sense-making and breathing//from the editor's desk

Art plays with cognition. We can say the art process is strategic, leading to the works of geniuses and production of masterpieces. But the objects of these accolades pool at our brainstems; they wrap around the medulla oblongata (follow my cranial nerve analogy here), a structure essential to vital functions such as blood flow and breathing.

Music, for instance, delivers us our own humanity and we applaud. It introduces us to ourselves, and slowly. Setting the keys of symphonies.

The key of G, the key of C… they calibrate a range of notes, set a spectrum of all frequencies one deems suitable for hearing in the same piece. Following the examples, root notes can be G or C which would tend to set the realms of their pieces, the aura of the notes surrounding them.

Now how do staffs and orchestras introduce us to ourselves? They make us want to realize something without even knowing it, and then help us realize it slowly.  Most of the music-writing and music-playing is done to prep our ears for some eventual eruption, some crescendo, which we would find startling if we hadn’t been implicitly and slowly processing its rumblings. A bridge to a chorus offers a good example: Maybe the notes of the bridge inch a bit closer to the tune, tempo, and/or notes in the chorus. This eases us into it. A swift progression from verse to chorus would, on the other hand, sound a bit jarring, at least in Western cultures. That’s why we call such music “experimental.”

And what about lovers in films, who preface the loving with insinuating interest? It’s tasteless when they embrace each other out of nowhere. Some call it bad on the part of the director. In coffee shops we seem unstable when we immediately confide all our private insecurities in another without first hinting at those peculiar neuroticisms. Hinting is done slowly, in a midnight battery of texts or at the moment you lose your earring, and prepare each end of the possibility, with eyes strategically dodging each other and assembling with the steam of tepid coffees, for the holy glory complexities of what a relationship could bring.

disclaimer: this is not entirely accurate; there is no "left-brained" or "right-brained" personality. each hemisphere is needed in processing, but each does offer a unique orientation to tasks and behavior.

but again, it is not like only one side of your brain knows how to have fun, or be creative.

We process things more quickly and to our satisfaction when they are embraced by both hemispheres of the brain. Take movies, dancing, or, again, symphonies; the sequential is complemented by the spatial. Music’s logic and progression pick up on the scene, movement, or tone, and the latter three pick up on the logic and progression. Everything feeds off each other. Moments like these successfully deliver what would otherwise take time to understand (e.g. emotions, love, tension) The immediacy of them make enough sense to halt breathing, the process which makes the most sense of all. 

To survival, anyway. Maybe that’s why sometimes it feels okay to die. Things can suddenly make enough sense that the essential mechanism to living must be suspended, for a little while.

Do we only keep on breathing because things don’t quite make sense yet   ?

Take-home message:

 love your medulla oblongata

                                             and art is anything that leads you to abuse it

ps imma try to post a recipe soon i swear this is still a food blog

quotes//february//love

“February is a suitable month for dying. Everything around is dead, the trees black and frozen so that the appearance of green shoots two months hence seems preposterous, the ground hard and cold, the snow dirty, the winter hateful, hanging on too long.” 
― Anna Quindlen

this one is good too:

February makes a bridge and March breaks it.

all you need is not love.

It was just Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend, and I felt barraged by promotions of love:

even Dr. King looks afflicted in this one.

There's a problem with this. Love cannot solve everything.

Think about it. If you loved everyone, who would you have to blame? How would you get anything done?

While the above statements are worth consideration, my argument against love is not predicated on a need to blame. But the expectation of love to solve everything–differences, tensions, hard feelings–can lead to serious disappointment. You can't love everyone because the connoted intensity of the feeling would blind you to understanding what those differences, tensions, and feelings are made of.

FOR EXAMPLE, you are in an argument with someone, pitting your beliefs against his or hers. The topic could concern politics, religion, lifestyle. How would love benefit you there? 

I don't agree with you, but I love you, so let's stop arguing.

If someone said this to me, I would think they're using love as an excuse, as a way out of trying to understand what I'm talking about, what I'm thinking about, and maybe why I'm thinking in that way.

Now, here's the first showing of my answer to the dilemma, my remedy for disagreements, personal issues, and social problems: not love, but a will to understand. 

Consider the following statement, which I've come to hear and see frequently enough to register a maxim, taken from the New Testament of the Bible:

Love thy neighbor as thyself.

Sigmund Freud called the expectation veiled by the easiness of saying–and superficially believing in– the exhortation unrealistic. "Love thy neighbor as thyself," misconstrues human nature, and disregards the individual right to choose who to love, and how.

Freud. 

A lot of social exchanges on the psychoanalyst ultimately denigrate him. Most conversations I've heard about Freud default to his psychosexual theories, depend on terms like "phallic stage" and "penis envy," "Oedipus conflict" and a quick reference to cocaine to discredit his work and, finally, to verbally confirm their lack of sexual interest in their mothers.

But I think that if you think you have to love thy neighbor as thyself, or love a stranger or someone you don't enjoy being around, you will end up hating yourself, doubting your worth as a human, and be bothered by a perceived inability to love.

