I stood outside the doorway to our ger, toothbrush hanging from my mouth. Gazing at the chaotic swarm of stars blanketing the night’s black. Mongolia, land of the clear blue sky, transforms at night; her blue skies fade to reveal the blackness of empty space, punctuated by the glow of distant stars.
Metal Listening Theory: Why Squinting Makes it Better
Squinting your eyes (with a knowing smile) makes metal sound better. Or rather, it makes the experience more enjoyable. For me. This makes sense… Given the law of sensory deprivation (if there isn’t one, there should be): when you see less, you hear more/better. That’s why all those blind people can hear EVERYTHING. Seriously. Anyways, as a result, this allows the beautiful ”flowing metal“ (in the words of some European guy who made a poster for my radio show) to more completely infiltrate your system. Which is Good and Awesome. The smile may be replaced with a frown, but only if it’s really grim, and slightly tongue-in-cheek.
Stranger Studies
3/11
She has a nose-ring impossible nose. Her hair is dirty blonde, fading to brown at the roots and secured by a grey-blue tie at the base of her formidable skull.
Her hand wobbles a spoon back and forth, she leans slightly forward in her seat and takes a bite of cereal, then gets up to obtain a cup of joe, no wait– she opts for tea, first pouring the honey, then walking over to the hot water machine and waiting in line there. She is wearing a low cut white tank-top, covered by a grey hooded sweatshirt. She stirs her tea using a spoon held lightly in two fingers. She sips the tea, blowing first, but still burns her mouth, and silently curses the pain and recoils. Her nose is straight and well defined, sloping down to her raised upper lip– giving her a slight perpetual scowl
Muted Tones
Muted Tones are nice sometimes. They are almost the opposite of the blaring, “I don’t trust you enough to let you find me on your own so I’m going to screech in obnoxious colors — like a TV ad or billboard. Muted colors just sit back like muted people; muted people don’t necessarily have muted thoughts. And muted colors carry a subtlety their more saturated companions rarely allow for. A nice tan or beige, light blue, or even the favorite of all home decorators, the paint-chip celebrity, off-white (maybe a nice eggshell-white?) You want a white that looks white but doesn’t really feel white. You want the cleanliness, but not the oppressive starkness of a sanitary hospital ward. You want elegance, simplicity, and light. Muted light.
Attention
From wikipedia:
Attention is the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one thing while ignoring other things. Examples include listening carefully to what someone is saying while ignoring other conversations in the room (e.g. the cocktail party problem, Cherry, 1953). Attention can also be split, as when a person drives a car, puts on makeup, and talks on a cell phone at the same time. (Never really try this, however.)
Attention is one of the most intensely studied topics within psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Of the many cognitive processes associated with the human mind (decision-making, memory, emotion, etc), attention is considered the most concrete because it is tied so closely to perception. As such, it is a gateway to the rest of cognition.
The most famous definition of attention was provided by one of the first major psychologists, William James:
“Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought…It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others.” (Principles of Psychology, 1890)
Pieces?
Rafalovich 410
3/20/06
Culturally approved. Broken. Inside. Outside. outsider. The thought that somewhere there is a world where everyone is like me, appreciates — relates, understands without reading the latest literature. That normal really is relative, no matter how hard I try to think otherwise. In the end, it is our culture, and society that dictate how we must be and how we should act — What we can or must wear say think do. Don’t go squawking down the street like a chicken — that’s crazy! But then I think of the social obvliviousness, that humans have evolved with. It’d be like a dog not “getting” that it’s supposed to sniff the butt of another dog, or whatever. We create our own norms, our own rules — are there cultures without rules? “difficulty with rule-based behavior”. How is it not a disorder? An inability to deal with the situation. Though I suppose some can’t do math, the rules too convoluted or abstract or whatever……….
Bigger focus
“Neurology offers a biological explanation which distinguishes between the ‘maladjusted’ child and the AD/HD child.” (Rafalovich, 411)
flashback: ms. whiteside
I remember those afternoons in strange detail. A soft knock on the doorframe punctuated the murmur of learningvoices, Ms. whiteside’s dark brown face smiling slightly, but warmly in the doorway. I rose to leave while she quietly asked our teacher if she could borrow me for a little while. We made our way down the dimly lit hallway, lined by pegs and cubbies and construction paper and into her office, hidden away in a corner of the main lobby.
