I have been doing a lot this year. I feel like I have not done a good job actually letting myself know how much stuff I've been doing this year. I have learned how to speak ok Japanese. I have learned what a computer is. I have learned basical survival readings. I have started narrowing down my thesis topics, gotten knowledgable about politics and the state of things.
I have learned how to be happy with less. Spencer and I often point out that there may actually come a time where we don't find ourselves wanting things. Right now I don't actually need to buy any more things. I need housing and stuff, but apart from the day to day life, I have books, games, computers and other unnecessary things. Through a mess of factors including understanding more of the political scene, being a little more environmentally aware, and understanding how much of my life has been influenced by American consumerism, I have stumbled on myself striving to start anew. I think I know what I want in a lifestyle, and I think I know what I don't want. The tricky part is removing the later. I don't need many things from my past. They sit around as physical reminders, holding me from time to time, but do not free me.
I am going to miss leaving Japan, but I am very excited for returning to America. I have ideas. I think I can do them. I know I have the ability. I need to royally get my ass in gear where homework and reading is involved, but I think everything will work out.
Another musing is just realizing how amazing any form of income will be. I am worried that I may not find a job right away but even if that is the case, just living on my own somewhere where I can have some peace of mind and my own personal zen hut will be wonderful. Granted, I need to get student loans out of the way. Those will be the hardest thing of all. I hope that maybe by the time I'm 30 I will be rid of them D:
Just the idea that I could potentially have $1000 as my PLAY money is amazing. I fully understand how easy it is for that to disappear with bills and living expenses or houses and cars, but seriously... That's a lot of play money. That is an "Oh. I guess I'll travel. Oh, I guess I get a sick new computer. Oh, I guess I get several hundreds of books. Oh I guess I eat like double the king I was last year. Oh I'll just make it rain cause I can. Oh I'll just pay someone to install kinnect into my house and make my home a living interface."
That's what throws me for a loop. I can just get things if I were to care to.
Even the fact I can be like "eh. don't like living here. To somewhere in Japan, or elsewhere in the world" astounds me. So much power...
I realize I have to get there first, but I'd like to think I have several ok paths infront of me. Bad case scenario, I go and work as starbucks or something. Either way. Will cling to Takemoto and his knowing placement of people.
I am excited to get back to Whitman and start practicing my new life. I think I have done well to make some steps, and I am excited to start not buying things anymore. The list will slowly get whittled away until I can just up and do anything on a whim. That would be the best. Ever.
Showing posts with label Calm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Calm. Show all posts
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Spaces
Yet another research paper, yet another 3am post. I am not enjoying the pattern in these schedules.
I feel like I need to start drawing again. I need to return to my world of creation and shapes. Once, I was nearly to the edge. I was close. I was close enough that I could pear over the precipice and see the downward slope toward the grove of goals. They were right there.
Every now and then I need to remember that I am stretched thin. I am so used, so at ease to be thinking in multiple times, multiple places, and maneuver through the world on the fly. It is how I am. It is me. It is what I do.
But I am tired.
I am really, really tired.
I am in too many places. I am in too many times. I am not here. I am not when. I am not what.
There is no chance for a full revival. Only stim packs and the random chanced upon reminder. A fleeting shimmer. A green leaf amongst a sea of yellow.
Too many traps. Too many dwellings. Too many don't matter. Not enough matter.
Stop. Move. Flow. Settle. Be. Expand, but return home. Travel forth, but hold a spoonful of oil. Drink from the sea and wrap yourself in the lonely, fickle wind. Give it a friend for the moment. Show it softness in order to remember your own softness and grip. Breathe. Find your motion. Find your cycle.
Find your place.
Retract. Center. Find security, find safety. Find a hill to roll down. Find a tree to climb. Let its slow hands reach up and lift you in its concerned skyward embrace.
Make yellow dance against a backdrop of seafoam orbs and lavender oranges.
Touch colors, smell the sights, taste the music.
Remember.
**reboot.
grow.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Pressures
It is 2 am, I have a research paper due in the afternoon, and I am writing on my blag.
Well, cheerio then.
I do not believe that people are as attuned to pressures and weight as they might think they are. On the whole, I would actually say that most people do not actually understand what it means to do something "softly". Lately, I have been reading several books on personality assessment through nonverbal language, microexpressions, nonverbal communication, and linguistic metamessages (also, I highly recommend reading Deborah Tannings works).
