Do you ever get those moments when everything in your mind is a mess, a tangle, but from that crazy boundless (and perhaps exactly because it lacks boundaries, organization, between thoughts) something elusive is on the edge of your mental grasp? Something, something profound, something you have never illuminated in your mind or concluded before but which will change you and you can feel the weight of its significance like a shadow of something to come. They pass so quickly.
The sky is so purest blue—the wondering, illogical, “wishy washy” side wonders: what makes that color so moving, so deep; if we lived in a world where the sky was green, would we feel the same? How does the idea of blue, and a blue sky, differ in people’s minds? Do people picture the same shade of blue when picturing a perfect sky? –the logical, scientific part says: that’s ridiculous, the properties of light and the water moisture in our atmosphere refract light so what we see is blue, it is clear, it is scientific, there is no mystery in the spaces left between wavelength and frequency.
Can science wonder like an artsy-humanitarian-non-scientist-rational whatever wonders? Are they dichotomous? Why does hard science and literature seem so dichotomous?
At least one thing I’ve grasped (which is sadly, one out of many I have not) in cognitive psychology is that brains do differ, there is a meeting plane between physiology and psychology. Thoughts change our physiology, like how people who fall under approach in the Approach/Withdrawal spectrum show more activity in the left anterior frontal lobes. Our conscious minds, existent on a different level than our walking feet, are yet governed by concrete differences in physiology. Doesn’t that seem sacrosanct?
Smiling makes you happier.
Everything we experience is socially constructed. The blue you dream of is a construction. I’ve thought before how each person contains within them a universe. We can go tell the quantum physicists that they don’t need to search for multiple universes, every person is one.
(But! The scientific side speaks up—that’s different. That is an emotional conclusion, whereas quantum mechanics and theoretical physics postulate multiple universes because of the way space-time behaves, involving things like vanishing gravity particles and mathematical equations. Keep your amorphous feeling worlds out of the realm of logic and science!)
Except, if they really are as different, as necessarily pulled apart, as they increasingly seem to be to my confused mind, why do we search for unity? Unifying M-theory, globalization—across all spectrums (this statement which is in itself a product of this mindset)—it’s Occam’s razor and parsimony, it’s what we strive for and a world where two fundamentally incompatible ways to approach thinking just seems wrong. Or missing something.
Margins dump to think about:
- how much of true cost is deliberately masked and how much is simply due to “can’t get perfect info to everyone?”
- read some Marx
- funny how “utilitarian” means something completely opposite to what economic “utility” stands for; like how birds and sunsets are not utilitarian but give utility. English language confusion across disciplines. Maybe economists and geographers should just never talk
- morality is system dependent
- “mutual coercion”
- how quickly can institutions change? how much do they change because of conscious desire? how much can they only be changed by subconscious influence?
- wish I could live more than one life...but is that the product of living this relatively easy one?
- “trade is more important to use than aid” Malawi trade minister
- propagation of uncertainty (and not in a physics sense)
- worldfocus.org
- risk perception is political
- our system of control is politically divided, can never manage an entire ecosystem; given that we can’t change our system so dramatically, what can we do w/in this system?
- “ecology” of uneven development
- “environmental carnage”
- f you control means and conditions of production, necessarily means there is no surplus value? surplus value only gotten by removing labor from owner? capitalism IS surplus value
capitalism is a positive feedback loop, goes faster and faster
capitalism…key characteristic is over-accumulation?
- “experiential cues”
- constructed binaries: nature, society
- ontology
- idea world loop: ideas shape world, which shapes ideas, mental to physical medium change
my brain feels like it is about to explode.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Rat love.
Surgeons are an interesting people. There are those, like my mentor Solomon, who seem to live in calmness. He has the strongest looking hands but every movement they make looks deliberate, graceful, clean. Then you hear about surgeons who are type-A personalities, loud, unconstrained, who shout and scream at residents--partly because within the operating room they are rightfully the authority above all authorities but unfortunately, this can lead to a god-complex and unwillingness to negotiate outside of the OR.
(Maybe Scott Walker was a--never mind. That would be like saying maybe a garden slug built the great wall. In a former life)
Today Solomon was accepted into the neuroscience training program at UW Hospital, which means he'll be a resident for seven years here(!), then be fully licensed and able to practice surgery in the United States as well as Uganda. It's such great news, and he definitely deserves to get it--he'll make a kickass neurosurgeon. All throughout today he kept getting congratulatory phone calls and other residents/researchers on our floor would wander in to say congratulations. This made me very happy. Seeing the generosity, the warmth, the simple acts of goodwill made me think: most people are nice. Imagine that! This'll probably last until pessimism kicks in again in five minutes.
