Do you even lift?

How many people can say without hesitation that they emulate a healthy lifestyle by going to the gym and eating right?

I can say that I kind of do! I mean I go to the gym and I try to eat as healthy as I can, I get my protein and all. But when I get those cravings (and girls you can relate here) chocolate is really hard to deny and then the gym becomes a distant friend. It’s so hard to want to go to the gym and work out and be fit when all you get bombarded with are these jacked up juice heads that overpower the machines and the ones that go just for fun and don’t really need to be there just seem to stare and make comments about others! I for one am a fan of the classes I think that they’re fun and I don’t really feel like I’m doing an intense workout when really I am. The classes I find provide a very welcoming and inclusive environment free of those harsh eyes and criticisms (though I think for the most part the fact that people think others are staring at them while they work out is wrong, because in reality no one cares they focus on their own workout).

These gendered stereotypes that bombard us are probably the most evident when we’re at the gym! Which makes it just that much more difficult to want to go. Dworkin pointed out some key things that are quite important and that is that the human body gets constructed in a particular way through the constant repetition and selection of certain images and fitness practices. This leads people to the internalization of these images and practices that makes them eventually think that their body isn’t good enough or that the female form of a body builder can never be as sexy or as beautiful as someone who is on the verge of passing out from being too skinny- but hey she can walk down a runway with style, so who cares right?

There were three people in the fitness industry that I heard speak about health and fitness and they were all quite interesting. One of the women was a competitor in body building competitions and though she didn’t look like Arnold Schwarzenegger she had a decent amount of muscle and still looked like a woman. We get ourselves into the notion that women who compete or who have too much muscle are to be considered manly and not much like a woman and that is the result of these stereotypes we’ve fallen into believing as right. These things happen on a subconscious level that we aren’t even aware of sometimes but the fact that most women don’t feel that they can step foot into a gym until they look a certain way is just ridiculous. 

The two other speakers spoke about being fit and active and incorporating being fit and active almost like play into everyday life. And it provided me with some motivation to want to go to the gym probably more often than I do to begin with. I think what is really important when considering the human body and what it should look like we don’t do ourselves an injustice by thinking that what society tells us is correct. Because though we aren’t always aware of the male and female “ideal” body form that we get bombarded with I think it’s about time that we do.

 

Illusion or Not?

Isn’t that Trippy!?

Illusions. Hard on the eyes and the brain, I for one cannot stand them, it’s worse than playing a game and losing sometimes mainly because I feel like i’m always losing when I look at these things!

I was apart of a taxing and very frustrating activity that made me look at, what felt like a hundred, optical illusions all to try and get this notion of Haptic visuality/Criticism across. I could have done without this chore but none the less it happened.

This notion of haptic criticism comes from a lady named Laura Marks, who describes it as the ability to touch with the eyes, using the eyes as an organ to touch an object rather than to just look at it passively. There is an active element involved, especially when looking at art.

I found the activity on the whole to be extremely challenging and rather irritating that I had to do this, but after a while this thing started to happen with my eyes and instead of looking at the elephant and the four legs it had I saw eight, or maybe more. You know that moment when you’re looking out a window at the trees and passing cars and all of a sudden it becomes a blur and all you see are the water spots and streaks on the window?

Well I swear that is what happened, I started to see beyond what was right in front of me and look almost past what it was on the surface to see what it was underneath! Truly something different, and my eyes have never hurt so much in my life, considering that i’m bombarded by wearing glasses that didn’t help much. I think I find the concept that Marks puts out there about haptic visuality very interesting because it is providing people with a way to look far beyond what they would normally be witness to. I like that, now I feel that when i look at something though i may not stare at something for 5 minutes straight i may just stare long enough to see something stand out that others may not see, and I think that is kind of cool.

Want to play?

Play time, it was always the most sought after part of any child’s day, whether at school or at home. It is interesting of course when you think back to your childhood and consider the games you played, which ones were your favorite and which you didn’t like so much. I for one had a liking to hide and seek, and a lot of the hand clapping ones were always a hit!

