one of my favorite activities
Monday, June 20, 2005
hunting
a tuesday at 10 to 2
the wind blows papers from the gravitation field of the desk, to the gravitational field of the floor.
I'm sitting in the gravitational field of a torn grey plastic computer chair
thinking about nothing special.
there are 5 white peanut buns up for grabs if anyone is interested.
very white.
there are 6 kinds of drinks - cocoa, green tea, coffee ( but no milk) muscat flavored green tea, earl grey tea, and special black tea spice tea.
there are 44 days left in Japan
there are 11 chocolates for the students who won last week's game (but I had no treats then)there are 125 minutes left in my workday
there is one other teacher in the office right now - Hiraide sensei - a 40ish math teacher - he is sort of an upstanding man, in that way that attracts women - he likes to take photos out the window of our office. There are 2 floors under our office.
There are 2 wisdom teeth in my mouth which will be extracted next week.
There is 1 mount fuji which isn't visible today due to the June haze.
Its weird to count things. to break things up into seperate pieces. Especially time is strange to break up.
I wonder how many millimetres my hair grows in a day - is it even countable?
But I don't think we really count time in such strict pieces - not in our memory - not even as its happening really. I think people are episodic. We see time in something a lot more like phrases or waves. My memory of times are based around certain markers - mostly people and places. and I tend to forget times which didn't have strong markers.But on the other hand, I have always been interested in remembering totally uninteresting times - plain times, repetitive times. I remember very clearly when I was 11 - drying my hands on a royal blue towel in that long bathroom at the Mckinnon's house ( the bathroom with the shower where I first noticed my breasts appearing ) and thinking - ' I will never never forget this moment' I don't know why I was interested in it - but I have several clear memories of specific individual banal moments like that which I specifically remembered.
normal banal memories are really sedimentary blocks of an action repeated hundreds of times over. I already can't remember brushing my teeth last night. I know I did it, but I don't remember where I stood, or walked, how long I did it for, how good a job I did. I want to do a photo project where I take about 50 photos of one person making a face they always make over and over. I guess thats similar in a way. Can you remember a particular smile someone gave you? Only if they are a stranger or something and it was the only time. People you know have a certain ' smile' which is the way they always smile over and over. But its very hard to remember specific smiles.
For me anyway, sedimentary memories form the foundation of our lives, and episodic memories are the decorations. I like the decorations better, in some ways, because they are attractive and, honestly - the more enjoyable things in life. But that foundation is intriguing to me from a philosophical / artistic point of view because in a way the secrets to ourselves seem to be in the parts we are unaware of. I guess you could say as soon as I'm aware something it will change - and of course thats true - but I wouldn't say that spoils the endevour. Just something to take into account.
the wind blows papers from the gravitation field of the desk, to the gravitational field of the floor.
I'm sitting in the gravitational field of a torn grey plastic computer chair
thinking about nothing special.
there are 5 white peanut buns up for grabs if anyone is interested.
very white.
there are 6 kinds of drinks - cocoa, green tea, coffee ( but no milk) muscat flavored green tea, earl grey tea, and special black tea spice tea.
there are 44 days left in Japan
there are 11 chocolates for the students who won last week's game (but I had no treats then)there are 125 minutes left in my workday
there is one other teacher in the office right now - Hiraide sensei - a 40ish math teacher - he is sort of an upstanding man, in that way that attracts women - he likes to take photos out the window of our office. There are 2 floors under our office.
There are 2 wisdom teeth in my mouth which will be extracted next week.
There is 1 mount fuji which isn't visible today due to the June haze.
Its weird to count things. to break things up into seperate pieces. Especially time is strange to break up.
I wonder how many millimetres my hair grows in a day - is it even countable?
But I don't think we really count time in such strict pieces - not in our memory - not even as its happening really. I think people are episodic. We see time in something a lot more like phrases or waves. My memory of times are based around certain markers - mostly people and places. and I tend to forget times which didn't have strong markers.But on the other hand, I have always been interested in remembering totally uninteresting times - plain times, repetitive times. I remember very clearly when I was 11 - drying my hands on a royal blue towel in that long bathroom at the Mckinnon's house ( the bathroom with the shower where I first noticed my breasts appearing ) and thinking - ' I will never never forget this moment' I don't know why I was interested in it - but I have several clear memories of specific individual banal moments like that which I specifically remembered.
normal banal memories are really sedimentary blocks of an action repeated hundreds of times over. I already can't remember brushing my teeth last night. I know I did it, but I don't remember where I stood, or walked, how long I did it for, how good a job I did. I want to do a photo project where I take about 50 photos of one person making a face they always make over and over. I guess thats similar in a way. Can you remember a particular smile someone gave you? Only if they are a stranger or something and it was the only time. People you know have a certain ' smile' which is the way they always smile over and over. But its very hard to remember specific smiles.