Am I suggesting that people do not know how to control their own bodies, and thus do not know what it means to move "softly"? No. I would say that most people are extremely aware of their bodies. From the uncoordinated gamer to the dexterous harp player, I would guess everyone is aware of what their bodies are doing. I would not say, however, that they know why they are moving the way they are, what their flow is, what they are communicating, or to what degree they are participating in any of these actions. People can be beautiful sports players, and refined cooks and still not have an idea as to what "softness", or more specifically, "pressure" is.
Softness in movement is different from softness of physical description. I feel vaguely hypocritical even writing this because I know I have only personally experienced the tip of this ice berg. I do not feel as if I entirely understand enough to communicate about it, but I have to say I know enough that I can feel it, and I can notice it. In the most basic form, softness is something not forceful, hard, ridged, or inflexible. It is tender, accepting, conforming, and unimposing. I want to focus on unimposing for a moment.
unimposing, to me, goes hand in hand with a form of intimate respect. There is an underlying respect to softness. It has its own form to hold, but it is still respectful of the form and pressures that are being placed upon it. A small agreement of identities if you will. It is this relationship that I'm not sure too many people understand, and then are able to act upon. From my own experience (and earlier discussion on a seemingly universal "flow" in movements and activities), here are some examples of underlying respect, and careers I would expect people would have to intimate with this idea in order to survive.
-Dancing
-Drawing
-Slack rope
-Climbing
-Soccer
-Cooking
-Any musical instrument, or faculty
-Any martial arts
-To an extent, writing and story telling
-Architecture
-Making friends
-Keeping your friends
-Keeping your friends healthy
This semester, I have been rubbing a lot of backs. This is not where the thought came from, but it certainly seems to be the most frequent example where I can practice this thought. Touch is a gradient. In order for a touch to be soft, there must be a hardness, a stiffness with which to contrast it with. Otherwise, if you rub someone's back, you will be unable to adapt to the necessary tension points, and your friend will be disappointed. Softness is also a gradient. There is a light softness, and hard softness. It is still accepting, but it doesn't quite bend so easily to the identity of the incoming other. A dance of distances, a dance of pressures.
The reason I feel people do not practice this is because the overwhelming amount of motions I see are heavy. They are weighty, almost as if someone is swinging a heavy rock around on a string. There is fluidity because of the constant motion of the swinging rock, but there is still a heavy cadence. It thuds, it rolls awkwardly down a stairs, it stutters.
Watching someone who moves both softly, and smoothly is something that's near awe inspiring to me. There is an amazing amount of respect actively being shown between both the state of mind, and the body's capabilities, and the nature of the environment it is working it.
Well, cheerio then.
I do not believe that people are as attuned to pressures and weight as they might think they are. On the whole, I would actually say that most people do not actually understand what it means to do something "softly". Lately, I have been reading several books on personality assessment through nonverbal language, microexpressions, nonverbal communication, and linguistic metamessages (also, I highly recommend reading Deborah Tannings works).
Am I suggesting that people do not know how to control their own bodies, and thus do not know what it means to move "softly"? No. I would say that most people are extremely aware of their bodies. From the uncoordinated gamer to the dexterous harp player, I would guess everyone is aware of what their bodies are doing. I would not say, however, that they know why they are moving the way they are, what their flow is, what they are communicating, or to what degree they are participating in any of these actions. People can be beautiful sports players, and refined cooks and still not have an idea as to what "softness", or more specifically, "pressure" is.
Softness in movement is different from softness of physical description. I feel vaguely hypocritical even writing this because I know I have only personally experienced the tip of this ice berg. I do not feel as if I entirely understand enough to communicate about it, but I have to say I know enough that I can feel it, and I can notice it. In the most basic form, softness is something not forceful, hard, ridged, or inflexible. It is tender, accepting, conforming, and unimposing. I want to focus on unimposing for a moment.
unimposing, to me, goes hand in hand with a form of intimate respect. There is an underlying respect to softness. It has its own form to hold, but it is still respectful of the form and pressures that are being placed upon it. A small agreement of identities if you will. It is this relationship that I'm not sure too many people understand, and then are able to act upon. From my own experience (and earlier discussion on a seemingly universal "flow" in movements and activities), here are some examples of underlying respect, and careers I would expect people would have to intimate with this idea in order to survive.