Rain or Shine. Play is play and mud is FUN!

 

Reading this article about the different kinds of play (by Flanagan and another by Malaby for those interested) really opened up my eyes to something that i never would have thought about before. There are ways that people play that shape us, like adult play! And no, let’s keep our minds out of the gutter here! It is meant more in the sense of looking at critical play, an environment or activity that has representations and questions about human life. It is the ability to critique the status quo within play and not what goes bump in the bedroom. That would be a tad difficult for 5 year old’s playing hop scotch to wrap their minds around. 

For children in particular play can work to legitimize or facilitate alternative ways of knowing, unaware as they may or may not be, the play space that they work within have a lasting impact whether subconsciously or not in their lives. 

When thinking about play in these kinds of ways it really opens up questions and discussions about the reality of some of the games you played as a child, take for instance ring around the rosie! how many people knew that the song revolved around the bubonic plague? ring around the rosie refers to the ring around the spots on an affected person (the rash would leave a red mark). the pocket full of posies were supposed to ward off the disease and counter act the smell. ashes to ashes is from when they’d burn the bodies. and all fall down referred to all the people who died. Kind of makes you question why you even sang and danced to that song doesn’t it? 

 

It is important, i believe, to remember this: Play provides opportunities to de-naturalize and therefore to undo or redo material semiotic knots or to reconfigure our figurations. Play is very important and extremely critical to our lives; as children at first and later as adults. It is wrong, according to Malaby to assume that all play is fun. In reality it isn’t always the case, there are frustrations and challenges and not every one is a winner. There is tension in play and it creates order and disorder, we learn a lot about the real personality of a person by playing a board game with them. Keep that in mind the next time you play Monopoly. 🙂 

Sense or Senseless

If you could live without one sense what would it be? That’s a lofty question indeed, and when I was asked I can certainly say that I had to think long and hard about what my answer would be.

But in all honesty I don’t think that I have a solid answer. The first thing that came to my mind though was this episode of Oprah (I think it was Oprah) that I watched about a little girl who couldn’t feel anything. She couldn’t feel when someone touched her, or if she was cut or hit, she couldn’t feel if she was hungry or if she even had to pee!!!! Her mom had to lay out this entire plan about when she would eat and she had to always remind her about going to the bathroom at certain times of the day. I remember watching that and thinking OH. MY. WORD!! What would I do if that was me, how would I be able to live?!!

Not to be able to feel pain or pleasure, to have absolutely zero control over your bodily functions because you simply can’t feel them!! That sounds like utter torcher and how she copes is incredible to me. Though I remember her being quite the happy little girl!! She has no worries and no cares! She has no teeth because she was mutilating her tongue and she almost blinded herself by scratching her eyes with her fingernails. This to me seems like it would be the most unfortunate thing to have happen. But she says that she feels normal. This goes to emphasize the point that you only know and understand things as they relate to something else. You understand student because you understand classroom, and the education system. If you didn’t know education than the concept of student wouldn’t make any sense to you.

When I was reading this article about a man who was born blind and then went through surgery to regain his eyesight there was something that was said that struck a chord in my head and it said that he didn’t know where speech came from because he didn’t know what a mouth was or looked like. So it just got me to thinking, if you didn’t know you were missing a sense how would you know that you were being left out of something, or that you were different? You really wouldn’t. And so I still can’t say for certain which sense I would be able to live without. It is one thing to gain a sense after not having one and trying to adjust to it, and depending on when you gain that sense trying to relearn how to live and function (like the man in the article had to do), than it is to have all your senses and then lose one. You think of yourself as so fortunate and lucky and blessed to be able to function in the way that most of us do that if we were to contemplate not having one of our senses it becomes an extremely hard thing to try and think of.

