Counting Sheep

Last night Dan and I were counting sheep in groups of twelve because we had just tried to create a list of '90s alternative rock and grunge bands for about twenty minutes, and our heads just kept on their search for band names. So we counted sheep in groups of twelve to get our minds on something else.

Midway through counting, Dan asks: "What kind of sheep do you picture when you count them? Do you see an actual sheep or one of those big fluffy cartoon ones?"

Laughter ensued, but he was serious. It is a really good question.

"I see those fluffy cartoon ones. What about you?"

"I see fluffy cartoon ones too, and they are jumping over a fence as I count them. What do your sheep do?"

"Nothing. They just float."

"Just float across your thoughts from left to right?"

"Yup."

"I see a big green field, and a white fence, and the sheep jump over it!"

"Mine are see-through, almost iridescent, and float."

"I probably got stuck on something I saw in a cartoon."

"You never know."

It may seem trivial, but I guess this is a pretty significant disclosure, on both of our parts, just to illuminate the fact that we may not envision the same thing, but have enough understanding to bridge this with communication. However, Google images shows tons of sheep jumping over fences - and it seems that the majority of the population envisions sheep jumping over a fence because of references in popular culture. The fact that Dan asked me what my sheep look like is especially considerate! Why I don't I envision a field with sheep in technicolor but a transparent outline of a sheep floating without context is something I may never know. There are also studies that show that some people don't envision sheep at all!

Time to sleep.

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

"the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissection table"

Artist unknown, and piece found in - of all places - the spa:

An impressive and bold choice, I think. A external representation of what goes through someone's head while receiving a facial. Something fragmented, happening in a faraway place, riddled with textures of trees, sand, and stone, while something winged passes by. And holes, both deep and shallow holes of thought and memory coming and going.

No kidding.

- F

Old Poem

I don't think
the world
always spins
in the direction
it chooses.
For moonlight
creeps up
and confuses
the shimmer
with the rays
until one's eyes
tire and cross,
and the mind
drifts to sleep.

- F

The Missing Ring

I was having a good day. I came home from work and ate a hot plate of chicken with caramelized onions, which my amazing good cook of a fiancé made for us. Our kitty Grigio was sitting on my lap, jumping on the table, laying on the kitchen floor as usual. We fed her hot chicken, she loved it. I don’t know what Dan and I were talking about, probably about the news and work and of course a little bit of nonsense. Because Dan cooks (I am not a cook at this point), I do the dishes. This particular night I decided to stick my engagement ring in my back pant pocket while I finished cleaning up. So I did. The next thing I did was clean out Grigio’s litter box which was particularly dirty, with my ring back in its proper place, on my finger. Then I vacuumed, then I went to wash my face, and then I looked for my ring (which I usually leave on the inside corner of the bathroom sink) and I couldn’t find it. I looked everywhere in the bathroom. Looked back in the kitchen. Looked back in the pants pocket. I couldn’t find it. I told Dan it was missing. I didn’t think I was going to get scared but then I did. My beautiful ring, my engagement ring, just a symbol of our love.  JUST A SYMBOL.  No, an object symbolizing our love. It's just an... where is it? Dan and I went from room to room, checking every table, every inch of the floor. I’m being punished I thought. Maybe I don’t deserve Dan. Dear St. Anthony, please come around, my ring is lost and it can’t be found. We checked the living room. Looked under tables, couches. We started wondering if Grigio did something to it. Hearts pounding, we started getting really, really nervous. Where could it be? It couldn’t have just disappeared! Tell me the order of events leading up to you realizing you didn’t have it, Dan says. I tell him. We double check my back jeans pocket. Nothing.

I open up my night-stand drawer. There it is, glistening on top of my eye-glasses case. I dropped it in there mindlessly, trying to keep it safe, but forgetting where the safe place was. This thing, this thing worth thousands. Dan yells that I should leave it on from now on. I tell him I can’t the soap will make it slip off. I cry. It’s found. Dan says we have it insured we could have gotten a replacement. NO not for this one, I said, not this one. Dan, I can see now, was scared and sad. My tears start coming down harder. We lay on the bed, Dan holds me tightly. My ring is in its right place, all is well with the world.