For me anyway, sedimentary memories form the foundation of our lives, and episodic memories are the decorations. I like the decorations better, in some ways, because they are attractive and, honestly - the more enjoyable things in life. But that foundation is intriguing to me from a philosophical / artistic point of view because in a way the secrets to ourselves seem to be in the parts we are unaware of. I guess you could say as soon as I'm aware something it will change - and of course thats true - but I wouldn't say that spoils the endevour. Just something to take into account.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
thoughts on stonewall jackson, my stomach, and the concept of 'race'
Hypochondria is a strange thing. I read last night that Stonewall Jackson ( a civil war general or some such ) refused to eat black pepper because he thought it would make his right leg go numb. Was he right? or just batty?
I went to the hospital today to have my blood test early, because my stomach has seemed strange lately and it makes me worry. I really don't want to lose my second ovary or worse. But I can't remember what a normal stomach felt like before, and I don't even know when before was.
The doctor kind of laughed when I said my stomach felt strange and sick if I didn't eat, and bloated if I did. I pointed out that those were the symptoms of ovarian cancer, and he said yes, but everyone feels like that. I would think I was just being paranoid if it wasn't for the fact that I had these exact same mental conversations last year, and concluded I was just being paranoid, and then it turned out I did have ovarian cancer. So. I guess I'm entitled to be a bit paranoid.
Its odd thinking about what normal is. We were friends with this family when I was a kid whose daughter seemed fairly normal, if a bit hyper and bossy. Then she went to the hospital for a routine checkup of some kind and they realized she had a huge hole in her heart, and her body had been operating as if she'd been running all the time. She got a lot calmer after the operation. Things that affect your personality are especially weird. Like I heard about someone once who was always irritable, then when they were told to eat more broccoli they totally chilled out.
I think this can be related back to my thoughts a few days ago about in between things and places in a certain way.
That is, the blur between self and environment, or put another way, just the indefiniteness of self, of what it is to be a human. We think of it as so clear - this is me, that's a tree, this is me, this is air, this is me, that's a frog. But, really, its nothing like that at all. Everything is always blurring together, turning into other things - being is becoming - as some philosopher said ( Sartre? Kierkegaard?) I can't remember - terrible with this B.A. in philosophy and all... and that entails the problem of defining in any solid way what a person is, or what they are not, what's normal, what's abnormal - nothing can ever be clear cut, its always a matter of trends...
but people are obsessed with categorization. I suppose our minds work like that, categorizing allows us to make distinctions and establish patterns. It makes us uneasy if we cannot clearly differentiate between what makes one thing, and what makes another. One interesting place in which that human tendency to categorize arises is in regards to race. Scientists have stated quite clearly, that there are no definite racial characteristics which can be assigned to any given race. That is, that though there are trends within a ' racial' group, thats all they are - tendencies within a group which are by no means definitive. Having been in Japan so long, I've noticed how my perception of Asian people has changed. When I first came, and maybe last year, my very first impression of any Japanese person was their ' Asianess' not that I even thought about it, but that was very clear to me when someone was Asian, and when they weren't. But now, after 3 years of looking at almost all Asian faces every day, I don't really notice it. Japanese people just look like people. Its difficult to explain, but I realize that what makes up ' Asianness' is simply a bunch of similar characteristics - a certain kind of eyes, a certain shape of face - its not really any different than the differences between anyone's faces - its only because ' Asian' faces have certain things in common, and certain things not in common with other people, that we classify them into a big group. But there are no real lines between an 'Asian' and a white person ( for example) not really - There is no strict basis for race. But it seems to drive people crazy when they cannot categorize. And some people out there want to keep the ' bloodlines' ' pure' - it just doesn't make any sense, because there is nothing to establish ' whiteness' or ' asianness' in the first place. Its nothing but trends in facial and physical characteristics. Isn't it? someone please tell me if I am wrong about this.