An interaction will leave you feeling angry. You will become angrier if you deny yourself the right not to love.

"All you need is love" says John Lennon.

Nope.

Message from religion: "Love thy neighbor as thyself"

I hear Freud was pessimistic. In his writings, he does not communicate the sunniest perception of human nature. But he was a psychoanalyst. He tried to understand. YES there are ethical concerns about his practice, but he did not think that love was an answer to the woes of society, or the chasms between people. LOVE is not an guaranteed, pliable answer to every situation. I do not want to love everyone, for that would be EXHAUSTING.

If understanding is step towards love, then, maybe I can try to start.

cleaver//

this is the definition i get when i inquire into the meaning of "cleaver" on the Apple Dictionary app:

people in Russia are visiting this page. And 1 person in Costa Rica. hey.

Aggression cues.

Studies show that arousal fuels emotions–whatever they may be. This plays into the two-factor theory of emotion (Schachter & Singer, 1962) which puts words to a human tendency; we sometimes misattribute physical excitement to mushy emotion. 

When I say "misattribute," I do not mean that this tendency is inherently wrong or flawed; it just happens–and can actually lead to serious pleasure. Take this example, for instance:

A study by Dutton and Arthur Aron (1974) arranged for a young woman to approach
a number of young men as they crossed a narrow, wobbly, 450-foot-long suspension walkway hanging 230 feet above British Columbia’s rocky Capilano River.

sup.

During each approach, the woman asked that the participants help her fill out a class questionnaire. After they complied, she offered her name and number, and suggested that each guy call–if he wanted to hear more about the project (mm-hmm, right). Of those who accepted the phone number (most), half called.

so where's the statistical significance? she was probably hot.

So, half the guys called back. This isn't surprising–maybe they found the digit-sharing inquisitor attractive. 

i love you, stock.

But here's the big find: men who were instead approached by the same woman on a low, solid, and therefore SAFER bridge, rarely called. 

This is where the participants' physical arousal on the dangerous bridge may have been attributed to attraction.

From our own experiences, we know that emotion can, and always does, have some sort of physiological effect. The two-factor theory of emotion can help us to see why accompanying sweethearts during arousing activities can really pick up the romance. 

The theory writes kissing-in-the-corner of cinemas as more than a social script, amusement parks more than a trite date idea; scary movies and rollercoasters can bring expectation to fruition, a fear-laden pump of blood, suddenly, the anticipated tryst.

talk about paranormal activity.

just kidding, all i want is this tangerine-colored liquid.

I haven't thought of tangerines in a while. Did you know they got their name from their source of export? Me neither.

While I just gave you (or reinforced) an idea for a sultry evening, let's get back to aggression. I don't mean the hot and bothered kind.

If physical arousal can fuel sexual desire, can it fuel other emotions? Yes. The principal seems to be that "a given state of bodily arousal feeds one emotion or another, depending on how the person interprets and labels the arousal" (Myers, 2013, pp. 368).

Have you ever gotten really into a song at the gym, feeling as if it's carrying you through an episode of squats and you freakin LOVE TOM PETTY? Have you ever sat dwelling in a few moments of silent, otherwise benign frustration, and suddenly felt enraged at an unexpected and LOUD telephone ring? Have you received bad news after running home, and volcanoed? Are you angry right now?

cool it, it's only a rupture in the Earth's crust.

Studies by Leonard Berkowitz and colleagues (1968, 1961, 1995) zeroed in on the power of aggression cues. They found that children who had just played with toy guns became more willing to 

knock down another child’s blocks.

Another study showed college men giving more electric shocks to a person who had just angered them when a rifle and a revolver (supposedly left over from a previous experiment) were nearby than when badminton rackets had been left behind.

Let's go back to the idea of a cleaver. The above one was possibly used to dice garlic, or diced garlic was used to consummate the action connoted by the image. I think this is one of ShoutWithYourMouthFull's most photo-loaded posts. What are you thinking of when you look at this photo?

hah. i just linked myself.

I'm learning that it's important to consider the impact of environment on the individual psyche. And when I say I'm learning, I mean I try to step outside of my impulse, let its anger or sadness flow through me as i experience it, fascinated. I am fascinated by how I can connect my sadness to the idea of suicide when I see a knife drying on the dish rack.

To be sure, I am not considering killing myself. But it's important to talk, to think about, to observe.

The power a suggestion has over you is up to you.

“IF YOU DON’T GO TO 

SOMEBODY’S FUNERAL, 

THEY WON’T COME TO 

YOURS.”

—YOGI BERRA

WORKS CITED GODDAMMIT THEY'RE DRILLED INTO ME

Myers, David (2013-01-01). Social Psychology, 11th edition (Page 368). McGraw-Hill Higher Education -A. Kindle Edition. 

^^^i am not going to indent the second line. <3

do your little bit//not food related\\a definitely food-related challenge

"Do your little bit of good wherever you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world." ~Desmond Tutu

Can you tell I copy and pasted the above from a PowerPoint>

Well. I'm going to do my little bit of good right now. 

And it's funny what we decide to be "good"; the term is subjective, left to contingencies, spliced on situational dependencies.

