Smells and Bells

The concept that dreams can be premonitions, messages, warnings, or anything in the realm of the transcendental or paranormal has never been something I even try to understand. Only twice in my life have I experienced or believed in a dream being more than just images concocted by the brain. The first one was my own experience. It was not anything special, just oddly clear and direct in a way. I had the dream when I was in seventh or eighth grade and I remember it perfectly.  I was with my family, somewhere beautiful but unknown to me. We were staying in a lovely house next to a crystal clear, shallow river, surrounded by sort of tropical looking forest. There was a gorgeous green lawn between the river and the house and the sun was shining. Every thing seemed perfect. I was swimming with my family, then they went back to the house, leaving me on my own. When they left, a large, sort of ugly, black fish appeared. It lurked for a while before darting at me and trying to bite my feet...

  Image by Gage Skidmore @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bruce_Willis_by_Gage_Skidmore_3.jpg So after reading David Abram’s The Spell of the Sensuous, I came to find myself having a new perspective on a lot of things. In regards to the sixth sense specifically, I never really believed or looked into how it works. For the most part, the words “Sixth Sense” were always just a reminder of that one movie with the ghost and Bruce Willis. Or at least I think that’s the right movie, I still haven’t seen it yet but thanks to the internet I know how it ends so that kind of sucks. ANYWAYS, after reading this book, I got a whole new definition for the word sixth sense and what it can actually mean for both me and other people. Now instead of thinking about ghosts or actors, I can think about all the different abstract concepts that never really crossed my mind until now. In fact, the one concept that really stood out to me the most while reading this was the sections on time and spa...

AReading Spell of the Sensuous, I couldn't help but think about the Sapir- Whorf hypothesis- a leading theory in how language and our minds work. Two scientists of the early 90's discuss how language influences our view of the world and ourselves. They argue that h uman beings do not live in society alone and therefore the language of the society we are in predisposes certain choices of interpretation about how we view the world. Whorf also says that w e dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. We categorize objects in the schema laid by the language and if we do not subscribe to these classifications, we cannot communicate. Translations between one language and another is at the very least, problematic, and sometimes impossible. There are so many phrases in Bosnian that I do not know how to communicate in English to my friends, I try to find words to communicate it but the connotations and tone that accompany them will never be the same as they are in Bosn...

My family is very connected to the supernatural, 6th sense world. My sister is a practicing witch, and while no one else in my family really digs the witchcraft stuff (it’s totally growing on me though, I’m not gonna front), it would be nonsense to ignore all the wack shit that we have experienced. Out of body experiences, dreams with implications for the future, seeing black figures before bad things happen, entering rooms and randomly being completely overcome with terror. We’ve had things move, toilets flush, lights and microwaves flicker. Last night I slept in my sister's room because my dog spent a very long time just standing in the middle of the kitchen, frozen in place looking afraid he wouldn’t move even when we called him and pet him, and it took lots of loving coaxing from my sister to get him to move. A few days ago my mom suddenly started getting anxious in the kitchen for no reason; my sister thinks it from her reading more and more about darker magic, weird things ha...