"The world is so complicated, tangled, and overloaded that to see into it with any clarity you must prune and prune." -If on a winter's night a traveler, Italo Calvino
A brief addendum to the previous post: It's interesting to me how those dark, spiraling thoughts take hold and toss me about. Of course I can easily say that now that whatever that was has passed. It feels like I've been experiencing things of this nature more frequently, but the eventual return to what I might call normal brings a palpable relief. I read back on those words I spewed out and it's hard to imagine me feeling that way at all; the mood is so ephemeral that it almost seems like embellishment to ascribe any words to it. Strangely, I don't identify with them, even though I acknowledge that I was feeling that one. It just doesn't seem like me... to myself.
But how accurately can anyone describe any emotion? That's a pretty simplistic rhetorical question, but why not consider it a little? Maybe accuracy isn't the point, but how you can relate those feelings into a story. Emotion is sort of fictional at heart, at least when we communicate feelings to others. There are certainly quantifiable things happening in our brains, but the garbled language that we use to capture those unique configurations of neural activity is wildly inconsistent between individuals. We might even be experiencing the same thing but registering it in different ways, and I imagine psycholinguistics offers a wealth of knowledge on this subject. It reminds me of those strange moments when I become aware of my inner monologue, sometimes even having little conversations with myself before that monologue inhabits other fabricated people. Sometimes those fabrications are my friends or even famous Hollywood celebrities, but they are the entities that spew my random thoughts out of their mouths. Nonetheless, the language aspect is pretty fluid throughout our lives. Sometimes I might be in a more musical mindset and those thoughts are harder to verbalize, but it seems that my brain psychology is predominantly comprised of and affected by words.
I'm also happy that indulging in something that seems a bit on my melodramatic side seemed to have some benefit. Or maybe it didn't at all, but I'll go ahead and give it some meaning to save face. Even though I was somewhat rattled while writing that piece, it seemed like it was all I could do to get it out of my head. The experience sort of reminds me of a psychedelic experience: as you try to grasp at words to describe the unintelligible, the words don't resonate so firmly. It's weird to have something feel so true at the beginning of a sentence, yet by the end it seems vague and even false. Something misses the mark.
This reminds me of a bit that describes the conceptual framework for Lois Lowry's The Giver:
"...the reason for precision of language was to ensure that unintentional lies were never uttered."
This excerpt really sat with me, and I love thinking on it from time to time when I re-read my little book of quotes. Effectively 1984 for kids, the author creates a utopian society which emphasizes the paring down of language to basic needs. You can be happy or sad, but expanding beyond simple one-word descriptions might subject the speaker to social punishment or even... Release. Yes, it sort of sounds like Newspeak, but I appreciate that Lowry manages to capture that essence and make it accessible to a wider audience.
Well, my sleepy half-baked thoughts are now giving way to even sleepier balls of uncooked dough. I'm planning on starting up a new sub-blog dedicated solely to Peace Corps Zambia activity, so I'll keep people posted as that gets set up.
A brief addendum to the previous post: It's interesting to me how those dark, spiraling thoughts take hold and toss me about. Of course I can easily say that now that whatever that was has passed. It feels like I've been experiencing things of this nature more frequently, but the eventual return to what I might call normal brings a palpable relief. I read back on those words I spewed out and it's hard to imagine me feeling that way at all; the mood is so ephemeral that it almost seems like embellishment to ascribe any words to it. Strangely, I don't identify with them, even though I acknowledge that I was feeling that one. It just doesn't seem like me... to myself.
But how accurately can anyone describe any emotion? That's a pretty simplistic rhetorical question, but why not consider it a little? Maybe accuracy isn't the point, but how you can relate those feelings into a story. Emotion is sort of fictional at heart, at least when we communicate feelings to others. There are certainly quantifiable things happening in our brains, but the garbled language that we use to capture those unique configurations of neural activity is wildly inconsistent between individuals. We might even be experiencing the same thing but registering it in different ways, and I imagine psycholinguistics offers a wealth of knowledge on this subject. It reminds me of those strange moments when I become aware of my inner monologue, sometimes even having little conversations with myself before that monologue inhabits other fabricated people. Sometimes those fabrications are my friends or even famous Hollywood celebrities, but they are the entities that spew my random thoughts out of their mouths. Nonetheless, the language aspect is pretty fluid throughout our lives. Sometimes I might be in a more musical mindset and those thoughts are harder to verbalize, but it seems that my brain psychology is predominantly comprised of and affected by words.
I'm also happy that indulging in something that seems a bit on my melodramatic side seemed to have some benefit. Or maybe it didn't at all, but I'll go ahead and give it some meaning to save face. Even though I was somewhat rattled while writing that piece, it seemed like it was all I could do to get it out of my head. The experience sort of reminds me of a psychedelic experience: as you try to grasp at words to describe the unintelligible, the words don't resonate so firmly. It's weird to have something feel so true at the beginning of a sentence, yet by the end it seems vague and even false. Something misses the mark.
This reminds me of a bit that describes the conceptual framework for Lois Lowry's The Giver:
"...the reason for precision of language was to ensure that unintentional lies were never uttered."
This excerpt really sat with me, and I love thinking on it from time to time when I re-read my little book of quotes. Effectively 1984 for kids, the author creates a utopian society which emphasizes the paring down of language to basic needs. You can be happy or sad, but expanding beyond simple one-word descriptions might subject the speaker to social punishment or even... Release. Yes, it sort of sounds like Newspeak, but I appreciate that Lowry manages to capture that essence and make it accessible to a wider audience.
Well, my sleepy half-baked thoughts are now giving way to even sleepier balls of uncooked dough. I'm planning on starting up a new sub-blog dedicated solely to Peace Corps Zambia activity, so I'll keep people posted as that gets set up.
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