tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5778540044237706432024-03-25T10:06:02.919-04:00Agenty DuckBriennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17354968365123237971noreply@blogger.comBlogger164125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-577854004423770643.post-86928537734686006872023-09-24T16:40:00.004-04:002023-09-24T16:52:54.164-04:00One Month On T<p>I'll begin with some context-setting. If you want to skip to the main event, start at "It's now been about one month."</p>
<p>First, a caveat: I did not start with a baseline female endocrine profile when I began taking testosterone. I'd given birth two and a half months earlier, so my most recent memories of what it was like to inhabit a female body were of a <em>postpartum</em> body, and before that a <em>pregnant</em> body. I suspect that if I'd started T at a different time, some of the contrasts would not have seemed so stark. Still, pregnancy and postpartum felt to me like they turned up certain parts of my experience, not like they added something completely new. I do think that from baseline, I would have noticed the same things, just to a lesser degree.</p>
<p>Second, what was my relationship with HRT, going in? </p>
<p>I have in my head a sort of caricature of a pre-T trans man. The character I have in mind thinks of himself as a man, suffers so much from being trapped in the wrong body that he's constantly depressed and anxious over it, can't stand being misgendered by other people, and is confident that "medically transitioning" will solve his biggest problem. When it <em>does</em> turn out to solve his biggest problem, and his life is dramatically better, and he's transformed from a miserable wreck into a self-actualized and flourishing version of himself, he is not at all surprised, and neither is anyone who knows him. </p>
<p>I worry that I've described this person in a way that's somehow trivializing; I don't mean to. I think many such people actually exist. What I'm trying to do here is point at one extreme end of a spectrum, where the other end is "cis by default"—someone who really just doesn't care about their sex or gender, either from the inside or with respect to how others treat them.</p>
<p>I have never been at either extreme end of this spectrum.</p>
<p>I was sure about enough things that HRT seemed like it was the right choice for me, on net. But very little seemed obvious or straightforward. I made my decision largely through reference class forecasting: Changes I'd previously made to my body and social situation that tend to help transmasculine people turned out to help me as well, and starting T was the next obvious thing to try. I wasn't sure that I "am a man", or that I'd feel more like myself on testosterone, and I had some pretty big concerns. </p>
<p>I was hesitant for three reasons. First, I was afraid of having a higher sex drive. Depending on my mood, I either see sexuality as a somewhat nice diversion, like popcorn at a movie, or as a tragic distraction from the things that actually matter to me.</p>
<p>Secondly, I'm not the best at coping with change, in general. For example, I have sometimes cried after getting a haircut, even when it was exactly the haircut I wanted and I thought it looked really good, just because it was so rough for me to suddenly look different.</p>
<p>And third, maybe I'd miss biological femininity! Although my money was actually on feeling <em>freer</em> to openly express the feminine aspects of myself once my masculinity felt more secure, it was only a guess. For example, I was once a stripper, someone who performs feminine sexuality professionally, and I loved it. Not everything about it—any job has its downsides—but I enjoyed playing those characters on stage, and I enjoyed the way people responded to me when I did. Seems like at least some evidence that T would make my life worse instead of better, no?</p>
<p>So overall, my attitude going in was that the situation was <em>complicated</em> and <em>uncertain</em>, but it seemed likely that I'd be better off with a male endocrine profile than with a female one, even though the change probably wouldn't solve any big problems immediately and might cause some new ones. By sticking with the female endocrine profile indefinitely, I'd be failing the reversal test.</p>
<p><b>It's now been about one month.</b> I've been injecting 80mg of testosterone cypionate intramuscularly once a week for four weeks. What has resulted so far?