I just thought about this. When I'm suturing a rat, harvesting, or doing some operation, I don't think about the amazing thing that is any relatively advanced organism's body. When I'm reading a textbook, or kind of going off an a tangent thought to a lecture, or even just thinking, it becomes inescapable that life and all the myriad parts that make up life are reason for awe. Complete and utter confounded awe. From membrane protein to diastereomer selectiveness to blood circulation to negative feedback to set points to hypothalamus to visual cortex to action potential to yawning to movement to thought to wonder. Like what the fuck? Every moment we live is a mystery.
However, when it's you and a scalpel and a sedated rat the mindset changes. Suddenly your brain shuts down the metaphysical thinking portion. What's left is more mechanical than anything else. "Have a gotten all of that bit of muscle pulled down so I can anchor the hook in ?" or "cut along that muscle, wow it's like a perfect landmark." It sounds gruesome and sometimes, it is (harvesting the spinal cord, hoooooly crap the surreal disgust when Thomas got to the skull...maybe I shouldn't explain that) but most of the time I find myself completely engrossed. It's fantastic. The body disintegrates into something to be contextually understood and then in a way, conquered, as you are always trying to achieve something without damaging something else.
It's the relating of the two mindsets that is critical. Just like the merging of "do this surgery/immuno/whatever" with the grander picture of "here is a problem, affecting the quality of people's lives, and we must solve it."
...this has been the weirdest spring break ever. It feels like a slinky.
(Maybe Scott Walker was a--never mind. That would be like saying maybe a garden slug built the great wall. In a former life)
Today Solomon was accepted into the neuroscience training program at UW Hospital, which means he'll be a resident for seven years here(!), then be fully licensed and able to practice surgery in the United States as well as Uganda. It's such great news, and he definitely deserves to get it--he'll make a kickass neurosurgeon. All throughout today he kept getting congratulatory phone calls and other residents/researchers on our floor would wander in to say congratulations. This made me very happy. Seeing the generosity, the warmth, the simple acts of goodwill made me think: most people are nice. Imagine that! This'll probably last until pessimism kicks in again in five minutes.
I just thought about this. When I'm suturing a rat, harvesting, or doing some operation, I don't think about the amazing thing that is any relatively advanced organism's body. When I'm reading a textbook, or kind of going off an a tangent thought to a lecture, or even just thinking, it becomes inescapable that life and all the myriad parts that make up life are reason for awe. Complete and utter confounded awe. From membrane protein to diastereomer selectiveness to blood circulation to negative feedback to set points to hypothalamus to visual cortex to action potential to yawning to movement to thought to wonder. Like what the fuck? Every moment we live is a mystery.
However, when it's you and a scalpel and a sedated rat the mindset changes. Suddenly your brain shuts down the metaphysical thinking portion. What's left is more mechanical than anything else. "Have a gotten all of that bit of muscle pulled down so I can anchor the hook in ?" or "cut along that muscle, wow it's like a perfect landmark." It sounds gruesome and sometimes, it is (harvesting the spinal cord, hoooooly crap the surreal disgust when Thomas got to the skull...maybe I shouldn't explain that) but most of the time I find myself completely engrossed. It's fantastic. The body disintegrates into something to be contextually understood and then in a way, conquered, as you are always trying to achieve something without damaging something else.
It's the relating of the two mindsets that is critical. Just like the merging of "do this surgery/immuno/whatever" with the grander picture of "here is a problem, affecting the quality of people's lives, and we must solve it."
...this has been the weirdest spring break ever. It feels like a slinky.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Showaaaaaaaahh
This post brought to you by: I need to shower.
I'm sitting here, still in half of my running clothes, with probably a constant and low buzzing 35% of my brain raggedly chanting, youneedtoshoweryouneedtoshower. It's so annoying and yet I can't muster the activation energy necessary to pass the energy barrier to my clean state. It's really rather gross.
(The mixing of science with day to day speech, see: activation energy, substrate, etc etc, gives me a feeling of simultaneous pleasure and self...ridicule? What's that word that describes the feeling you get when you see an earnest I Only Sleep On Organic Angel Hair Sheets Made With Baby Smiles From Urban Outfitters person? Not exactly contempt. When you know someone is being pretentious. Damn. Now 24% of my remaining 65% of brain processing power is going to be devoted to finding the word and annoyance at not being able to.)
And on the the parenthetical topic of brains/thinking--brain failure! Not even brain failure along the lines of memory fail, or test-taking fail, but brain failure like this: It is so interesting to me that we exist in planes of consciousness that cannot ever truly touch, like alternate universes. For example, in your current state of consciousness you can think about being stressed. You can characterize what stress looks like, emotionally, physiologically, socially. You can say, gosh I was so stressed haha that was crazy, let's not do that again. It's a rational frame of reference. However, when you are IN that stressed state, you simply won't be capable of having thoughts to this specific (rational?) frame of reference. You will be first hand experiencing all those symptoms; but more importantly, your brain/consciousness will be wholly engaged in them. Even if you say, okay, you are stressed, what can you do about it, you haven't stepped out of it.
