Beach Wedding DressWednesday, July 29, 2009
Beach Wedding Dress
Beach Wedding Dress
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
ये भ्रम सब ने पाला है
इस झूठ को सच मान डाला है
की दुनिया बुरी है
मै भला हूँ |
ये शब्दों की व्यथा भी देखे
सच और झूठ एक ही पंक्ति में
देखना तो बस नजरिया है
दुनिया बुरी है
मै भला हूँ |
रावण ने सीता हरण किया, अंहकार
राम ने वध किया, महिमा अपरम्पार
हरण या हत्या?
दुनिया बुरी है
मै भला हूँ|
कौरवो का राज, पाप
पांडवो का कपट, साफ़
द्रौपदी पे दांव, या उस दांव का मान?
दुनिया बुरी है
मै भला हूँ|
प्रतिदिन इस जीवन में
भावुकता देती हमारे मन को सींच
तर्क वितर्क तिरस्कार अलंकार
प्रेम घृणा को करते भींच
चल देते राह पे ये कहके,
दुनिया बुरी है,
मै भला हूँ|
न जाने कितनो का ह्रदय तोडे
कितनो का किया अपमान
सोचा नहीं, निशा और किरण का सम्बन्ध
मेघा और वर्षा में अंतर
बस, दुनिया बुरी है
मै भला हूँ|
झूठ ही सच है, और सच भी झूठ
जाने ये हम कब मानेंगे
की, हालात पहलु है, और हम नज़रिया
तब तक, दुनिया बुरी है
मै भला हूँ|
--राजीव रं. की रचना
Monday, July 20, 2009
Gone fishin'
Not really.
I'll be away for a week or so. I do not plan on blogging. The reason why? Being in New York City, surrounded by old friends and close relatives, well, why should I spend any time on a computer? I don't have time right now to write what that might say about my normal life. . .Have a great week, folks.
Photo note: A bit of my garden I've been wanting to photograph for days (but had no batteries). Seems like going to a city at this time of year is crazy.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Language shapes thought, thought shapes language
I've been convinced for years that our thought is affected by what language we speak, and often constricted by it. There has been an argument about this idea for decades in academia; those who contend language shapes thought and those who assert we all think alike. This is an example of why I have sometimes little patience for academia; why does it always have to be an either/or proposition? The answer always seems to be only that a thesis or study must be about proof of one proposition. In this way, I could say that academia shapes our understanding of things, even if we're not academics; we see reality as a series of yes/no ideas. If you believe language shapes thought, one can't also believe that we all think alike, too.
The process of thinking in its most abstract sense is universal, but intuitively, I've always felt that language does shape the way we see and think about the world. I'm pleased to see new studies that prove this to be so. This week's Newsweek has a short, but very good article on the subject, and here is a link to a more in-depth article.
As a practitioner of Zen Buddhism, it has always seemed plainly obvious that language shapes ones' understanding of the world. The English language does get in the way of expressing many Buddhist concepts. Our language is inherently concrete as opposed to Chinese, where Zen first flourished. While Americans struggle with concepts that involve the oneness of all things and of time being non-linear, in Chinese these concepts are already built into the language. For instance, the characters for "thought" itself are many, and none of them are thought alone. The most-used character for thought is a combination of the characters for heart and mind. While we tend to intellectualize, try to think without including what's in our feelings, in Chinese that's nearly impossible right from the get-go, for these concepts are inextricably bound together. How could that not affect the way one thinks?
Another Chinese character for thought is one that implies thinking about the past. One does not say "I'm thinking about a bowl that I once had", but simply "I'm thinking about a bowl", and the listener, hearing the different word for thought, simply gets it without all the extraneous words. Speaking of bowls, it's interesting to me that we say "S/he broke the bowl" when a person accidentally breaks something by banging into it, but in Chinese and Japanese one would say something akin to "the bowl broke itself." Studies show that English speakers think back on these events and attach blame. Asians look back on the same events and think of the broken bowl, tending to forget "who" broke it.
I had mentioned just yesterday that I had a problem with attaching gender to objects, such as calling a boat "she". One person said that they always did, and that made sense, for their native language is Russian, where even verbs take on gender. Italian speakers think of keys, for instance, as feminine and pretty, and French speakers think of keys are masculine and strong. I think "key", and I wonder what key to think of. Gendered keys? Not in my mind.
For a good part of my childhood, my closest friends were the neighbor's children, who spoke English, Spanish, and some Portugese. I always wondered what language they thought in, and asked about it many times. Remembering this, I can see that language has always fascinated me, as has the process of thought. I had fantasies of a science fiction interface between brain and computer, where ones' thoughts could be read perfectly and projected onto a screen or made instantly into words or music. I used to walk home from elementary school conducting imaginary classical compositions in my mind while singing, but I could only play the cello, and not that well. I felt a strong sense of my brain holding all sorts of things that would remain forever only mine, locked away, unused, and never to be heard, all because I lacked the skills to translate them from my own inner dialogues and sound to some finished product that was impossible to produce without too many skill sets.
I also wondered if our thoughts were determined by what we saw. Now, this new study about thought and language shows that our very seeing may also be determined by language. It appears that we can see more color distinctions simply by naming them. In English, most people know only light blue and blue, whereas there are separate words for both of these in Russian. Russian speakers (and now one can say Russian thinkers) can identify these colors faster than Americans. No one has tested artists, but this leads me to think that artists will recognize an even larger array of colors. When I think see or think "blue", there is cornflower blue, azure blue, ultramarine blue, baby blue, royal blue, Prussian blue, and many more (but notice that the word blue never changes, but is only modified).
