Jeffrey R. Holland.

Words, words, words. Man I love these words.

Blink.

I've been reading this book:

Very interesting--all about the way our subconscious mind works. It led me to this website: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/. It hosts a number of what are called Implicit Association Tests (IATs). They are based on the concept that we make connections much more quickly between pairs of ideas that are already related in our minds than we do between pairs of ideas that are unfamiliar to us.

Using the i and e keys on your keyboard, you place images or words that pop up into one of two corresponding categories. The categories typically consist of two characteristics. The combination of characteristics are changed each round. By measuring the speed of your responses for each combination of characteristics, they can determine, somewhat, what sorts of connections your subconscious makes.

Some of them are a little controversial because they give results people don't want to hear. For example, a race test has categories like 'African American or Good' and 'European American or Bad'. Pictures of African American and European American faces are interspersed with words like 'love', 'peace', 'terror', and 'awful'. You sort them in to their proper categories. Then the categories are switched to read 'European American or Good' and 'African American or Bad'. You might be able to see what this is leading to.

There are a number of interesting tests that I tried out. Some of it suggested things about my subconscious that I wasn't sure I wanted to hear, that didn't sit well with me. This set my mind in motion--did I really do that? Is this me if it's not who I choose to be? I was analyzing the results more than worrying over them, but I can't deny that I was bothered.

As I thought, I concluded that I am not all subconscious. Subconscious me isn't the only me existing. I am a product of the joint efforts of my conscious and subconscious selves: my conscious self corrects my subconscious self when it grows too brash and instinctive because of my limited experiences, while my subconscious self clues me in to the things my conscious self overlooks. And, as I experience more, myselves adapt to encompass more life. Which seems, to me, a huge relief.

Try a few out for yourself; they're definitely something to think about.

The Hunger Games.

Suzanne Collins has ripped a hunk out of my heart. It seems as though there's little in the world to be thankful for when so many people are on the brink of obliteration.

But really, read it, love it; waste away for two days devouring it, as I did.

The Phrontistery.

This may be my new favorite website.

Today's favorite word:

epalpebrate [adj] - lacking eyebrows.

Warning: Spoiler.

Lately I've found myself engrossed in Hemmingway's The Sun Also Rises. When I say engrossed, I really mean that I've been grabbing it off the back-room shelf to entertain during slow days at work in the writing center. As my first serious encounter with Hemmingway, I found myself pleased with the accessibility and authenticity of his characters thus far.

However.

Last week, as I sat at the elitist "tutor table"--designed especially for us haut monde who know the difference between affect and effect--a co-worker (whose name will go unmentioned in order to protect him from possible slander and/or hate crimes) set out to be the cause of my undoing:

Noticing the book laying next to me on the table, "Oh, you're reading Hemmingway?" he coyly lured me into seemingly innocent conversation. "Have you read much by him?"

"No, this is actually my first." I was naive and unsuspecting.

"This is actually the only one I haven't read by him. Isn't it the one about Brett Ashley? She's the girl, right?"

"Yeah, she's the girl." I was impressed that he knew the character's full name. He must really like Hemmingway.

"And the guy she's in love with, his name is Jacob, isn't it?

Spot on. I could feel a little vortex of excitement welling within as I realized we really were on the same page; I always get this way when discussing books.

"And they can't be together because he lost his reproductive organ in war?"

The vortex seized and collapsed in upon itself, and me.

Crushed:

"I...haven't gotten to that part, yet." And all the intrigue of the book that kept me reading seemed to reveal itself in the undeniable truth of his words.

Blast.

However, not all is lost. Now I find myself reading in hopes of eventually getting to the scene in which that ever-critical bit of information is revealed. Hemmingway has managed to do it all well enough that merely knowing what happens is insufficient--I must see how.

***

Also: As a byproduct of reading, I have discovered that the word toro literally means "bull" in Spanish. How disappointing. As a friend of mine cleverly pointed out, the bullfighter's call "Toro! Toro!" is not unlike America's own disparaging "Hey batter batter!"

Blogging'd.

So I've been doing a little blog reading today. Which is not quite normal, but my roommates have suckered me in to it. Mainly because they always talk about "Nie Nie" as though she were extended family--Look how chubby Claire used to be! or Oliver is always running around naked! [perusing old posts] I began to feel a little left out when they started to scream upon discovering that the real-as-corn Nie Nie herself was, in fact, in So-and-So's ward. How many things do we end up doing just so we can become a part of the intrigue of conversation that revolves around it?