How about the idea of having 6 toes or fingers ( a la The Chrysilids ) ? Its not wrong to have 6 fingers or toes, its just that most people have only 5, and so that's become the standard 'human' amount. But if people started all developing 6 digits on their hand and feet, would that become standard?
Its weird to think about absolutes and unabsolutes I think. People are always trying to establish solid ground, a basis on which to make judgements about things - but life is a shifting sand of meaning and reality. Even the established analytical truths of science and mathematics are beginning to be challenged by quantum physics ( see the movie 'what the bleep do we know' for an interesting, if bizarrely presented introduction ) I wonder if one day, as of now untouchable mathematical proofs will be showed to be different in different situations.
And back to how to deal with, be in, comprehend a constantly shifting world. An in-between place, neither here nor there. Its something to do with trying not to intellectually categorize, but instead follow currents, trends, possibilities, and hunches I guess. Unsatisfactory in the case of deciding if I am being paranoid or not, because there is no way to know for sure - I guess its just that old fumbling along, keep your ears and eyes open.
I went to the hospital today to have my blood test early, because my stomach has seemed strange lately and it makes me worry. I really don't want to lose my second ovary or worse. But I can't remember what a normal stomach felt like before, and I don't even know when before was.
The doctor kind of laughed when I said my stomach felt strange and sick if I didn't eat, and bloated if I did. I pointed out that those were the symptoms of ovarian cancer, and he said yes, but everyone feels like that. I would think I was just being paranoid if it wasn't for the fact that I had these exact same mental conversations last year, and concluded I was just being paranoid, and then it turned out I did have ovarian cancer. So. I guess I'm entitled to be a bit paranoid.
Its odd thinking about what normal is. We were friends with this family when I was a kid whose daughter seemed fairly normal, if a bit hyper and bossy. Then she went to the hospital for a routine checkup of some kind and they realized she had a huge hole in her heart, and her body had been operating as if she'd been running all the time. She got a lot calmer after the operation. Things that affect your personality are especially weird. Like I heard about someone once who was always irritable, then when they were told to eat more broccoli they totally chilled out.
I think this can be related back to my thoughts a few days ago about in between things and places in a certain way.
That is, the blur between self and environment, or put another way, just the indefiniteness of self, of what it is to be a human. We think of it as so clear - this is me, that's a tree, this is me, this is air, this is me, that's a frog. But, really, its nothing like that at all. Everything is always blurring together, turning into other things - being is becoming - as some philosopher said ( Sartre? Kierkegaard?) I can't remember - terrible with this B.A. in philosophy and all... and that entails the problem of defining in any solid way what a person is, or what they are not, what's normal, what's abnormal - nothing can ever be clear cut, its always a matter of trends...
but people are obsessed with categorization. I suppose our minds work like that, categorizing allows us to make distinctions and establish patterns. It makes us uneasy if we cannot clearly differentiate between what makes one thing, and what makes another. One interesting place in which that human tendency to categorize arises is in regards to race. Scientists have stated quite clearly, that there are no definite racial characteristics which can be assigned to any given race. That is, that though there are trends within a ' racial' group, thats all they are - tendencies within a group which are by no means definitive. Having been in Japan so long, I've noticed how my perception of Asian people has changed. When I first came, and maybe last year, my very first impression of any Japanese person was their ' Asianess' not that I even thought about it, but that was very clear to me when someone was Asian, and when they weren't. But now, after 3 years of looking at almost all Asian faces every day, I don't really notice it. Japanese people just look like people. Its difficult to explain, but I realize that what makes up ' Asianness' is simply a bunch of similar characteristics - a certain kind of eyes, a certain shape of face - its not really any different than the differences between anyone's faces - its only because ' Asian' faces have certain things in common, and certain things not in common with other people, that we classify them into a big group. But there are no real lines between an 'Asian' and a white person ( for example) not really - There is no strict basis for race. But it seems to drive people crazy when they cannot categorize. And some people out there want to keep the ' bloodlines' ' pure' - it just doesn't make any sense, because there is nothing to establish ' whiteness' or ' asianness' in the first place. Its nothing but trends in facial and physical characteristics. Isn't it? someone please tell me if I am wrong about this.
How about the idea of having 6 toes or fingers ( a la The Chrysilids ) ? Its not wrong to have 6 fingers or toes, its just that most people have only 5, and so that's become the standard 'human' amount. But if people started all developing 6 digits on their hand and feet, would that become standard?