This is a rich topic. Can you name something that you know your own thinking about may be affected by your language? If you have a second language, or studied one, do you think it has added to your understanding of the world? I'd love to hear your thoughts (no matter how constrained they are by English!)
Photo note: Decadent Fibers yarn.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Learning to communicate
I've been having an interesting two days of olfactory hypersensitivity. This is not a bad kind of hypersensitivity, which I've experienced in the past, where everything suddenly smells terrible, but the opposite. Everything smells glorious. Last night I was intoxicated with smell. I was with a group of people, mostly in silence, and the first clue I had that something was different was that I could smell a dog come into the room before I heard her enter. I felt nearly blinded by my intense sense of smell. My other senses receded, or at least seemed to.
The dog made her rounds, sniffing everyone in the room. What I didn't know was that the dog is blind. When I found out, I was rather was rather stunned with a feeling of synchronicity. Of course, I have my sight, my hearing, my sense of touch, but my sense of smell was so strong that as I could smell myself and my surroundings at the same time so keenly (or seemingly so), it felt as if I was smell, not a self experiencing it. Aware of scent as sight, the dog served to illustrate that one can indeed see without seeing, as we normally think each sense is discreet and fixed.
Everyone I met smelled wonderful. I wanted to touch people. It was exhilarating and a bit surreal. When I spoke and listened, the words seemed strange, as if I should have lost the power of speech and hearing, too.
In the midst of this was something that was so trivial. Earlier, I had stopped into Marshall's to see if they had any great finds in the messy perfume sale section, and there was an open bottle of Armani Prive Eau de Jade that I sampled. I dismissed it out of hand and walked out of the store. A half an hour on the road later, I kept smelling my wrist. It smelled wonderful. And then, hours later, my surreal olfactory experience started.
Of course, I associated this with the Armani, but I also thought I detected a hint of the Chergui I was wearing the day before. Wanting to grasp at the experience, when the store opened this morning at 9:30am, I called to see if they still had the two bottles I saw amongst the mess. No. They had reduced the price of everything on sale at 6:00pm and the salesperson said that they only thing left was some Elizabeth Taylor stuff. I didn't want to believe him, so I called again at 3:00pm. The person asked, "Did you call this morning?" I couldn't lie, and when I said yes to the question I found out that that $175 bottle of perfume sold for ten bucks. Mind you, this perfume, which is essentially just a fairly good cologne, is not worth anything near one hundred and seventy five bucks, but I wanted it, and a bargain like that is a thrill. The lesson, for me, is both that I should not dismiss something out of hand because I have a preconception that's it's "bad" and that I shouldn't pass up a good deal that I can afford. I could always sell it on Ebay, right?
The other lesson is that nothing good comes from grasping. Not that anything untoward happened, but once again, I notice that I'm craving more than feels right, and that is not a good thing.
I'm wearing another unaffordable scent this evening, Chanel Sycomore. I hadn't tried it before. I've had it for a while, but didn't know it until I did my sample inventory a few weeks ago (or was it just last week). Earlier, it smelled heavenly, and I kept spraying more on, for I was loving the opening notes. It is as dry as a block of wood, or so I thought. As the evening has progressed, either my olfactory sensitivity has returned, or my being overheated in the sweater I'm wearing has made the scent blossom. At some point, I thought about scrubbing it off. I've got a sinus headache, but I'm not sure it's from the scent. Instead, I rubbed some lavender lotion onto my arms. That was a nice combination, but it didn't last. I then used some Weleda Skin Food, a thick hand and face cream, which has a strong natural orange scent. Again, it works very nicely with the Sycomore.
I must be craving the citrus of a good cologne (or just some citrus). The dusky and dusty scents I usually like are not fitting the bill right now, although I am enjoying everything. Yesterday, the scent of other people's shampoos seemed nearly thrilling, as did the smell of bogs, wet grass, dirt, even that overly strong Bath and Bodyworks plug-in thingie I've got in my bathroom (which is supposed to be sandalwood and vanilla).
I also realize that I can't describe scent well. I don't know if I'll ever learn. Is that okay? I don't know. There's a lot of things I can't communicate, and this has been something I've been thinking a lot about lately. There is much I feel, and much I know, that I've kept to myself for so long that I just haven't got the words. I can communicate through abstract art, but no one would get what I'm saying, so it amounts to the same thing.
Earlier this evening, I watched the film "Blindness", and I had so many thoughts that I wanted to express, yet I realized I could not express them. I didn't try, and I'm not going to (at least not tonight).
When I was a kid, I hardly spoke. Now I'm a blabbermouth, and when I write, the words flow in the same gush of free-flowing non-edited nonsense with some nuggets of truth in them. I'm rather attached to this "style", but I hope someday I will have one word to my twenty words, and I can get to the point (or even have a point). In the meantime, I'll keep on doing what I'm doing.
At least I'm thinking and learning. What would it be like if I weren't? I shudder to think of that condition.
Painting note: Mark Rothko - title and date unknown. The power of Rothko's work does not translate well into small tiny iconic images. Standing in front of one of his paintings, I experience color as feeling and the self lost, engrossed, in the act of painting at its purest. Here, it is like a nice ball of hand dyed yarn. Good enough!
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