It's 1234 o clock! Aaaaand.............................now it it's not. That's right, I just typed in ellipses until the minute changed. Better uses of time? I think not.
Change is strange. You can change and in the process of changing, not even notice the differences until you compare with the past. Then it's like you suddenly wake up and realize that you have become different. The feeling is kind of scary actually to know that you, the person you should know the best, can become a stranger to the previous you while you think nothing has changed. It kind of ties into that one quotation by Ranier Maria Rilke (whose name reminds me alternatively of cherries, men with female names, and something german) that goes roughly, just live your way into the answer. Every moment in the past was a now. That's why the change climbs upon you, because in the slice of the past that is the present, you aren't comparing.
Same with being at home. Going through all the stuff I drew, things I wrote, the debris of programs I attended, paper trails of a past. I found the blueprint I drew for a model house that I made in architecture camp, and was amazed by how at one point I somehow made the outlines of a building and then constructed it. Don't know how to do that anymore.
I guess that's why I like to read old things. Notes from friends in high school (the ones with inside jokes that are out of context and due to my shittastic memory, unable to be put into context, are funny and perplexing), emails, even chats. Without technology, such time-capsuling would be difficult so there's a check for technology in my pro/con list. I guess it could be argued that this behavior is not very pro-active or helfpul, since people change and inevitably you and whomever you were communicating with at that time are now completely different people with a different relationship so you run the risk of pessimistic nostalgia. But I think if you can learn something from these time capsules, then it's useful. If nothing else, if it can slide your perception out of this now and into the comparison of a past now, then it has been useful. To see the change you've gathered is useful, and stunning.
It's weird, I feel like now I remember who I am. And that's a good feeling.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Friday, May 13, 2011
Thought (com)post
Thinking ruts—are they okay?
Sweeping makes me think about how I spent a lot of my childhood sweeping. I guess not a lot. That lead up to the thought that how no matter what, no one will ever know what I experienced or how I felt. Who I am today is a product of everything that I experienced, and it’s like we are all a conduit for our past experiences. Experiences once removed. I am thinking about how no one will ever know anyone else perfectly, because we can never fully experience what they did. There are so many aspects to other peoples’ lives—maybe they swept every day too, or they played out in their yard in one particular tree, or ate from a particular bowl. I think it’s really cool how there are a thousand thousand intensely unique experiences for every person, and that’s what makes there be a thousand thousand different people. I guess it’s kind of a lonely thought too. Probably the take home message is to look past a perception and recognize that each person is an I.
Connections—another all-encompassing concept, like equilibrium
Thought-branches
Psychology—it’s killing the appreciation I have for an effect, since I think about the biological cause.
Superorganisms.
SO many things to think about, Every thing your eye perceives has millions of thought-branches: chair—perceptual thoughts, like lines and shapes, and spaces between slats; cognitive thoughts based off of perception—why do chairs always assume this shape, solely due to natural logic? imposed upon mankind? why certain flourishes at the top? what wood is used? what varnish? where did the tree come from?; connections to be made—chairs to physics (support, gravity) to the process of making—who made it? how? assembled where? what skills do you need?; what do chairs stand for? (ha); Marx and commodity fetishism; socially constructed chairs?; dreaming thoughts—who sat there, who will sit here, do chairs carry an imprint of their sitters (not like, an ass print but more along the lines of “what does technology want,” and how Radiolab used that word “want”--what does a chair "want"); specific, utilitarian thoughts—that chair is dirty, our apartment is dirty. That’s just a chair.
Living is the only situation where you experiment as you hypothesize
What if you died a hundred years from when you were born? "Where" would you be?
I wonder if you listen to music as a background to things, like doing work, you aren’t really fully appreciating it. For example, I never am able to hear lyrics. I think it’s because I always play music when I am doing something else and I am not listening to the words at all. I have to actively concentrate on them and not the other task at hand to hear them. Once I know the lyrics (have looked them up and such) then I will be able to recognize them aurally. I wonder if that is increasing my ability to tune things out—like the specific meaning of things. How big of a role does habituation play?