Its weird to think about absolutes and unabsolutes I think. People are always trying to establish solid ground, a basis on which to make judgements about things - but life is a shifting sand of meaning and reality. Even the established analytical truths of science and mathematics are beginning to be challenged by quantum physics ( see the movie 'what the bleep do we know' for an interesting, if bizarrely presented introduction ) I wonder if one day, as of now untouchable mathematical proofs will be showed to be different in different situations.
And back to how to deal with, be in, comprehend a constantly shifting world. An in-between place, neither here nor there. Its something to do with trying not to intellectually categorize, but instead follow currents, trends, possibilities, and hunches I guess. Unsatisfactory in the case of deciding if I am being paranoid or not, because there is no way to know for sure - I guess its just that old fumbling along, keep your ears and eyes open.
Monday, June 13, 2005
the view from above vs. the view from inside
How far can you go with things I wonder, how far is the farthest someone can get into anything.
I went swimming last night, and it felt different than it used to. Like I had never really gotten past the foyer of all that swimming can be. I guess I've always been that kind of person, someone who likes to look into doors, but so often gets lured away by the possibility of what's behind some other door. A dabbler, as I was once accused of being. I suppose part of my problem has always been a sense of wanting to visit before making any commitments. There just isn't enough time, there really isn't - to get into everything. Perhaps I have always felt I wanted an overview of things and people, a basis on which to make a decision about what to get into. And maybe I've finally gotten that overview, after trying so many pastimes, travelling to most of the continents, dating a respectable number of different people.
Because these days, I feel sort of differently. I want to push the wall back and back. I want to work at things. I never used to want to do that. Things came easily, and there were so many kinds of things to discover. But lately I feel like I want to push myself, to go far inside things. And I guess I have an idea of which things I want to do that with. It seems like up until now, I've been circling the world in a small jet plane, diving down sometimes, for brief interludes, trying to understand the pattern from above, trying to get how it all fits together, what it means, what there is. And its not that I want to stop exploring, I just feel like I'd like to start dropping from the sky like an arrow, wham, pierce the surface, and zoom, keep going in and in and in, even if I have to start paddling because my momentum dies out, keep going until like some animation I'm suddenly at the cellular level, with the guts of my chosen topic chugging and churning and whizzing, and its a whole massive new universe to explore and get intimate with. To work with instead of just visit.
And you know, I always thought it was just that nothing had pulled me close enough to it, that I hadn't found the right thing. But it wasn't that, I just wasn't ready. I hadn't gotten a handle on the big picture. Which isn't to say I've exactly figured out the meaning of life, but perhaps I know it now - which is an entirely different thing.
I went swimming last night, and it felt different than it used to. Like I had never really gotten past the foyer of all that swimming can be. I guess I've always been that kind of person, someone who likes to look into doors, but so often gets lured away by the possibility of what's behind some other door. A dabbler, as I was once accused of being. I suppose part of my problem has always been a sense of wanting to visit before making any commitments. There just isn't enough time, there really isn't - to get into everything. Perhaps I have always felt I wanted an overview of things and people, a basis on which to make a decision about what to get into. And maybe I've finally gotten that overview, after trying so many pastimes, travelling to most of the continents, dating a respectable number of different people.
Because these days, I feel sort of differently. I want to push the wall back and back. I want to work at things. I never used to want to do that. Things came easily, and there were so many kinds of things to discover. But lately I feel like I want to push myself, to go far inside things. And I guess I have an idea of which things I want to do that with. It seems like up until now, I've been circling the world in a small jet plane, diving down sometimes, for brief interludes, trying to understand the pattern from above, trying to get how it all fits together, what it means, what there is. And its not that I want to stop exploring, I just feel like I'd like to start dropping from the sky like an arrow, wham, pierce the surface, and zoom, keep going in and in and in, even if I have to start paddling because my momentum dies out, keep going until like some animation I'm suddenly at the cellular level, with the guts of my chosen topic chugging and churning and whizzing, and its a whole massive new universe to explore and get intimate with. To work with instead of just visit.
And you know, I always thought it was just that nothing had pulled me close enough to it, that I hadn't found the right thing. But it wasn't that, I just wasn't ready. I hadn't gotten a handle on the big picture. Which isn't to say I've exactly figured out the meaning of life, but perhaps I know it now - which is an entirely different thing.
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