemical explanation for how (and why) they develop. Our appreciation of beautiful things is one facet of human experience that makes me want to thumb my nose a bit at all the rationalist and reductionist explanations medical people bandy about when it comes to the human mind.  Click here for an article entitled "Our Brains Are Not Us" which reflects on this in greater depth. (Hat tip to Daniel Goldberg, author of the Medical Humanities Blog, for the reference.)

If you're reading this, consider yourself tagged to share your own six uninteresting yet beloved items.  :) 

Just in time. There goes my beeper again...