I think it’s really cool how you can bake things. You take like some sugar, some puree, stick it together, and not only are the ingredients physically transformed but it’s like there is some sort of mental transformation too. You get this whole. Parts to pie. That whole process of transformation, it applies in many ways to many things. I’m interested in mental paralleling physical transformation.
Memory is tied to the senses. Smells are powerful enough to knock you into a feeling-memory. How many memories are actually feeling and not just recalling? Sensation of that point in time, not image/visualization/recall of you in that time. can implant false smell memories?
It’s so weird when random but very specific things itch. Like the exact place where your ear meets your head.
Loops. Loops and circles in biology, life. Kind of like the concept of equilibrium as it applies across all fields—loops! Closed circles, circles, efficiency, beauty, things are circular.
The metabolism of cities
Birds chirping and waking up to the sound may be the happiest sound
Sweeping makes me think about how I spent a lot of my childhood sweeping. I guess not a lot. That lead up to the thought that how no matter what, no one will ever know what I experienced or how I felt. Who I am today is a product of everything that I experienced, and it’s like we are all a conduit for our past experiences. Experiences once removed. I am thinking about how no one will ever know anyone else perfectly, because we can never fully experience what they did. There are so many aspects to other peoples’ lives—maybe they swept every day too, or they played out in their yard in one particular tree, or ate from a particular bowl. I think it’s really cool how there are a thousand thousand intensely unique experiences for every person, and that’s what makes there be a thousand thousand different people. I guess it’s kind of a lonely thought too. Probably the take home message is to look past a perception and recognize that each person is an I.
Connections—another all-encompassing concept, like equilibrium
Thought-branches
Psychology—it’s killing the appreciation I have for an effect, since I think about the biological cause.
Superorganisms.
SO many things to think about, Every thing your eye perceives has millions of thought-branches: chair—perceptual thoughts, like lines and shapes, and spaces between slats; cognitive thoughts based off of perception—why do chairs always assume this shape, solely due to natural logic? imposed upon mankind? why certain flourishes at the top? what wood is used? what varnish? where did the tree come from?; connections to be made—chairs to physics (support, gravity) to the process of making—who made it? how? assembled where? what skills do you need?; what do chairs stand for? (ha); Marx and commodity fetishism; socially constructed chairs?; dreaming thoughts—who sat there, who will sit here, do chairs carry an imprint of their sitters (not like, an ass print but more along the lines of “what does technology want,” and how Radiolab used that word “want”--what does a chair "want"); specific, utilitarian thoughts—that chair is dirty, our apartment is dirty. That’s just a chair.
Living is the only situation where you experiment as you hypothesize
What if you died a hundred years from when you were born? "Where" would you be?
I wonder if you listen to music as a background to things, like doing work, you aren’t really fully appreciating it. For example, I never am able to hear lyrics. I think it’s because I always play music when I am doing something else and I am not listening to the words at all. I have to actively concentrate on them and not the other task at hand to hear them. Once I know the lyrics (have looked them up and such) then I will be able to recognize them aurally. I wonder if that is increasing my ability to tune things out—like the specific meaning of things. How big of a role does habituation play?
I think it’s really cool how you can bake things. You take like some sugar, some puree, stick it together, and not only are the ingredients physically transformed but it’s like there is some sort of mental transformation too. You get this whole. Parts to pie. That whole process of transformation, it applies in many ways to many things. I’m interested in mental paralleling physical transformation.
Memory is tied to the senses. Smells are powerful enough to knock you into a feeling-memory. How many memories are actually feeling and not just recalling? Sensation of that point in time, not image/visualization/recall of you in that time. can implant false smell memories?
It’s so weird when random but very specific things itch. Like the exact place where your ear meets your head.
Loops. Loops and circles in biology, life. Kind of like the concept of equilibrium as it applies across all fields—loops! Closed circles, circles, efficiency, beauty, things are circular.
The metabolism of cities
Birds chirping and waking up to the sound may be the happiest sound
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