I must have spent hours in that office with Ms. Whiteside — hours that I enjoyed, as she would put me to a task and then silently watch, observing details I could not fathom,. She would give me colored blocks, and ask me to assemble certain shapes, or tell a story about a picture. I was intrigued, and maybe confused at times by the simplicity of the tasks, but I completed them with no less fervor. Ms. Whiteside’s measured gaze never hostile or intimidating… I vaguely remember her checking a timepiece, perhaps recording all the times. She probably had a file. Come to think of it, she must have written everything down… Yes, she was always writing, in pencil in even measured hand on yellow legal paper, it seemed she wrote far more than what could possibly be taken from my simple tasks…
Then there was Dr. A. We would sit in his office playing games — he’d casually ask how everything was going, and I’d quickly dismiss the question without lifting my focus from the game. I’d tell him everything was fine, and we’d finish our game. Sometimes we played Stratego.
I Don’t Remember
And now to cap off a night whose productivity was so low it cannot even be measured, I leave you with some writings I did over break with my Mom and some of her friends.
“I Don’t Remember” 3/20/06
How many times have those words passed from my lips? I don’t remember exactly, surely thousands. My Kimberly reassured me, told me not to worry, that she’d remember for me. The hours she spent copying, transcribing each word — well, most words… leaving out the worst, and the best — each day of those early days, each moment, each throb of the heart as it sputtered to life, the fumes of yesterday still pungent, unburned, waiting to explode in a new direction. I lay on my thin mattress, the knotted boards below pressing up through the foam, my sweetheart’s three latest letters in hand. I’d open one, read it through, drink in every word no matter how it made me hurt, or sigh — wince or blush. Give away emotion under that veneer of everything’s bueno. Todo bien. Each letter holding an entry from her journal. Her place of venting, rushing, bubbling, open and closeness. Her memories open to me — flowing across the thousand miles between us. The thousand miles between today and those days only months, years ago when it all began. “I don’t remember,” I could no longer speak those words. She had given me hers. My own memories now sketches where they had been only white-blackness, a swirling soup of places, words, memes… blended and blurred and fused into a chaotic oblivion.
Stranger Sketches – 3/12 9:19 pm
Alright, I didn’t write a disclaimer for any of my other posts, and I don’t plan to write one now… but let me just say that writing these was HAARRRRRRD! Usually I can just write through my “inner-critic”, but with the person whom I was describing sitting right there in front of me, every second I was reminded of just how inadequate my portrayals were… which was not coooool…
Well, here’s a random one that is at least postable. Some of them just get mean…
He might be my age, maybe a bit younger. He’s sitting with freshman, so it would make sense. He eats his bacon with his hands, tearing off the fat first. His hair is brown, and short. His eyebrows define his face; they look like two dark hairy caterpillars — the kind that give you a nasty rash when you touch them. He is nondescript. His cowlicks make his head look vaguely square-like.
I just read Megan’s study, and it really freed me up, I had been thinking in the wrong place when working on these before… I’ll still post some of my other ones (maybe), and try again tomorrow or later tonight (to write some more)…
Creative Nonfiction Scene – Untitled (Costa Rica)
The wind; my throat choked, try to let it all out; trapped inside myself. The wind on my face feels fine, and the city below blinks up at me. The road is rutted, but we fly — the old Land Rover roaring up the mountain, bed and cabin full. We surge forward, each shift — or is it just some gas, throw us forward a little, in unison. One of my uncles — or is he just their friend, well, he holds a rifle. The old-fashioned kind, like from World War II. I’m told it was his father’s, and he grips it tightly, his eyes twinkling and his face bittersweet. He points the gun up, and shoots into the night sky. I hear nothing but the rumble of passing time. The farmland rolls past, now on both sides as we leave behind what we call our village. We leave behind the humble houses with open kitchens; here no-one lives but the cows and some horses, startled by our approach. My uncle Eduardo, the hustband of my father’s sister, we call him lagarto; that means Crocodile. They say it’s because he looks like one. His face is warm and wrinkled with smiles, his skin has been tanned by the fields and sun and rain and mosquitos. He turns his face to the sky, arms spread wide, and lets out a yell, a whoop, full of all the freedom of the night sky. The pain in his hands, gnarled at only 30 years from working coffee. He yells for his lost daughter, her face gazing up from their photoalbum, flanked by a clipping of her hair. I can’t help but shiver when they show me. He yells for his lost niece, she would have been my sister.