I used to blindly say that if I had to live without a sense I could live without my hearing. And then I would say that I thought long and hard about this and came to the conclusion that I valued my eyesight too much. And I don’t know that I do. There is so much that I see that I don’t want to see and hear that I don’t want to hear, feel what I don’t want to feel, and the same goes with all the other senses that you can think of! But there is good and bad to all senses. There are good aspects to them and there are bad ones, but we can’t simply turn them on and off as we please. So, our senses are things that we just cope with on a daily basis, whether we have them all or not. If I could live without a sense which would it be? The answer: I couldn’t tell you. Unless I lost one or gained an extra I wouldn’t be able to comment or even make a hypothesis on how I would cope or live with or without them. 

I believe my answer will have to be that if ever i lose a sense i will tell you how it goes! 🙂 Until then, it’s all contemplation.

For the Hungry!!

FOOD!!! Oh what a feeling I get when I talk about food! Hungry!!!!

I was watching Chuck’s week off “Mexico” this morning on the Food Network and as I was watching I had the biggest urge to be in Mexico and feel everything he was feeling, smell what he was smelling, taste what he was eating, and experience the culture of Mexico the way he was. Then of course I realized I could just as well go to my boyfriend’s house and watch his mom cook some of her amazing food! Hahaha

Chef Chuck Hughes

When you think of Mexico what comes to mind? Tacos are a good place to start, considering I have food on the brain I’d start with that!! But if you’ve ever been to Mexico, or if you’ve ever met a Mexican, you would know how strong and vibrant a culture they have and how passionate their people are. The same goes for their food.

Huitlacoche

I was watching this show and he went from Puebla to Mexico City and he had all kinds of different food combinations that he ate and helped to prepare. Cactus and odd fruits and veggies, one I recall in particular that was weird to me was huitlacoche which was described as being a cross between corn and a mushroom; needless to say it didn’t look all that pleasing and even though they said it tasted fantastic I still felt a little sick. In Puebla he was judging a Chilli – en – Nogada competition which seemed to me very exciting. All these people and all with a very different way of making the same dish, and they all did it with such passion it looked incredible, and a lot of tasting fun.

YUM! Chili-en-nogada

The vibe that was given off through the people, the music that was playing, the sounds and the smells, there was so much to take in I could only imagine what it would have felt like if I was there. Insane.

When they were cooking it was interesting to listen to the words that they were using to describe what they were doing; the language of chefs I never much paid attention to before. They said things like: infuse, soak up, absorb, strong, sharp, creamy, bitter, sweet, just right, golden brown, fresh, light and airy. The words say a lot about the food and the people, as I found out when I was reading an article shortly after on food and anthropology. It was mentioned that different cultures attribute certain smells and words to very specific feelings and “characteristics”, if you will.

TACOS AL PASTOR!! Mmmmmm.

In the show it was easy to pick out the words that they used that fit with the culture and the people, fresh and sweet, strong and just right. Everything was done to perfection and pride was taken in everything that they did. When Chuck was helping to make the tacos al pastor he was sent sprinting with three or four plates out to a parking lot filled with waiting customers; the rush and the thrill seemed incredible as was his reaction to the whole thing. The kinds of food that people make also, according to what was found in this article, expresses and reflects the mood of the person which I found really interesting. And then it hit me! That’s true!! I mean, think about it! I know from my experience and especially watching my dad cook, when someone isn’t feeling good, or when they’ve had a bad day they’re a little off, and as a result so is their cooking! It didn’t actually hit me until I read the reaction of these people to this woman’s food it was horrible, because of the social frustration she was feeling, and she chose to express that through a specific sauce.

Something else I found really insightful was the way that food was given to mean a certain status or class to some people. Like the hot spiced tea in England and how it wasn’t given to the working class for a very long time, and when it was it was a big deal. An example that was given was this Filipino woman who had just immigrated. She had a colleague come over and the smell that was in her house because of a very Filipino dish made her feel humiliated. Although her English was near perfect and she was completely professional at work the smell and the food itself gave her away as a FOB, as the article stated it. In the show that I watched the food reflected the people exactly the way they were and that was evident by the way that the people enjoyed the food and ate it. You could see the passion it was made with and the appreciation it was eaten with. People could feel the happiness and the culture and they could feel the affluence of life that Mexico exuded.