Lol um well, it immediately solved my biggest problems, actually, and suddenly my life is dramatically better. </p>
<p>I am surprised. This was in my hypothesis space, but I definitely did not expect it, especially not so quickly.</p>
<p>What exactly have I noticed? What has changed?</p>
<p>1. The very first thing I noticed was something I've described as "heat" in my body. I gave myself my first injection in the morning, and by that night, I was feeling something emanating from my torso that reminded me of gently glowing embers. It was strongest for the first couple of days, and then it subsided, but has not completely gone away. </li>
</p>
<p>It seems closely tied with my experience of "having more energy". I've been enjoying exercise more, feeling more motivated, more eager to go places and do things. It's not an uncomfortable restlessness; just a pleasant internal fire that drives me forward toward action.</p>
<p>2. The second thing I noticed was a cognitive change away from neuroticism and toward clarity. This was apparent by day three.</p>
<p>When thinking through a problem, reading, studying, or considering a project for work, my cognition seemed far more direct. It's not that there was an <em>addition</em> of directness, no impatient craving for a clear answer or anything like that. There was just an <em>absence</em> of many obstacles I'd previously spend at least half of my thinking time contending with. Obstacles like self criticism, considerations about how other people might perceive my thoughts/beliefs/preferences/emotions, a constant meta-level weighing of whether what I was doing was any good and whether I should continue, and what sort of evidence my thoughts were about whether I'd succeed or fail.</p>
<p>With testosterone, I immediately found that I could just... think. On the object level, directly, without paranoia diverting me at every step, without spending a lot of cycles ameliorating and mitigating all those protective filters.</p>
<p>It's a quantitative difference more than a qualitative one. My brain is still doing all of the same things. I still seem to care about what my thoughts mean about my future and so forth, and I'm still sometimes distracted by that sort of thing when I'd like to focus completely on something else; but it's mostly only when I'm tired, very hungry, or sick. By default, my thinking feels so much more clear, engaged, uncomplicated, quick, focused, decisive. No more weird twisty mazes of intrusive neuroticism.</p>
<p>3. The increased stability isn't limited to intellectual tasks. By the end of the first week, emotional regulation had become quicker and easier in general.</p>
<p>On September 2 (day 6 of T), I wrote, "Today I was emotionally rattled by something in a way and to an extent that I think would have caused a lot of prolonged distress in any other period of my life. I would have been unable to sleep, and it might have dominated my thoughts and made it really difficult to accomplish anything for at least a day. Instead, after half an hour and a bit of yoga, I was pretty much emotionally re-centered, I had a game plan for how to deal with things practically, and I was ok. And on the first day of my period, no less."</p>
<p>I've been taking a depression test called the "Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale" every week since the middle of pregnancy. The test says, "A score of more than 10 suggests minor or major depression may be present. Further evaluation is recommended." Before T, I'd never seen a number below 5, and I considered 5 to be "as good as things can actually get". My scores for the past month have been 1, 1, 2, and 1.</p>
<p>4. Over the course of the month, something has changed about my experience of pleasure.</p>
<p>This cluster of perceptions is a little tricky to untangle, perhaps because it seems to have something to do with sexuality, but not in an obvious way. I'll describe it as three separate things, but I'm strongly inclined to claim that it's really all one thing.</p>
<p>4.1 Eudemonia. By the end of the first week, I'd noticed a general sense of wellbeing that subtly (and sometimes overtly) permeated my experiences. I just felt... good. Sometimes there was happiness, joy, excitement. But mostly it's more subtle than that. </p>
<p>I feel it right now, so I'll pay attention to it and try to describe it to you.</p>
<p>There's a gentle, pleasant buzzing in my body. I feel it in my head, my lips and mouth, the front of my chest, my arms, my lower abdomen, my legs, and my feet. It's a sunny grounded feeling. It resonates with phrases like, "Things are ok," "Life is good," "I like being here, now, doing exactly what I'm doing."</p>
<p>I've been happy before. I've even been elated, triumphant, lovesick. I've been physically healthy, I've been vibrant and generative, I've been pleased with the way my life is going. But I don't think I've ever felt a persistent sense of <em>wellbeing</em>. I've never just felt good, in general, for weeks on end.</p>
<p>I mean, it's not like every experience I've had all month has been great. I had a period, I got a stomach bug, I spent most of my time at a caloric deficit because I'm trying to lose pregnancy weight, I slept poorly for most of last week while over-socializing and felt exhausted and pretty much like crap. </p>
<p>But all of that stuff seemed to go <em>on top</em> of "being ok". And whenever the crappy stuff dissipated, eudemonia shone through like the sky behind parting clouds.</p>
<p>4.2 Enjoyment. During weeks two and three, I'd started to notice a change in what it's like for me to enjoy things.</p>
<p>You can see some of it in that description of my immediate experience of wellbeing above. Did you notice how much I talked about my body? I've always been an exceptionally embodied person, but testosterone seems to have turned that up even more.</p>
<p>This month, I enjoy things more acutely than I have at any other point in the previous year. For the most part, I don't enjoy different things—it's still poetry, music, working out, learning, sunshine, leaves, excellent writing, chocolate, etc.—but I enjoy them both more and differently.