-Dancing
-Drawing
-Slack rope
-Climbing
-Soccer
-Cooking
-Any musical instrument, or faculty
-Any martial arts
-To an extent, writing and story telling
-Architecture
-Making friends
-Keeping your friends
-Keeping your friends healthy
This semester, I have been rubbing a lot of backs. This is not where the thought came from, but it certainly seems to be the most frequent example where I can practice this thought. Touch is a gradient. In order for a touch to be soft, there must be a hardness, a stiffness with which to contrast it with. Otherwise, if you rub someone's back, you will be unable to adapt to the necessary tension points, and your friend will be disappointed. Softness is also a gradient. There is a light softness, and hard softness. It is still accepting, but it doesn't quite bend so easily to the identity of the incoming other. A dance of distances, a dance of pressures.
The reason I feel people do not practice this is because the overwhelming amount of motions I see are heavy. They are weighty, almost as if someone is swinging a heavy rock around on a string. There is fluidity because of the constant motion of the swinging rock, but there is still a heavy cadence. It thuds, it rolls awkwardly down a stairs, it stutters.
Watching someone who moves both softly, and smoothly is something that's near awe inspiring to me. There is an amazing amount of respect actively being shown between both the state of mind, and the body's capabilities, and the nature of the environment it is working it.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Since I'm Here. Recontinued Remember: pt 3
Since I've just been talking with people for what is now five hours already I must resign myself that I'm not going to be doing homework today. I also haven't been writing. Now that I have had a warm up I feel moved to note down a few things.
Over this weekend I began to be come so calm about the way things were that that lack of commotion or problems in it of itself seemed to be problem. When things seem fine I am inclined to look for the problem that I am over looking. It is usually a misinterpretation, something misunderstood or straight out ignored. I was reminded this night that my sister is not the only one I can converse with at a high level of understanding. Granted, I would be hard pressed to say that any one ever will be able to get onto our level of color, shared experiences, and inside connecting jokes of interest and codexes, but at times I feel as if I forget this. I forget that there are other intelligently aware people surrounding me if I take the chance to reach out a little or do the correct prodding.
I am also working on trusting people to be good people more. While it is not as if I consciously or instinctively distrusted people, it was interesting to see that in cases of confusion and uncertainty, I withdraw and worry rather than trust them to be a capable human being that doesn't mean to harm me. They are doing the best they can with the given situation and how they move about it. They are not searching to do wrong, and it can be avoided with simple communication.
Geneva showed me a video of people dancing extraordinarily, and recently I watched a Youtube video on par kour combined with gymnastics and mixed martial arts. Then I went and climbed a tree. I feel as if I've touched on this before but the physical movement of it all is what, heh, moves me. I am beginning to feel more confident as if when one does something well, or becomes pretty good at a thing, there is this rhythm to it that can be translated from almost anything. I feel it when I write Japanese Calligraphy, in climbing, in dancing, in soccer, in TaeKwonDo, in piano, in cooking, and how one moves through a math problem. There is a beat, a movement to it all. A flow. Hopefully in time I well develop a better connection with amazing connectivity between environment and self. It feels so safe and so wonderful.
REMEMBER: Roleplaying
On situations and people doing what they can with what they have reminds me to continue topics I discussed with Tracy last year. I felt as if alot of problems in social relations between people be it groups, relationships, etc. occur from problems in role playing. It is something that I am simply used to doing. Partly being brought up in a way that emphasized not troubling anyone else unless you absolutely must, it became a tool that I have since developed. As I imagine actors must thoroughly research and understand the pressures on their character in order to play the role as authentically as possible, so too must others not underestimate just how much they have to imagine in order to simply make a good guess as to another's thoughts, feelings, possible reaction. When I imagine this process, I literally have to stop moving, close my eyes and focus entirely on how things would be from another's point of view.
