Smells and Bells

I thought it was very interesting in  Constance Classen's The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch, that he spend time discussing the environment of the houses that people in the dark ages. In particular I really enjoyed the description of beds, simply because they were so vastly different from ours. looking back at all of the rough textures of the past it makes us modern day people look like wimps. I think that without all of those rough textures our skin and our receptors in our skin are probably alot more sensitive. I also wonder how different their brains would be, would the area of the brain related to touch be larger or smaller? He mentions that they way that people heated their homes was with fire. The rooms would be filled with smoke from the fire place and make everything they own smell like smoke. I personally love the smell of firewood and its very noticeable to me. After awhile I bet they couldn't even smell it anymore. Does that...

​ “That with this new sensibility comes to view itself as an isolated intelligence located inside the material body can only be understood in relation to the forgetting of the air, to the forgetting of this sensuous but unseen medium that continually flows in and out of the breathing body, binding the subtle depths within us to the fathomless depths that surround us.” ​ This particular quote stood out to be because it reminded be of meditation.  There are two major types of meditation that peo ple typically practice.  First, sometimes people meditate by focusing on one particular thing or object and nothing else. The second type of meditation reminds me of the above quote, and involves freeing one’s mind from the body and the senses that connects us to the external world.  It is an extremely difficult task, and the easiest way to begin is to focus on breathing.  Since many of us have been using our senses to interpret and experience the world we live in our entire...

​ No matter what language you speak, everyone in the world uses their language to describe their interactions with their external environment.  They also use their language to describe the thoughts that are going on their minds.  Regardless of the language we speak, we can all have very similar, if not the same, experiences as those who speak different languages then us.  People have filled their languages with tons of extremely vivid and descriptive words in order to be able to accurately portray their experiences to one another.  According to the author, “ Our own languages are continuously nourished by these other voices- by the roar of waterfalls and the humming of crickets.  For the sound that unites all these words is that which the water itself chants as it flows between the banks.  If human language arises from the perceptual interplay between the body and the world, then language belongs to the landscape as much as it belongs to ourselves. ” ...

​ After reading this literature I became particularly interested in how the sensory world has changed over time.  In fact, the view of the self as changed immensely over the years.  In the early renaissance period, individuals developed their identities through the social networks that they were a part of.  Today, the view of the self is much more individualistic and people are encouraged to be unique in their own ways.  In the reading the author discussed of many technological developments that occurred over time that enhanced societies’ ability to incorporate all of the senses in education.  For example, when the printer was invented, people were able  to visually see information printed on a piece of paper.  Also, when eyeglasses were introduced to the public, those with poor eyesight were now able to participate in the classroom.  It is important for educators to incorporate all the five senses into the curriculum.  Many classes already ...

​ I’ve always been told throughout my life that those who lose one of their senses typically gain strength in each of their remaining senses.  After reading this chapter on smell, I became particularly fascinated by Helen Keller and her sense of smell.  Since she was unable to see and hear,  her remaining three senses, especially scent, became exceptionally stronger.  In the book, Helen Keller stated,  “The sense of smell has told me of a coming storm hours before there was any sign of it visible.  I notice first a throb of expectancy, a slight quiver, a concentration in my nostrils.  As the storm draws near my nostrils dilate, the better to receive the flood of earth odors which seem to multiply and extend, until I feel the splash of rain against my cheek.” ​ It is hard to imagine anyone with this particular ability and mastery of a specific sense.  Interestingly enough, she was able to somehow adapt to her lost senses by reinforcing her other...

This book did a great job at illustrating all of the senses that humans possess by exploring how individuals explore and experience the world through these different types of observation.  I like how her book describes the scientific and subjective experiences of the senses.  Ackerman accurately describes the anatomy of our brain and how we process sound waves, light waves, etc.  Furthermore, she explains how even though people process this information the same way scientifically, we all share different subjective experiences and feelings about the information we perceive.  The part about hearing really interested me because of my love and awareness for music.  Although every individual experiences music through sound waves, music impacts each individual differently.  Music is known to have physical, emotional, cognitive, social, and therapeutic impacts on individuals.          ...

​ It is nighttime on the planet Earth.  But that is only a whim of nature, a result of our planet rolling in space at 1,000 miles per minute.  What we call night is the time we spend facing the secret reaches of space, where other solar systems and, perhaps, other planetarians dwell.  Don’t think of the night as the absence of day; think of it as a kind of freedom.  Turned away from our sun, we see the dawning of far-flung galaxies. ​ As you can imagine, this quote in the chapter on vision caught my attention because it gives you a cool, different perspective on night and day that I personally have never thought about.  Also, it paints a picture in my head about how vast the universe really is.  As we spend our daily lives we focus our attention on objects that are very close in distance.  For example, we normally look at our laptops, cell phone, friends, the car in front of us, etc.  Rarely do we look at the night sky and get a good glimpse of...

