Smells and Bells

  As I mentioned during one of our ice breakers about an "impossible experience", I believe that when I was meditating one day about a year ago I felt the presence of a future daughter of mine.  "Felt the presence" is the best way I can simply put it into words, I did not visualize or sense anyone through the 5 "regular" bodily senses. I felt the feeling you get when you're having a splendid conversation with a best friend and its so splendid you can't help but think thank goodness you're my best friend. I felt an unconditional love, one that was understanding and oh so kind and comforting. In a way I felt like I heard her, but not in the way that your ears hear sounds, more in a way of a sweet memory of a sound that you don't even really remember exactly how it sounded, but you do know and remember that you loved it. I figured this must be something someone else has experienced in some sort of a way, and so I decided to search it up on goo...

I really enjoyed listening to guest speaker and masseuse Elizabeth Robinson. I enjoyed the grounding activities she walked and talked us through and I really was engaged and quite captivated by the way she so naturally could read the room and seem to know what to do about it. I remember when I first had that thought as she was speaking, I realized that that is a skill and knowledge I want to have as I progress after college to become an elementary school teacher one day with my own classroom. I am very passionate about teaching, specifically in regards to the youngest of students. In elementary years, these humans are truly piecing together what is their perception of what, to them, is a brand new world, and they want to do it in all the ways that they can. For this reason I believe incorporating and appreciating aspects of all the senses in learning is an important value all teachers should have. When Elizabeth asked the class about our experiences with touch/massage in school I menti...

As we have discussed in class and as Rasmussen also describes in her book, “Arabic flavored” Islam tends to be much more publically patriarical, while Indoneisan Islam includes and appreciates women in their islamic traditions, practices and beliefs. This generality kind of reminded me of christianity amongst white people vs christianity among black people in America.  Christianity by whites was often forced upon and used to oppress black people especially during slavery times and now just a few generations later many black families hold strong christian beliefs, which seems counterintuituve to many. I do not speak for anyone whatsoever, but from what I have experienced and witnessed many have in turn used it to persevere through the effects of that oppression, to restore and keep faith.  Wildly famous rapper and producer Kanye, for example, openly discusses his faith in his music and other media, often symbolizing Jesus and religion as safety and motivation to get through ra...

I do not follow a particular religion as I have never been raised to do so, and after our conversations regarding the ways in which religion is sometimes placed upon people forcefully or simply unwantedly, I began to think about how my parents sort of intended there to be an absence of religion.  We have our beliefs surely, but I never attended church or Sunday school or religious youth groups which I’ve heard many people share their not so fond memories of but still somehow felt like I was missing out. Religion quite literally rules the world in lots of ways, and I have had so many thoughts like “what the heck, how am I not involved in anything??”  And then I was comforted by some of our discussions on how Perez emphasizes the ways in which religion is present in cooking. I don’t cook for Orishas or deities or necessarily think of any spiritual beings while cooking but I surely can resonate with the emotions, forms of thinking, and the beauty of conversation evoked through co...

Green’s subtle feminism throughout Aroma of Righteousness sparked many ideas in my head. In another course I’m taking, Psychology of Women, we recently discussed Freud’s “groundbreaking” psychological theories of women and girls being born with this innate “penis envy”, yes, penis envy. His theory proposes the idea that men are superior, and when girls get to an age when they realize that they do not have a penis, they realize their inferiority and are therefore envious. As a rebuttal to Freud’s prospections, psychoanalyst Karen Horney proposes that power inequalities, not biology, cause the psychological differences observed in girls and women and that there is more likely to be “Womb envy” present among men- an envy of women’s reproductive ability, which motivated men’s desire to dominate women. This made me think of the ways in which, throughout religion specifically, scent has been so heavily associated with women and their oh so evil seductiveness and sexuality. I get really confu...

I enjoy thinking of the senses in whimsical ways. Our noses act as time machines transporting us back to our fondest memories. Magic happens inside of our eyes and brains popping images of anything we’d like to see into our minds. Our eardrums get tickled by invisible waves, causing us to dance. Butterflies flutter in our tummies at the touch of someone special’s lips to ours. Life is granted to us through tasting the flavors of the world.  I’ve contemplated the absurdity of our ability for sight specifically for a few years now. As I became older I naturally began having many revelations regarding how the world really works . One being the fact that the reason we see things is simply because our eyeballs capture the light reflected off of.. well literally everything. I learned about this process during my junior year of high school in AP Pysch, how our retinas capture the light reflected off of objects to create images in our brains, but never realized the actual hecking craz...