This holds true of happiness, or sadness, or any other emotion. At any other state of being, we can perceive the others, but when we are in one of them, our consciousness is shifted to a different norm. That's what I'm trying to say.
Then again, perhaps this is a failure simply of me.
MY MEMORY IS THE SHITTIEST THING. If it were to be bartered on the internet, it's worth would probably be a beer bottle cap and half a pencil. I was skyping with Eva, during which we talked about Ms. Schwaegerl and how her class was amazing (ahh, I don't think I could ever forget her though, her chain-smoking, diet-Coke, popcorn-imbibing, sixty-year-old-version-of-a-Who. what a woman). I asked Eva if she'd ever been truly moved or changed by reading a book; she said that the discussions we had in Schwaegerl's class made her think, and especially when we read Heart of Darkness she remembered Schwaegerl's question for everyone: "Are you one of the people in the boat who are asleep or are you awake?" I have no memory of this.
Turns out, she said this in reference to how Heart of Darkness is a story told after the fact (which I'd forgotten), to a boat full of travelers, some of whom fell asleep and some of whom remained awake. Her comment is so encapsulating of what I think about life! Life should be lived awakened, be it to your experiences or those of others, whatever truth you come upon or are imparted with.
And I forgot it. How much more have I forgotten? And can life be trusted to give the same wisdom again, though perhaps in a different way? Or is a path to, call it whatever, enlightenment, once missed never found again? Well, no. I don't agree with that. But perhaps the path would have been more straightforward and didn't require crossing a rickety rope bridge over a canyon at flash flood during a thunderstorm. It may have lead to a completely different place.
The problem with thinking like that is inherently, every point in space/time has infinite paths leading from it to take and choosing one (which is life, choosing) necessarily loses you others. There was always something different you could have done, some potential, some Schroedinger's cat still alive. Therefore, focusing upon the could-have-beens guarantees you, if not depression because the could-have-beens all could-have-been better, then at least stress.
Full circle. WhaBAM.
Hm. Guess it's not studying physics and rambling time. Running today was surreal, being back in my own neighborhood. Noticing changes. Feeling time. I end up always running the same couple of routes, and I intensely dislike retracing, so I had to do Rosa Rd today. Now that's a motherfucker of a hill, because the truly steep part comes after you've already toiled up 2/3rds of the way. That wasn't too bad, JKJKJKJK!!!
It was a beautiful day out. I sat and read for awhile at that one bench by the concrete canoe launch on my walk back from the hospital to the bus stop home. Why do I write like I don't know how to grammar?
Okay. Enough. Fin.
.
I'm sitting here, still in half of my running clothes, with probably a constant and low buzzing 35% of my brain raggedly chanting, youneedtoshoweryouneedtoshower. It's so annoying and yet I can't muster the activation energy necessary to pass the energy barrier to my clean state. It's really rather gross.
(The mixing of science with day to day speech, see: activation energy, substrate, etc etc, gives me a feeling of simultaneous pleasure and self...ridicule? What's that word that describes the feeling you get when you see an earnest I Only Sleep On Organic Angel Hair Sheets Made With Baby Smiles From Urban Outfitters person? Not exactly contempt. When you know someone is being pretentious. Damn. Now 24% of my remaining 65% of brain processing power is going to be devoted to finding the word and annoyance at not being able to.)
And on the the parenthetical topic of brains/thinking--brain failure! Not even brain failure along the lines of memory fail, or test-taking fail, but brain failure like this: It is so interesting to me that we exist in planes of consciousness that cannot ever truly touch, like alternate universes. For example, in your current state of consciousness you can think about being stressed. You can characterize what stress looks like, emotionally, physiologically, socially. You can say, gosh I was so stressed haha that was crazy, let's not do that again. It's a rational frame of reference. However, when you are IN that stressed state, you simply won't be capable of having thoughts to this specific (rational?) frame of reference. You will be first hand experiencing all those symptoms; but more importantly, your brain/consciousness will be wholly engaged in them. Even if you say, okay, you are stressed, what can you do about it, you haven't stepped out of it.
This holds true of happiness, or sadness, or any other emotion. At any other state of being, we can perceive the others, but when we are in one of them, our consciousness is shifted to a different norm. That's what I'm trying to say.
Then again, perhaps this is a failure simply of me.