Never has there ever been an object so dear to me. Never will I lose it again.

When does a thing stop being a thing and start meaning something more? Once it's past a certain price point? No... can't be. I've lost jewels before.

With relief,
F

A Peaceful Afternoon

My magical, soft, curious, loving Grigio kitty, sitting next to the fairy garden, on the windowsill.

- F

OKNOTOK

A few days ago I read an article written by Amanda Petrusich from The New Yorker - The Whispered Warnings of Radiohead's "OK Computer" Have Come True. As a long-time fan of Radiohead, I read it, and Petrusich's insight about the album motivated me to listen to it once more, this time digitally remastered with b-sides and renamed OKNOTOK. Upon listening, though deeply moved, I kept my cool for most the opening tracks, but something about the track (I don't know if anyone would even really call it a song) Fitter Happier And More Productive tipped me just a little over the edge and down came the few but powerful tears.

Petrusich writes:

"The disparity between these two things—the idea that everyone has gone on believing that the record is about the rise of machines, when Yorke keeps telling us it’s about how much he hated touring the world in a dumb bus—is fascinating, and at least partially attributable to the record’s fretful instrumentation. (Its lyrics are abstract enough to suit just about any imagined narrative.)"

My own imagined narrative from this album is not so much about a fear of the rising machines, or being trapped, but instead about the mechanization of individuality. Having previously been a floundering, outgoing, free-spirited human being, this album's whispered warning to me was about the strangling pressure to conform. But conformity, for many, in it's distilled form, is necessary for survival. And this is what I had to do, this is why I'm still here. But that is the sad thought, the reality of that thought brought upon by listening to OKNOTOK, that made me cry. Radiohead's robot says:

fitter, happier, more productive

And I am.

While "OK Computer" was not subversive for me in those wild and carefree days (it was soothing art which I could interpret but not feel), it is so much more so now. It is because of the very fact of self-reflection, of self-examination in the 21st century, which is apparent in both the musicality and lyrics. Petrusich writes:

"Radiohead wasn’t a grunge band (if anything, it was in danger of being rolled into Britpop), but its insistence on a kind of brainy largesse—on bringing in unexpected instrumentation, approaching rock from an unapologetically cerebral place—felt almost countercultural."

I will listen to OKNOTOK again, and will probably focus on the second half of it, which is a bit more uplifting. 

I'll just leave this lyric-less rendition of "Let Down" by the pianist Christopher O'Riley right here.

Easy, easy.

The Poets House has left quote inscriptions throughout the zoo, and placed this message from Neruda right at the entryway:

But that humans are animals is easy to forget - yet easy to remember when the wilderness within still knows fear.

"So many things were forbidden—like taking anything seriously..."

The Paris Review published an insightful interview for The Art Of Fiction with Alice Munro in 1994, and recently shared it again. She is one of my favorite writers for many reasons (see my review of Too Much Happiness), though most everyone knows her for the unique and skillful way she crafts stories, each time with a twist, each time unexpected.

In one part of the interview she talks about living in a place, a very particular place, which was excruciatingly suffocating because of its inability to allow, or accept, actual, meaningful conversation. Conversation was kept to niceties. The imposition of this kind of culture was so horrible that Munro deemed the experience unwritable. The rest of the article is fascinating as well. 

The Paris Review, The Art Of Fiction with Alice Munro

The difficulty in attempting earnest, important discussions despite seemingly inflexible mores is vexing, and is something worth some pondering, though it may, ironically, leave us silent. 

Shaking with excitement, nerves, and hope,

- F 

Something New

I'm starting this blog primarily to change my frame of mind from Facebook and other social media posts to something with more depth, and perhaps more honesty, that not everyone might feel obligated to see. I'm hoping to become more intentional in my daily (and nightly) activities - I am never without something to do - by keeping the knowledge that I aim to write about these activities, and other thoughts I may have - without the same discretion as I would normally. I'm very much looking forward to this. I already keep a journal, which is sometimes left forgotten for weeks. Some of my written journal entries I will share here. I promise you this is nothing special. For now, it is merely a way for me to practice a skill that I love; writing.

Sincerely,
F