Thus, I spent a portion of today getting acquainted with a few new blogs.

I realized that I've been doing blogging all wrong. You're supposed to do it with lots of pictures and pretty things and connections and singing telegrams and all the fanfare that will make yourself recommendable. Not that anyone really reads this.

But, you know, just in case.

So here are a few pretty things:

Here's the song that I can't seem to stop listening to--don't want to stop listening to. Josh Ritter makes me swoon.

And I'm quite certain that these glasses will make me feel nice and dreamy when they are on my face, in a LunaLovegoodlibrarianflorist sort of way:

And finally: Anderson. Also very, very pretty.

I suppose that'll do for now.

10.17.2009

I like the way this swing swivels and pitches out after me when I hop off and head for home. Sometimes I feel that it's movements are begging me to come back--just one more go.

I like that, climbing aboard, I am suddenly weightless. I ebb and flow, back and forth, while I watch the world as a movie because the music is too loud for me to hear much else. It's better this way: I run harder, I pump my legs with greater force. And this is when I begin to forget where the rest of the world has got itself to, and I sing. I hardly know anyone but myself--I know myself.

I like the way I yield a longer pull when I pump with my legs crossed. I haven't quite figured out the physics guiding it, but the physical guiding me senses it, and I do it again and again.

And then I begin working my hips in to it, twisting--and skeewomp is me, is the swing, is the thrumming cavity in my chest where I once touted a heart. The misdirection thrills me and my eyes close to find catharsis in it's unpredictability. After a moment or two, however, the twist slows to a routine and suddenly I'm on a new beaten path.

I like the way it feels near impossible to step gently off this swing. Instead, I jump--even if it's a mere two-incher. That maybe explains why it never seems to be satisfied with the attention I've paid, and continually beckons, motions for more. I can resist it maybe. My day need never begin; I am caught in a cycle I don't want out of.

I like it that way.

10.4.2009

The rain outside is mourning with me--crying. Here lies Dignity, it says to me. And the remnants of my former friend are hurried to the curb and down the gutter in a quick succession of plink plink plinks.

I frantically scrape the sides of an empty Nutella jar with a spoon as I think on it because I am anxious and embarrassed and frankly don't know how to handle the situation in a more mature, less animalistic manner. But I feel somewhat beastly just now. I can't help but think of Tuffy, early this afternoon: we went out. Met another puppy on our way. They made friends. Her owner and I made small puppy talk. Then we politely moved on and I turned away, walking, until the leash jerked me in to looking back. There, at the other end, Tuffy took care of business on his new friend's lawn. No inhibitions.

Suddenly, alone in the laundry room, I am much more like Tuffy than I have ever wanted to be. But much more aware of my situation and therefore much more humiliated. I'm something that people could refer to as 'it'. Thus we unconsciously name dogs and fetuses and any other things we're unsure of that don't seem to understand the term 'righteous indignation'.

And now I call myself. And I suppose that skirting around the issue via blog post number two will make me feel better. A secret outlet, through which I can be as vague and cryptic as I'd like--where I am god and can edit and delete comments at will.

But the truth of it all is that the only audience I really have is the me that is beside myself, laughing and crying simultaneously.

eleven.

I have nothing to write.  Yet I want to write it so very badly.  Now.  I set aside this time before my eyelids sunk with the exhaustion of lengthening hours and meaty lists of tasks to check for my own leisurely unfurling.  And yet.

I draw a blank.

That is an interesting phrase to me--it is impossible to draw blankness.  In the way an artist might draw a picture, I mean.  And I suppose that's the ironic purpose to it all.  When you are drawing nothing you aren't really drawing.  You are sitting at a desk, tapping your eraser against the hard wood and shaking your leg in frustration before a page pleading for the contribution of your creative tatooing, still unmarked.  You are poised with your fingers over a keyboard, an unlimited combination of letters and spaces and punctuation at your disposal--and yet they can't be compelled to force down a single symbol.  

Thoughts wink at me seductively, starry and inconsistent enough.  I can't see them long enough to put them down on paper before the light goes out again.  On again, off again.  

Flash!

I buy too much music.

Light!

We create Zion.

Asterisk!

If you add ghetto slang to juvenile sentences it makes you sound older?

Zap!

I have a goal to say only good things about people that is hard sometimes.

Thought!

I am Homework Kid--it says so on my cape.

Notion!

Sam Beam is a beautiful man.

Something!

Maggot face.

N o t h i n g .