MY MEMORY IS THE SHITTIEST THING. If it were to be bartered on the internet, it's worth would probably be a beer bottle cap and half a pencil. I was skyping with Eva, during which we talked about Ms. Schwaegerl and how her class was amazing (ahh, I don't think I could ever forget her though, her chain-smoking, diet-Coke, popcorn-imbibing, sixty-year-old-version-of-a-Who. what a woman). I asked Eva if she'd ever been truly moved or changed by reading a book; she said that the discussions we had in Schwaegerl's class made her think, and especially when we read Heart of Darkness she remembered Schwaegerl's question for everyone: "Are you one of the people in the boat who are asleep or are you awake?" I have no memory of this.
Turns out, she said this in reference to how Heart of Darkness is a story told after the fact (which I'd forgotten), to a boat full of travelers, some of whom fell asleep and some of whom remained awake. Her comment is so encapsulating of what I think about life! Life should be lived awakened, be it to your experiences or those of others, whatever truth you come upon or are imparted with.
And I forgot it. How much more have I forgotten? And can life be trusted to give the same wisdom again, though perhaps in a different way? Or is a path to, call it whatever, enlightenment, once missed never found again? Well, no. I don't agree with that. But perhaps the path would have been more straightforward and didn't require crossing a rickety rope bridge over a canyon at flash flood during a thunderstorm. It may have lead to a completely different place.
The problem with thinking like that is inherently, every point in space/time has infinite paths leading from it to take and choosing one (which is life, choosing) necessarily loses you others. There was always something different you could have done, some potential, some Schroedinger's cat still alive. Therefore, focusing upon the could-have-beens guarantees you, if not depression because the could-have-beens all could-have-been better, then at least stress.
Full circle. WhaBAM.
Hm. Guess it's not studying physics and rambling time. Running today was surreal, being back in my own neighborhood. Noticing changes. Feeling time. I end up always running the same couple of routes, and I intensely dislike retracing, so I had to do Rosa Rd today. Now that's a motherfucker of a hill, because the truly steep part comes after you've already toiled up 2/3rds of the way. That wasn't too bad, JKJKJKJK!!!
It was a beautiful day out. I sat and read for awhile at that one bench by the concrete canoe launch on my walk back from the hospital to the bus stop home. Why do I write like I don't know how to grammar?
Okay. Enough. Fin.
.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Conversations with the small one
I love her.
Kelly: I win you lose now you have a big bruise
Connie: In my heart?
Kelly: Yup.
Kelly: My city is called Pleasant Oaks, my island is called Treasure island, my restaurant is called fast food, my empire is called platinum empire, and my farm is called billy bob joe.
Kelly: oooo connie the schol play is on friday and idk if u can come... u dont need to it will probably fail because right mow the people who are in it like the 50000000 animalls flowers and trees crowding on a imaginary stage dont know their lines and the teacher is still adjusting everything etc. and the main caracters like little red mother and the wolf dont know their lines that well either!!!!!!! im just a narrerator who starts off the story,,, then i can go do whatever i want because i am never needed anymore so i should bring a big thick book backstage;
Kelly: so i can read while i hear them get stage fright
In the context of dvorak
Connie: when was world war two again?
Kelly: It started for real in 1915 but before that there was stuff happening
Connie: Wow, are you learning this in class?
Kelly: No mama read it to me as a bedtime story.
I guess it actually started in 1939. I might trust kelly over my memory of kelly saying something though.
Kelly: what are handkerchiefs used for?
me: well in the olden days people used to blow their noses with them
Kelly: yeah then they used them for dabbing away tears
Kelly: When I was little, I thought the Disney was Disnep. And you have to admit the D looks like a G.
Connie: Gisnep?
Kelly: Yep
Kelly: I win you lose now you have a big bruise
Connie: In my heart?
Kelly: Yup.
Kelly: My city is called Pleasant Oaks, my island is called Treasure island, my restaurant is called fast food, my empire is called platinum empire, and my farm is called billy bob joe.
Kelly: oooo connie the schol play is on friday and idk if u can come... u dont need to it will probably fail because right mow the people who are in it like the 50000000 animalls flowers and trees crowding on a imaginary stage dont know their lines and the teacher is still adjusting everything etc. and the main caracters like little red mother and the wolf dont know their lines that well either!!!!!!! im just a narrerator who starts off the story,,, then i can go do whatever i want because i am never needed anymore so i should bring a big thick book backstage;
Kelly: so i can read while i hear them get stage fright
In the context of dvorak
Connie: when was world war two again?
Kelly: It started for real in 1915 but before that there was stuff happening
Connie: Wow, are you learning this in class?
Kelly: No mama read it to me as a bedtime story.
I guess it actually started in 1939. I might trust kelly over my memory of kelly saying something though.
Kelly: what are handkerchiefs used for?
me: well in the olden days people used to blow their noses with them
Kelly: yeah then they used them for dabbing away tears
Kelly: When I was little, I thought the Disney was Disnep. And you have to admit the D looks like a G.
Connie: Gisnep?
Kelly: Yep
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