How is my enjoyment "different"? There's more "excitement" in it, it's more embodied, and "pleasure" is a more apt description of one of the central components of enjoyment than it's ever been before. My enjoyment of things used to be relatively distant and intellectual. More like "appreciation". Now it is very often visceral, physical, embodied.</p>
<p>Take for example "Snow" by Louis Macneice. This is a brilliant free verse poem I encountered for the first time during the past month.
When I read it, my chest flutters and leaps. The words drop into my lower abdomen and smoulder there. The buzzing of wellbeing that I described earlier intensifies until I feel almost like I must have been drugged. The delight is in my chest, in my stomach, in my genitals, in my legs and arms and head. My appreciation of poetry has taken on a blazing full-body power.</p>
<p>4.3 Sex drive.</p>
<p>It did not become apparent until the fourth week that my desire for and enjoyment of literal physical two-person sex had increased.
It was a gradual dawning. First there were the changes to enjoyment generally, which I suspected were somehow tied to sexuality.
Then I noticed a greater interest in some of my kinks, and a larger impact from thinking about them.</p>
<p>I noticed that I was masturbating more often, a change from a couple times a week to one or two times a day. I was doing this with an exploratoratory attitude, and it wasn't until week four that it became clear to me I was in fact <em>craving</em> sexual experience, and that some of it even took the form of a desire to have sex with specific other people.</p>
<p>I would not have described myself as asexual before. I do sometimes experience sexual attraction to people. But most of the parts of attraction that have to do with sex in particular seem to largely go away by the end of the infatuation period for me; and even at the best of times, it's not really been clear that I enjoy sex itself. During pregnancy, I hated almost everything about sex, and it didn't feel like all that big of a change from baseline. I was mostly just less able to <em>tolerate</em> sex. Usually sex has been an instrumental goal for me, something I do in order to accomplish something else (such as the BDSM components of the experience, or social power, or intimacy with my partner).</p>
<p>Now I straightforwardly desire sex with at least some of the people I'm attracted to, and I straightforwardly enjoy it when it happens. I still have sensory sensitivities to contend with, and I have to keep track of that and communicate about it in order to have a good time. But having a good time during sex is actually possible now.</p>
<p>Having a higher sex drive is really different from how I imagined it would be. Sexuality has never felt <em>integrated</em> for me before. There are things I enjoy greatly, and there is sexual stimulation and orgasm and so forth, and I've never really been clear on what those two things have to do with each other. So I think that when I imagined having a higher sex drive, I mostly imagined turning up a certain kind of discomfort. The discomfort of physically craving orgasm.</p>
<p>Instead, it's been something that doesn't really come apart from my ability to enjoy art, and learning, and the excitement and satisfaction of engaging with the world as myself. I do crave physical sexual stimulation more strongly and more frequently than before. But so far, it feels like just another part of being more brightly on fire. If this is the kind of sexuality I'm turning up by taking testosterone, I think I'm ok with that.</p>
<p>Overall, it so far seems likely that taking T will turn out to have been literally the best decision I have ever made. I completely love it.</p>
Briennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15624501270714671076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-577854004423770643.post-32040768877077898722023-07-09T16:18:00.002-04:002023-07-09T16:18:56.087-04:00The Birth of Cadence<p>Hey guess what I have a kid now! Yes really. Their name is Cadence, and they were born on June 20th, 2023. It was rad.</p>
<p>There's a whole bunch of stuff about it <a href="https://www.loganstrohl.com/birth">on my website</a>, including a birth story, lots of other writing below that under Q&A, photos, and videos. (If you only click on the "writings" button, you won't see any naked people.)</p>
<p>I'm crossposting the birth story here.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>The day before labor began, I laid mulch around the sunflower seedlings and the raspberries in the raised beds. It was chilly out, despite being late June. I felt exhausted after gardening, but also satisfied for having done something physical. I spent most of the rest of the day watching British Bakeoff. "Bit of a rough day," I wrote in my journal. "Really tired and pretty physically uncomfortable. Grateful that pregnancy is almost over." I took a bath before bed, and then Duncan and I did a Spinning Babies exercise called The Three Sisters of Balance. For a few hours, I slept well.</p>
<p>I went into labor at about 1:30AM on June 20th, 2023. Right on time: June 20th was exactly my due date.</p>
<p>I called Duncan to my room once I was sure I’d had a few strong contractions. I was feeling pretty calm, but I was also shaking off and on. I wanted him to hold my hand.</p>