Christmas Dinner at my house…pretty spot on!
I love my Italian Food!

I for one love food, given my Italian background it is a little hard not to. The smells that are given off when nonna (grandmother) is cooking, or the smell and sounds coming from the kitchen around Christmas time are so amazing it’s hard to not be taken over by it. I felt like I could relate very well to what the article was saying in the sense that, in the case of food, the way we use our senses is key in the way we experience and enjoy the food. If something doesn’t look good or appetizing, if it smells funny and unpleasing I know I for one will be the last one to eat it. The sight, sound, smell and taste of food encapsulate the entire experience that we have when we eat and when we engage with others around a dinner table, or anywhere.

Food is certainly fun. And it should be enjoyed with vigor, life and appreciation, and that was clearly expressed to me through Chuck and his adventure through Mexico.

Did you hear THAT!!??

Sound? What’s sound? According to Dictionary.com Sound is: the sensation produced by stimulation of the organs of hearing by vibrations transmitted through the air or other medium. Interesting.

What do you think of when you hear a church bell, or a siren? What about when you hear the ocean or the inside of a shell? What is the sensation you’re feeling do you like it or not?

Do you consciously think of the noise you’re making at any given minute, what about now while you read? Do you ever wonder what calms you, and I mean what really calms you? What makes you happy, what makes you sad? Well think about it and really think! Why do you attribute certain noises with certain feelings?

I don’t give much thought to sound not as much as I should I gather, but it is a very important sense that gets overlooked way too often. According to Hillel Schwartz people complain endlessly about the noise that envelops our world, it doesn’t allow any room for peace or thought provoking ideas, it’s annoying and irritating and people are always trying to tone down the world, “Shhhhhhhh, be quiet; listen!” but what are they listening to? If you get rid of all that noise that everyone complains of, if you get rid of the one thing that many people attribute to alertness, being alive, an upbeat atmosphere “I WANT TO LIVE THERE!!” kind of “noise”, and then you make room for only silence what happens? Well, people get lost and people get scared. “I’m left with my thoughts, now what do I do?” “Silence is golden” they say (who’s they, anyways?) yet everyone tries to avoid it all the time; people are scared it’s pretty simple to see.

We live in a world that is constantly bombarded by noise and movement, nothing is ever quiet and slow the only way to live in it is to adapt to what is happening around you, and that my friends seems to require the ability to be up all day and all night and consume the world for what it is. If we take New York as an example you can truly see what I mean by that. And Schwartz mentions it in a way also when he talks about the lights that surround us just as much as the noise does. Times Square is FILLED with people, with noise, with light! And even at 2am in the morning it still has the same atmosphere of noise and light. Consume, consume, consume until you can’t anymore, then become depressed and sad and fall into a state of silence and there it is!!! The more and more that people consume the way they have been programmed and manipulated into doing, the more and more they will eventually not be able to function, and silence becomes the only saving grace, yet…people can’t stand that silence. The more you’re left with your thoughts the more likely you are to go crazy, right? Or is that just what everyone silently thinks to themselves? Oh! Be careful there’s that silence again! Dangerous.

Sound is used in so many ways that not everybody really realizes it until it’s maybe too late. There are so many things that sound can provoke, for instance have you ever listened or heard a gamelan? It’s the most fantastic thing (I urge you to enter that in your Google search bar) and it isn’t an annoying or irritating noise, it’s melodic and soothing, depending on what you find soothing obviously! People gather a relationship with the kind of sound that comes from this instrument. Schwartz mentions that towards the ending of his article that the noise around us is more of a relationship we have with it more than it is anything else. We allow it to annoy us or soothe us depending on what we have attributed to that specific sound. We have tailored the sounds around us but I don’t think that we have done it in such a way that is beneficial to us, and that is a problem.