​ One of the most soothing things in the world is to put your tongue to the roof of your mouth right behind your teeth and sing la, la, la, la, la, la.  When we sing, not only do our vocal cords vibrate, but so do some of our bones.  Hum with your mouth closed , and the sound travels to your inner ear directly through the skull, not bothering with the eardrum. ​ This was the opening paragraph to the section on music and emotion and it really caught my attention.  Personally, I don’t sing but I love listening to music and I believe it is the number one thing to calm me down in stressful situations.  I have noticed it have significant beneficial impacts in my life and have heard the same from many of my friends and family.  Many people listen to music in the shower, in the car, while they do homework, while they write/read, while they eat, etc.  Music is invested in many of our lives and we use it to express our feelings and emotions at times we don’t even...

​ After reading the chapter on taste, I thought about all of the places that I have lived or visited, and how different all of the food is in regard to taste.  In addition, the customs are different, the portion sizes are different, and the meal times are different among many other things.  In the book, I thought it was interesting when the author said that every culture uses food as a sign of approval or commemoration, and that some foods are eaten religiously or symbolically.  For example, the author stated that, “ Jews attend a Seder to eat a horseradish dish to symbolize the tears shed by the ancestors when they were slaves in Egypt.  Mayans celebrate important events with rice, the inspirational center of their lives.  The ancient Egyptians thought onions symbolized the many-layered universe .”  Some people might think that taste is so simple, but taste and food is what drives culture and diversity in the world.  The sense of taste enhances our a...

​ One of the interesting parts of this chapter that caught my attention was the segment on pain.  It reminded me of some of my friends from school and home.  A few of them can handle getting punched in the face time after time and claim that they barely feel anything.  I also have a couple of friends with very low tolerances that are much more vulnerable to feeling pain.  I find myself somewhere in between, but it is odd that pain is so subjective and that everyone experiences it differently.  In the book, it states, “ One of the great riddles of biology is why the experience of pain is so subjective.  Being able to withstand pain depends to a considerable extent on culture and tradition.  Many soldiers have denied pain despite appalling wounds, not even requesting morphine .”  Perhaps after long periods of time some individuals are able to build up pain tolerances that are significantly higher then other people.  In regard to the effect of ...

One rainy night in 1976, a thirty-three-year-old mathematician went out for an after-dinner stroll.  Everyone considered him not just a gourmet but a wunderkind, because he had the ability to taste a dish and tell you all its ingredients with shocking precision.  One writer described it as a kind of “perfect pitch.”  As he stepped into the street, a slow-moving van ran into him and he hit his head on the pavement when he fell.  The day after he got out of the hospital, he discovered to his horror t hat his sense of smell was gone. This is an example from the book of a person who developed anosmia as a result of an accident to the head.  This disabled his brain in such a way that it now could not interpret sensory information as a sense of smell.  Specifically, there has been damage to the olfactory bulbs which means now the person is no longer able to smell or distinguish different scents.  Some people develop anosmia in ways that are similar to the...

In David Abram's book Spell of the Sensuous , he presents language as an example of the separation that todays world has from nature. He explains that with the "advent of the aleph-beth , a new distance opens between human culture and the rest of nature” (100).  He is discussing the shift from oral tradition to writing for storytelling, which he elucidates with Homer's the Iliad and Odyssey .  Homer's writing deeply connects to the nature world, as it is nature, Gods, Goddesses, and a sorceress that so greatly impact the travels and life of Odysseus.  When I read both of these books, I was drawn into the stories because of the deeply descriptive language, much of which is based on nature.  In these epics, Gods and Goddesses can control nature and create natural events that push forward the story.  Abram describes the past oral traditions of these stories as an "oral tapestry".  With the rhythmic nature of phrases increasing the ability to memorize, t...

Constance Classen's The Deepest Sense  discusses touch in relation to women's historically social roles.  Traditionally, women were connected to the lower senses because of the scripture of Adam and Eve.  Because Eve gave into temptation, she was constructed as a sensual being without high intellect and easily swayed by her lower senses. Classen links this to the place of women in the household and the fear of a woman's touch affecting male dominance.  Her discussion of the connection between women and animals is interesting because it depicts the desired woman and the feared woman.  The desired woman is like a tortoise and lives within its cold, west shell, while the feared woman is like a spider, continually spinning her web of seduction like her household handwork. The spider is also connected to Delilah in the story of Samson and Delilah, as she seduced him and then destroyed him, this story serves as an example of a woman's touch to male dominance.  Th...

After reading Ariel Glucklich's Sacred Pain  for my critical book review, I found that his discussion of spirit possession connected with the 6th sense.  The examples that Gucklich uses are tied to the influence of pain on the resulting of possession a well as the importance of pain to expel the spirit or devil from the individual possessed.  There are also cases of voluntary possessions such as shamans and exorcists who choose to become possessed to assist a patient.  Glucklich states "the pain serves as the phenomenal signal that brings the body into the real of the perceiving self and reestablishes a hierarchy of self-control” (2001:116).  His statement explains that pain is linked to possession, and I would argue serves a form of embodiment that can lead to the return bodily self-control because of its effect of the nervous system.  I found that in his book, Glucklich was discussing some form of 6th sense with his example of spirit possession. With poss...