<p>I’ve heard that shaking is a common response to labor hormones. It was a big part of the labor experience for me, especially in early labor. The contractions that were accompanied by shaking felt like “hormone dumps” to me, and I described them that way to Duncan. They were more satisfying than the other contractions. I didn't like the shaking; it's difficult to relax through a contraction when you can't control your muscles. But I did like the psychological changes that went with it. I felt like I was moving into a different state of mind, like I’d taken a drug.</p>
<p>What state of mind did they move me into? Words I associate with the state include: Raw, toppled, stripped away, naked, open, riding, receptive, internal, trembling, alive, real, body-focused, quiet, present, and timeless. In that state, I wanted to be near the ground, to touch the floor with my hands and feel its stability. Everything outside of me became dim in my awareness as I let myself be taken by the waves. I barely felt time passing; there was only what was happening inside of me right then. I've never been more acutely aware of my animal instincts.</p>
<p>I felt a little bit like I’d been poisoned, but I wasn’t scared. I felt ready for it.</p>
<p>I asked Duncan to call our doula, Shalin, after about an hour and a half. She’d said it might take her an hour to get to our house, and I thought if things continued to progress as they had been, I’d probably want her support and guidance after another hour. She arrived at 3:50AM.</p>
<p>I used several positions early that morning. Some Shalin suggested, some were inspired by her suggestions, and some were spontaneous responses to what I was feeling. I spent time on hands and knees, sometimes tilting my pelvis or moving my torso in big circles. Sometimes I sat on the toilet, usually with a robe worn backward to keep me warm. For a while I sat on an exercise ball while leaning forward over my desk. I walked up and down the stairs sideways a few times, did a little bit of lunging in place with one foot up on the ottoman, walked around doing abdominal lift-and-tucks during contractions, and danced to music in my bedroom. But I think I spent the majority of my time kneeling and leaning forward over either an exercise ball, the ottoman, or a bean bag.</p>
<p>My focus was mainly on staying relaxed and integrating the sensations. I especially kept my hands, jaw, face, and pelvic floor relaxed. I breathed deeply and moaned to release the tension. Rain and thunder sounds usually calm me, so I kept those on in the background when I wasn’t playing music. I used mantras and visualization to guide my mind in the direction my physiology seemed to suggest. Aided by the endorphins and hormones, I deliberately put myself into a hypnotic state, moving deeper or nearer the surface as circumstances required, and I stayed that way for all 18hrs of labor.</p>
<p>I threw up at 5:37. It was quite a lot of liquid.</p>
<p>As the sun rose, my contractions started to space out. They had been about four minutes apart, lasting for one minute, but then they spread out to about eight minutes apart. I started to get a little worried that labor was going to stop again, like it had a week and a half before. I’d been through a lot already, and I would have found that pretty discouraging. There was still no bloody show when I went to the bathroom, and very little mucus. I was also feeling more “normal”, not so deep in labor space.</p>
<p>Shalin texted my midwife, Mackenzie, who suggested I take 50mg of benadryl and get some rest if possible. I took the benadryl and tried to rest, but lying on my side made contractions feel much more intense.</p>
<p>By 8AM I was shaking again, throwing up more, and losing a lot of mucus plug. Maybe this is really happening after all, I thought. I went for a short walk outside on the deck, where I paused a few times to lean against a wall or railing during a contraction. Duncan and Shalin walked beside me, ready to offer physical support, or a barf bag, if I needed help.</p>
<p>By 9:20 I’d thrown up again. Duncan kept me well supplied with coconut water, juice, and bone broth, but I couldn’t seem to keep much liquid down at all. Mackenzie decided to come over a bit early to rehydrate me with IV fluids.</p>
<p>I’d been paying a lot of attention to Cadence’s movements; they tended to move quite a bit just after contractions, as though they were stretching or shoving themselves around. I said multiple times during labor that I thought Cadence was doing most of the work. At 10:12 I had a contraction that I said felt “different”. I don’t remember this in detail, but I told Shalin that it felt like Cadence was “pushing through”. I think I felt them move to a different position this time, and there was more downward pressure for the rest of labor after this contraction.</p>
<p>Mackenzie arrived around 10:30. She listened to Cadence’s heartbeat with a doppler, and said they sounded good. She checked my blood pressure, temperature, and heart rate, and told me all of those readings were fine as well. I was feeling pretty ragged and depleted by this point, though.</p>