Can you think of something that seems to be "good" in your life right now that, at other times, hasn't been so good?

coats, for instance.

Because I began this thing with claims that it was and would forever be a food blog, for the first time in a battery of posts, I'm going to be discussing food.

Here's an instance I can picture now, where the "good" is entirely reliant on disposition or situation. Look at this:

This is my left hand, holding a jar of cashew butter in a health food store. My right hand is busy documenting what my left hand is doing.

In my opinion then, and in my opinion now, this jar of cashew butter is good. But what if I was severely allergic to cashews? Or take this:

A turkey, stuffed to the brim by my father (whose hand I physically impeded from additional stuffing action). This image, while it was taken, reflected something I thought was good. Half an hour later, a picture of food was the last thing I wished to see. 

One last one, not food related:

or I hope you don't consider it food related. That's not good.

When posing for this high school prom picture, I didn't consider the act particularly good or bad. I remember feeling a dullness that I thought should resemble excitement.

Now, I look back on prom and I think it was pretty good.

Anyway, speaking of good. I hope my ostensible displays of culinary mediocrity will inspire a little somethin' in your kitchen.

make it good.

Credit for this pie goes to Mehdi, who made it without following a recipe.

And so I challenge you. Make a pie. Don't measure anything.

See how it turns out.

Maybe your expression will resemble his.

photography//quotes\\Mo

i am a typewriter to-day.
a few years ago, i dropped photography because i thought it wasn't productive.

holy hallelujah baby, nothing is.

it ached not to take pictures; i dulled the yearning with other things.

so much that i couldn't identify what the longing wanted.

what do i want from myself?

By picking up a camera again, I re-learn what seems to leave me every time I learn it: you are your own worst enemy.

sure it sounds morbid, but anything can sound morbid:

this face saying "strawberries." 
it looks like it's on the tip of its tongue, anyway.

so my point is that to brush off this maxim, this saying as "too morbid" can sound morbid, too.

so look into my eyes

and listen to me say "you are your own worst enemy"

you're not actually going to hear me say it, but you can listen to Bible Belt:

https://thebiblebelt.bandcamp.com/

(the turning point of this moral story is indicated by a turn of typeface)

So, myself not picking up my camera, continuing to believe that photography just gets in the way--was the enemy. How a life can change by a shift in thinking.

When re-teaching myself the mechanics of a DSLR, I found myself on 

www.digital-photography-school.com.

From a posted titled, "5 Tips to Take Less Photos of Everything and Take More Photos that Mean Something":
There is a whole world of events that are unfolding in front of us at each moment. Your awareness of them is subject to your willingness to be aware of them, not the existence of them.

It is my choice, then, to pick up a camera, and create what could otherwise go unseen. The product doesn't have to require a split-second capture; it can be a way of looking at something, a slanted view, an angled perspective--

the "mundane" made remarkable--

or a face that can blast its own inhibitions through experimentation--

selfies do not have to be shameful

an advantage of having a face, I believe, is being able to play with it. portraits can raise tensions, erect lifelong insecurities--but your face is your face. allow yourself to be a peeping Tom of your eyes. 

looking at my face, embracing its bumps, its angles, its rough patch of skin here, its rounded edge there--helps me stop being afraid of it. It is a piece of art. It is abstract, and can be broken down, admired, critiqued, positioned. A comment about a face doesn't have to tear raw nerve endings. It is just a face, it is not all of you. 

And it can make things interesting.  

holy hallelujah. i dont have to be afraid of you anymore; i can bring the cosmos to you and launch my qualms to them

I feel that as you are reading this, you feel you already know all of it. All the life lessons. I'm not blaming you, because even as I write, I am sickened by the worn out quotes.

"you are your own worst enemy"

"the world is unfolding"

"make the mundane remarkable"

"believe in yourself"

But we need to come back to them, sicken ourselves with their sugary coated bloated yuckiness; we need them in moments that feel like deep dark deathly hallows harry potter.

death rejoices at lollipops. if sugar quells the emptiness of feeling, alright. ok. ill take all the trite quotes. people think themselves geniuses for penning them; ill pass through them and hold on for a little while, hoping they make a mark of some sort,

so i dont have to travel as far back when i need them again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You know those little symbols, often found in novels, that signify a turn in mood or story, thereby exempting the writer from using a considerable chunk of paper space?

http://www.pw.org/content/bon_app_tit_how_food_writing_fed_my_fiction


That clip is from an editorial.

The symbol comes after some vague profoundness is divulged.

That was where the artistry came in.

I'd like to disparage the gall I find in following an empty claim with a floaty I'm-whirling-around-in-the-genius-of-my-last-statement badge, but I won't. Even though I just did.

What's more, I just used the same trick above.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Because we sometimes need symbols to bore in a point.

If the author feels that his proclaimed firmament deserves a squiggle from the heavens, yes, hallelujah, power to you.

we use what we can to help ourselves believe in something else.

whatever it is.

you are//your own sky

because "art never expresses anything but itself." ~Oscar Wilde

www.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D5hnKz9rlna4&h=AAQF_OqsC