Three Projects Of Differing Natures

There are three ideas which I have been concerning myself with because I feel a strong necessity to either write about them, in essay form, or manifest them cohesively in some other way, creatively or artistically. Where this feeling comes from, or for what desire or outcome, I know not. At least not yet. 

The first concerns mental illness; my own. I would like to write an essay about my own experience/s with mental illness, and how it developed over time. However, time and time again I've attempted to prepare my mind for the endeavor of writing about it, but I am realizing that I'd like to do some real research. Get statistics. History. Other opinions from people who have this mental illness. Needless to say, I feel that my writing would benefit. The subject - the illness - I am coping with is a form of psychosis designated as schizo-affective depressive type. I have a few books to start with at home, and as I'm reading those I'm going to take notes, and at any spark of an idea to tie my essay together I will have pen and paper at hand. I will also include thoughts and notes on a recent all-day course I took via my job at the library. This course was sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health and I received my certificate in Mental Health First Aid, which I think should be a required course every three years, much like CPR courses.

The second idea that has been floating about is my concern for my ancestry and culture. That would be the Philippine Islands; i.e. the Philippines, and the state of Puerto Rico. Because I feel "closer" to the previous, I intend to look into what literature is available from contemporary Filipinos and Filipino-Americans. I wouldn't be surprised if not one reading this knew that this month, October, is Filipino-American Heritage Month. How many Filipino-Americans write fiction each year? What is available? What are they writing about? As for biographies and memoirs, who is writing those? What is it about? What is the emotional geography of this immigrant group - my own - and how does it differ and compare to other immigrant groups today? What are its politics and sensitivities? Why I am so interested in this is because I am concerned about the lack of proper, or at least, understandable heritage here. It is not clear because these are lands with heavily colonized histories. What does the ethnic and cultural heritage look like - and how does this fit in to the United States and furthermore, the global world - today? What can be brought to the table in a way that isn't terribly politicized? 

The third idea is fairy-tales and folklore. I'm just going to dive in, swim in it, and see what comes up. 

I'll keep you posted.

Sincerely,

F

No, it is unnecessary to trip on massive amounts of LSD and Mushrooms to expand your consciousness.

I would urge you not to freak out about how language is meaningless because it's an abstract construction created by man. I would urge you not to let your mind go reeling on the fact that the act of speaking itself is unimportant because it is "just sound"; that we can live without the act of speech. But thanks, because I looked into it, and what I found wasn't disappointing. 

I found this insightful article the other day that helped me understand another profound facet of language - language not just for communication - but for it's ability to change our worldview. There have been some studies that show how language shapes the way people literally see and understand the world. For example, in English, nouns are mostly gender neutral. But what about German and Spanish? For example, the word "key" is denoted as masculine in German. However, in Spanish, "key" is denoted as feminine. In one of the studies, scientists asked a group of German speaking people to describe the word "key" using adjectives. They said: hard, heavy, jagged, metal, serrated, and useful. The group of Spanish speakers described the word "key" as: golden, intricate, little, lovely, shiny, and tiny. As an English speaker, I can see how this would change my view of a key, something I would normally understand as gender neutral. I can't imagine thinking of a key and immediately connecting it to masculinity or femininity. Actually, I would probably think of something that had to do with my own personal experience with keys. This takes the whole argument even further. While the article describes language through a priori knowledge, I might say that language can also be understood through posteriori knowledge. But I'll focus on the former for now. There is an even more interesting excerpt in the article about a group of aboriginal people from Australia who use the words North, South, East, and West, but never right, left, forward, or back. This completely changes how they feel and think about space, it gives them even more depth... both physically and temporally.

Fascinating. Here's a link to the article:

How Does Our Language Shape The Way We Think? by Lera Boroditsky

- F