This means my general view of them, the history I know and how I feel it would affect my decisions and priorities, what that persons goals might be, social relations, tendencies, stature and how that body would feel like, where its balance is, and what seems to be most important is how I would appear and be interpreted by that person. This means visualizing myself conversing or simply being there. How would I react to myself? How would THEY react to me? How do I even behave? At the end, all I have is a guess. After all of that work, depending on how well I know the person, I have to resign myself to simply have an educated guess to guide my future actions. Perhaps it is I who is the ignorant one and flawed in my ability to understand a basic Cooley Looking Glass Self in operation but it seems to me that most do not go this far. They skip and just get to the guessing without trying as hard as they can to mentally develop a realistic scenario.
Over this weekend I began to be come so calm about the way things were that that lack of commotion or problems in it of itself seemed to be problem. When things seem fine I am inclined to look for the problem that I am over looking. It is usually a misinterpretation, something misunderstood or straight out ignored. I was reminded this night that my sister is not the only one I can converse with at a high level of understanding. Granted, I would be hard pressed to say that any one ever will be able to get onto our level of color, shared experiences, and inside connecting jokes of interest and codexes, but at times I feel as if I forget this. I forget that there are other intelligently aware people surrounding me if I take the chance to reach out a little or do the correct prodding.
I am also working on trusting people to be good people more. While it is not as if I consciously or instinctively distrusted people, it was interesting to see that in cases of confusion and uncertainty, I withdraw and worry rather than trust them to be a capable human being that doesn't mean to harm me. They are doing the best they can with the given situation and how they move about it. They are not searching to do wrong, and it can be avoided with simple communication.
Geneva showed me a video of people dancing extraordinarily, and recently I watched a Youtube video on par kour combined with gymnastics and mixed martial arts. Then I went and climbed a tree. I feel as if I've touched on this before but the physical movement of it all is what, heh, moves me. I am beginning to feel more confident as if when one does something well, or becomes pretty good at a thing, there is this rhythm to it that can be translated from almost anything. I feel it when I write Japanese Calligraphy, in climbing, in dancing, in soccer, in TaeKwonDo, in piano, in cooking, and how one moves through a math problem. There is a beat, a movement to it all. A flow. Hopefully in time I well develop a better connection with amazing connectivity between environment and self. It feels so safe and so wonderful.
REMEMBER: Roleplaying
On situations and people doing what they can with what they have reminds me to continue topics I discussed with Tracy last year. I felt as if alot of problems in social relations between people be it groups, relationships, etc. occur from problems in role playing. It is something that I am simply used to doing. Partly being brought up in a way that emphasized not troubling anyone else unless you absolutely must, it became a tool that I have since developed. As I imagine actors must thoroughly research and understand the pressures on their character in order to play the role as authentically as possible, so too must others not underestimate just how much they have to imagine in order to simply make a good guess as to another's thoughts, feelings, possible reaction. When I imagine this process, I literally have to stop moving, close my eyes and focus entirely on how things would be from another's point of view.
This means my general view of them, the history I know and how I feel it would affect my decisions and priorities, what that persons goals might be, social relations, tendencies, stature and how that body would feel like, where its balance is, and what seems to be most important is how I would appear and be interpreted by that person. This means visualizing myself conversing or simply being there. How would I react to myself? How would THEY react to me? How do I even behave? At the end, all I have is a guess. After all of that work, depending on how well I know the person, I have to resign myself to simply have an educated guess to guide my future actions. Perhaps it is I who is the ignorant one and flawed in my ability to understand a basic Cooley Looking Glass Self in operation but it seems to me that most do not go this far. They skip and just get to the guessing without trying as hard as they can to mentally develop a realistic scenario.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Awaken from Hibernation
It has been far, far too long since I have written anything down here. This follows for anything else that I have meant to keep a semblance of routine updates in. PWS, writing in journals, taking pictures, drawing, etc. It's been so long since I've taken the time to really, personally take a good look at the things around me and gleam anything meaningful from them. For the moment I feel this is because I have been lulled into a legitimate sense of security.
Nothing is wrong here. There are good friends, good work, good professors, good weather and activities, good books, great house/housemates...There is almost nothing missing. Years ago I may have felt a small drive to continue to pull back and consequently review and predict everything for hope of a different interpretation, or even just another perspective. I believe that for the moment, I am just calm. I don't feel like I need to look into everything. If it bothers me enough, or seems important, than yes, surely I'll look into and try to understand a speech pattern or watch how a duck walks, but for the moment. I don't think I really /want/ to find another interpretation.
This is great.
This is where I want to be.
This is where I LIKE being.
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