If we simply take the time to stop and listen to the beat of our heart, or perhaps the sound of our breathing, we may find that we attribute more meaning to those sounds (or we should attribute more meaning) than we do to all the other ones that are just harassing our bodies and souls. I think what everyone needs is a good hour of with drawl from all sound to get back to the basic ones.

 

ENOUGH! ENOUGH!
Give me quiet.

A poem; of sorts.

I was given a task, read a bunch of blogs pull a single line out of them, and create a poem. This is what came out of that task and hopefully I did my fellow bloggers a decent justice.

 

Why does the presence of water make people uncomfortable?

they tended to blend together and there was no singular noise or soundtrack to follow.

I enjoyed pulling on it and letting go as it bounced back into the toy

Fidgeting with the limbs, the jointed structure appears capable of contorting and holding its shape at the whim of the user, which led to some amusing poses made by me out of inevitable boredom

I had no idea why but for the next 10 or so minutes i was missing my dad, now more than ever

It made me feel as if I can do something not everyone else can, which to me was fascinating

Maybe I should have tasted it instead of limiting myself?

I went back to that place, seeing led me back to that memory.

Colors of green, beige, white, red, blue, and orange are vibrant, producing a pattern that I find difficult to describe

this sensory experience showed me that many objects are tied with memory and a knowledge taught to us

i noticed that objects have more features than we originally believe they have

For a while I just sat there because I felt that I had learned everything I could from this toy

when up close and personal one can definitely point out the deficiencies it possesses

I unscrewed the cap and so my journey began.

What I am simply trying to say is that everyone and everything has its own journey even a simple object

After sensing the toy I realized nothing is insensible,

The bells are the first thing I noticed because it is what I heard,

Rest assure I still tasted it and it had a bitter taste to it,

How then to define a sense…

In addition it is not an object to look at;

Incredible what a couple of tubes, a block, and a ball can prompt.

I can only bring logic to this finding through the plastic body in which the toy is comprised of.

I also noticed that it makes my skin feel a little warm

I wanted the right words to express what I was feeling

But does black pepper make a sound?

When I first laid eyes upon it, my facial expression went from excitement, to “this is going to suck”.

This can be used to create an attraction for an infant-like attention.

I became aware of the sticky lid that it had, but I proceeded anyways

I realized that we as individuals limit the freedom of our senses!

surprisingly enough it sounded like thunder!

It tasted like black pepper and pine

A great way to think of a puppet is that it creates life and that you can find a friend in it;

memory proceeds through optical means.

it evoked feelings of happiness and comfort

the experience brought me back to a time of innocence

There were quite a few of them in that container.

Seselelame! Feel it.

I read some interesting ethnographies today, I didn’t think that I much liked them either. But it would seem that when people tend to talk about their feelings and experiences in a new way it becomes rather intriguing, at least I find. Geurts, Classen and Howes provided for some interesting (albeit time consuming) reads. I’m not sure how fond I am with reading 25 page articles but let’s just say I get the gist. I think focussing on what I have titled this post as is a good place to start.

Seselelame is the ability to feel through the body as Geurts has pointed out through being informed of that meaning by others. It is really fun to ask why or how especially when you know who you’re asking has no answer to give to you, Geurts asked why do people ignore the feelings they get sometimes when it would, and does, have a significant impact on those people’s lives.

She ran over a rock and had a jolt of lightening rush through her and yet, she ignored it and to the people in the village she was living in, that was the worst thing she could have done. Why? Because that is a sign of a higher power at work around you. How do you know what you are feeling? How do you feel anything at all if you choose to ignore the signs right in front of you? The idea of seselelame is that the things that you are able to feel and experience are only allowed its full extent of experience when you allow your whole body to be able to sense it. The best way to understand feeling and sense is to use more than one mode of reasoning, more than one mode of thought or perspective and more than one mode of experience and sense to be able to come to a whole and complete understanding.