I was listening to Simon and Garfunkel yesterday, and well i started to think about the idea of silence having a sound, technically it shouldn't but it seems to sometimes. The example i will give  you is think about silence in when your in a room alone compared to silence in the woods. There is definitely a difference. I would attribute that to the fact that there is almost never true silence, rather our there are vibrations so small our brain is not registering them. That makes me think though how many possibly important sounds are we missing. Should there actually be some higher power trying to communicate with us, but there are only some of us who can ever here it. Were people in the past able to hear better than we do now? I really don't know, but I just think the sound of silence is a really interesting concept.

Earlier in the semester I got to go to the sri lakshmi temple with professor Timm. This was the first time I had been to a hindu temple in a more formal setting. When I was younger I went to a few when  I was in india, but i did not look at them very closely, and actually found them very boring at the time. Now that i am studying religion, and understand Hinduism more the experience was much deeper. the most interesting thing to me is looking at the gods in the temple once you observe your mind of the duality between you and any particular god. When you look at the gods with an understanding that they are not really different or separate from you in any way their image hits you in a much more profound way. I was specifically drawn to Ganesh, as I think many people are. To witness him, and have him witness you really does give you a sense of empowerment, after being to the temple I felt much more able to overcome some of the stresses in my days.

“Exploring the history of touch makes the past come alive … It clothes the dry bones of historical fact with the flesh of physical sensation” -Constance Classen Constance Classen is a very interesting figure because she takes something I love (history) and completely revolutionizes how it is understood. From her reading what I understood is that rather than viewing history through visual prowess she incorporated the sense of touch as a way to better understand history.  Classen's book deepens her own impressive influence on the emerging field of sensory history, a field grounded not only in uncovering lost sensory worlds of the past but also in examining how those sensory worlds connect to one another. This is interesting because I personally love history and throughout my time learning about history it has been very visual in recounting events. By inducing sensory history I think it is a way to better understand history as a whole. It also reminds me of when I did a WWI...

Darsan is translated to 'auspicious sight', The Hindu ritual traditions refers to religious seeing or visual perception. Diane Eck's novel "Seeing the Divine Image in India" is mainly focused on this aspect of Darsan. This reading was interesting because it showed how people who worship Hindu stand in the presence of the statue of a deity and behold the image with their eyes which in turn makes the statue of the deity give a see be seen presence. In understanding Darsan I really relate this spiritual feeling with my own religion Judaism. When I wear my Star of David or ever look at the torah I feel as though I am looking at G-d and G-d is looking at me. Another aspect that I throughly enjoyed and related to my own religious experience, with Darsan it is popular to take pilgrimage to Banaras, I relate this to birthright for Jewish people. Though I do not trek through dangerous areas like those who embrace the pilgrimage of Darsan, I still feel the energy around me ...

Surfing in Waikiki:              For the longest time that I could remember I have been surfing. From spending summers in California to moving there full-time, surfing has been somewhat a Davidson tradition. The greatest surfing trip I have ever had though was in Waikiki Hawaii about three years ago. We went to a hut to go rent surfboards and started hitting the surf. The first thing I noticed upon entering the water was the warmness the ocean held. In the whole world I have never been surfing where the water was on average 70-80 degrees. This caught me by surprise cause of the warmth and how differently it felt in comparison to the chilly coast of mainland America. Upon hitting some nice outside waves I noticed the sun was beginning to set, but to my surprise no one was leaving the water. I ask one of the surfers and he said people surf until the sun is completely set. This took me by surprise because around the time the sun se...

Sixth sense is a psychic ability, this gives us the ability to perceive the subtle-dimension or the unseen world of angels, ghosts, Heaven.  For this story I personally have not recollection of the event about to unfold and is told to me from what my mother remembers. On one night w hen I was about 7 years old, I was living in our house in New Jersey at the time, my father was on a business trip so it was just my mother and my brothers. My mother in the middle of the night felt the temperature drop in her room so she went to go inspect what was wrong with the thermostat. Upon seeing the thermostat in functioning order, my mom returned to bed with extra blankets thinking the thermostat was malfunctioning. In bed my mom was beginning to fall asleep when suddenly she felt a tug on her big toe and heard a giggle. Thinking it was either myself or one of my brothers my mom was about to get up to lecture us on being awake so late. All of a sudden I came running into my mom's r...

What Happen When: Recently as a group our soccer team attended the play What Happens When . The plays overall message was to show students at college problems with sexual assault and irresponsible behavior when related towards sex. Though I believe getting the message to students about sexual assault and how it’s a problem nationally throughout colleges and universities, I don’t agree with the way that What Happens When conveyed such a meaning.             The acting itself was superb and obviously I have no problem to such, but myself along with other male students felt as though we were being targeted in What Happens When . Though I do not disagree with the fact that a majority of sexual assault problems happen with the male sex, it is another story when such males seem targeted by a play. I know by putting up this post I will most plausibly be subjected to critical rejoinder and quite possibly be claimed as being sexist o...