Butterflies? No, syntax!

"It is astounding how little the ordinary person notices butterflies." (Pg. 129)



Okay, so this may not seem like a deep and brilliant line... at first!!



No, but really. When I first read it, for some reason it struck me that this is true about almost everything... what I mean is that the things you find really fascinating, regardless of what they are, are never very interesting to most other people. Has anyone ever not noticed this? I'm not talking about liking the Red Sox or watching some popular TV show.... I'm talking about something that is not embedded in our culture. Like, for instance, I find people's syntax really intriguing (which has a lot to do with why I manipulate mine so oddly on occasion). Weird, right? And that's exactly my point... you are not that interested in syntax, so you notice very little about it. Nabokov recognized that many people do not notice much about butterflies. It's the same thing, and I found it interesting that Nabokov pointed it out.