I feel love. Well that’s a nice statement on its own, but how do you know what you’re feeling? Is it something in your gut or your head? How do you know its love and not something else? I think it has everything to do with the way that people choose to believe that they know there is a distinctly specific feeling that indicates love to us that is not like anything we’ve ever known before. We choose to find it and look for it, we choose to feel it in many many ways other than just through our brains, we believe in love through our ability to feel it throughout our body; seselelame.

 

Sniff away!

 

Now moving on to a different train of thought! SMELL! 🙂 Why not!

I wrote previously about sight and how we modern-day thinkers, if you will, put such a great emphasis on sight that we tend to ignore the power and importance of all the other senses that we are able to experience, and as a result we don’t even end up using our over exaggerated sense of sight to its full potentiality! We ignore, forget and are oblivious to some really key things that are staring us directly in the face. Now isn’t that incredible!?

In Classen’s article the old Christian tradition and the emphasis on the olfactory sense that they had was focussed on. It was really interesting to read about how powerful smell really was to the people of that time, God was among them, He breathed life into people so that they could fulfill His wishes and that others would be able to experience God and paradise through just one person alone! The accounts of Teresa of Avila and Lydwine of Schiedam provided some really great examples of what it meant to really smell and experience God. Their scents were so aromatic and so powerful that they stood as testament to the greatness of paradise and what was to come to these people that even in death their bodies were never sweeter smelling or more calming.

The power of smell was intrinsic to the lives of these people, and yet today that power is not as important or prevalent, it comes a far second to all our other senses combined. Like Howes was talking about, there is a drastic decline in the power of smell and the olfactory system that no one is paying attention to or caring about. Why? It would seem that if all we could do was have the ability to see what was happening in front of us then everything would be okay. No one would need smell or sound and we have already begun ignoring the way we feel so why not just have sight?! I like to think that I personally have begun to truly allow myself to give in to my sensorium and feel the things around me in a new way, so if there are still people out there that believe in the ability to give in to their seselelame, and the message that everyone should be reintroduced to the world is spread, then we would have a much happier existence and we would be a lot more open to the things around us and not so closed off and sheltered!

Because quite frankly, people are becoming dull!!

A Sense Workout

Giving your senses a workout makes for some really interesting experiences which you would come to find if you embark on your own sense workout. Using a stairwell to get fit has always been the cheap man’s way of getting some cardio into that man’s daily workout, and I’m sure it is pretty effective too, but not only for exercise. Being able to experience your surroundings in a completely new way can also be done through the use of a simple object, in this case a stairwell.

In the beginning of a 30 minute stretch, of what would consist of walking up and down 98 steps and 5 “platforms” if you will, I initially began by assessing what I would have to do and what I could see. There were leaves, garbage, rotten apples, stains and even a very specific smell that takes about 3 minutes to be able to get used to before it goes away. At the top, everything is bright and airy and I feel quite cold but as I moved down the stairs there is a progressive darkening that occurs. It seems as if I am almost walking down into a “black hole”. The bottom is dank and is illuminated by a dim yellow light whereas every other floor had a large window, though as you moved down it got smaller and smaller. Beneath the stairs at the bottom there is a very dark, black area with a single section of light shining onto the floor, where is it coming from? I stand in the middle of the light and look up, it reminds me of jail. Eeriness takes over and the progression back up the stairs is now underway again and relief to be out of there sets in. Dizziness and a wave of emotions came over me. If you stop and think about the emotions you have you can realize that they are related to what you are or have experienced recently.

After walking up and down a couple of times I felt short of breath and extremely hot as compared to initially. I can feel how my body temperature changes, I can sense it inside. I sat at the top of the stairs and closed my eyes to listen. Every time a door opened or closed there was a big booming noise that echoed through the entire stairwell. When someone talked I could hear them regardless of what floor they were on and when they would rush by me the stairs would vibrate and I felt like I could almost lose balance and fall; I opened my eyes. I could notice so many things after walking up and down multiple times, the star under the railing, the play consisting of 4 scenes written on the wall; I touched the wall, it was cold and rough. It made me think of what people experience when boredom takes over.

I felt so sad and alone walking up and down this ever dark stairwell, it made me uncomfortable and restless, when I stopped to take a breath my legs would shake and after about 15 minutes I just wanted to leave, how depressing 😦 I even decided to compare the other stairwell to the one I was in. It smelt ten times worse and it was darker but managed to have a few more interesting things to see (i.e. the handmade spider web and the hanging cube lanterns) being there made me want to go back to the other stairwell, I had become familiar with that one and this new one was foreign and strange to me now.

When my “workout” was finished I felt the heat of my body rush through me as I sat down and my racing heartbeat (which made everything amplified) finally started to settle and I was glad it was over. It is unique though, to have something be experienced in such a way as that. I tend to over analyze things to begin with, but feeling all my senses come into play: balance, hearing, sight, smell, touch, possibly everything but taste (I’m not that adventurous to pick up a piece of apple off the floor) is really something to talk about!

Having to explain that experience to someone else is difficult because even in the best of situations our words can fail us, our sense of communication is not always on point. My ability to explain something may be decent enough but it is different when someone can’t understand a smell or a “jail-like cell” until they see it for themselves. Having my classmate come with me on my walkabout she often remarked “Oh, I see it now” or “Ya, now I get it”, it is all in the experiencing of it for oneself that is the key, it is not enough to just hear about an experience you have to do it openly and willingly yourself.

How to see in 27 ways

What happens when you close your eyes? Do the things and people around you disappear or just turn into some strange blob of neutrons just floating in the air? I was once asked that question and had no idea how to respond, because how can you really know? I guess 27 ways of seeing kind of gives you 27 different ways to look at those questions, or maybe it doesn’t really, it’s all in how you choose to perceive it, I guess. I’ll hand it to these Buddhists they make a lot of sense though, how you choose to look and see things changes the person you are, the things you believe, the knowledge you attain, in truth, it changes everything about your being.

 What do you see?

       I always wondered what other people are looking at when they talk to someone, if they wish they could telepathically say something just by the look they’re giving out; I bet that even if they aren’t doing it intentionally they are saying something. I was always told it was a respect thing to look someone in the eyes while talking to them, it allowed them to know that you’re fully “there” in the conversation, and you’re listening. I’d like to find one person though that can tell me that they were truly “there” when their parents were yelling at them for leaving nothing in the milk carton. But then Mheme brings up many things that hit home and resonate with me, like when he speaks about having a conversation without even opening your mouth, yes, that I can see. When I saw my grandmother lying in her hospital bed I didn’t have to tell her I loved her, or that I was scared and she didn’t have to say that she was scared or that it was going to be okay, we knew just by looking at each other. Our eyes say a lot about the people we are and the emotions that we are experiencing.

I think that people need to hear something for them to know it’s true in order for it to affect them in any way. But then there’s hearsay, and that’s not allowed in court for lack of evidence so how can people take someone’s word for truth and knowledge if they haven’t had a firsthand encounter or experience with it, where’s the evidence that it is in actuality a fact? Like it was mentioned, if someone didn’t see it happen how can they acknowledge it for truth, they can’t. It gets you thinking, and of all the senses which could I live without (which is a question that I have pondered and struggled with for a long time) I think I’ve come down to an answer; hearing, I could do without my hearing, at least in the way I’ve rationed it in my head.

I can see for myself what’s true I don’t need to necessarily hear it to know, my mother certainly didn’t need to hear me say I was lying for her to know. We give a lot away with just our eyes even when we try hard not to, my eyesight and my vision (though slowly deteriorating) is one of my most valued senses. I can look away from something to not see it, especially if its painful, and I can feel ashamed at someone I love if I’ve seen them do something wrong. I can feel those things because I’ve seen them happen, but if I don’t see it how can I be affected by it? We walk away from the things that hurt and the people who hurt us but we always have this tendency to look back, even when it is something happy, what we really say with our eyes speaks volumes to the people who see them. But what exactly are we seeing, what are we saying?