<p>She waited for the end of a contraction, then placed the IV while I was leaning forward over the ottoman. The IV itself wasn’t a major part of my experience, though it was occasionally a little inconvenient. She ran a second bag of IV fluids at 11:52, and by that time I was feeling much better. I definitely prefer to labor while hydrated. Being dehydrated felt sharp and strained. Being hydrated felt plump and expansive. I was stronger after the IV fluids.</p>
<p>At 12:25, Mackenzie asked if I wanted a cervical exam. I was still struggling with the possibility that this was not “real labor”—I didn't know how to orient to the experience, and it's hard for me to let go while disoriented—so I said yes. To my surprise, the exam didn't hurt at all. I was 7cm dilated and 90% effaced, and Cadence was at +1 station. I found that really encouraging! Sure sounded like real labor to me.</p>
<p>At 1PM, we decided it was time to start filling the birthing tub. We planned to set it up in my bedroom, so I moved to the living room while Mackenzie’s assistant Jaime began to inflate it.</p>
<p>I remember Shalin saying, “This is transition,” while Jaime was inflating the tub. The contraction sensations were intense, but they felt totally continuous with the earlier parts of labor. I had a harder time integrating them while the tub was inflating, because the sound of the air pump was pretty awful for me. Almost like a leaf blower. I didn’t consider it to be “too much” from within my tranced-out state, though, and told Duncan and Shalin that I was fine. But Duncan brought me ear muffs anyway, and things really were a lot easier after that.</p>
<p>The second bag of IV fluids finished running around 2PM, and it was time to go to the tub. Shalin and Mackenzie wanted me to use the bathroom first, but getting to and sitting on the toilet did not sound any good at all to me. I asked if I could just pee in the birth tub, and they said yes, people do that all the time and it’s fine. So I crawled on hands and knees toward the tub, pausing in the middle to ride through a contraction in child’s pose.</p>
<p>The support of the water was an immense relief. I felt far more comfortable with half of my body floating. I think it made an especially big difference between contractions. I found it easier to rest and relax in the water.</p>
<p>I spent a while leaning forward over the side of the tub, often holding Duncan’s hand. It was comfortable for me, but during a fetal heart rate check, Mackenzie told me that it was not comfortable for Cadence. The birth tub included a little seat on the other side, so I crawled over to it and sat upright. In the new position, Cadence sounded fine. I made the seat my new home base for the rest of labor.</p>
<p>Around 3:30PM, something started to shift for me. I don’t know what sensations tipped me off, but emotionally, I began to orient to the experience differently: Rather than completely surrendering into the timeless space of endurance, I think I recognized that I was entering “the home stretch”. I wanted to mark the shift, and perhaps to communicate with Cadence about it as well, so I asked Duncan to play Cadence’s birthday song: “Come Alive” from The Greatest Showman.</p>
<p>I rarely felt very connected to Cadence as a proto-person when they were in the womb. I was not in love with them already, the way many gestational parents are during pregnancy. But at some point in second trimester, I was listening to “Come Alive”, and it hit me hard that this is how I feel about the fetus, that this is what I want for them and why I was drawn to creating a human in the first place.</p>
<p>It’s what I want for everyone. It’s the kind of love that I feel for everyone. It’s the impact I want to have. I want people to somehow move beyond whatever obstacles prevent them from fully experiencing all the awesome things that constantly surround them. To be their full selves in intimate contact with the world. The ability to experience is why I care so much about humanity.</p>
<p>*Come alive, come alive
Go and light your light, let it burn so bright
Reaching up to the sky
And it’s open wide, you’re electrified</p>
<p>And the world becomes a fantasy
And you’re more than you could ever be
’Cause you’re dreaming with your eyes wide open
And you know you can’t go back again
To the world that you were living in
’Cause you’re dreaming with your eyes wide open*</p>
<p>So that’s how I wanted to welcome Cadence to Earth: with a prayer that when they left the darkness and safety of the womb, they would begin a life of unbridled wonder.</p>
<p>I felt all of that in the song as I listened to it, and as, between contractions, I was able to sing along.</p>
<p>The contractions were so intense, and even in the tub, the pain of them never completely let up in between. I felt a little bit betrayed; multiple books and videos about labor had led me to believe that the discomfort would stop between the contractions.</p>
<p>That sense of betrayal conflicted with my meditative strategies. For a few minutes, I was more aware of time, and I started to worry. I thought to myself, I can’t keep doing this.</p>
<p>Fortunately I’d prepared for exactly that thought. I recognized it as a sign of transition while it was happening, and I told my support team about it. “It was just a thought,” I said, trying to reassure them that it had been fleeting, and I was all right. Letting go of it moved me back toward the calm and relaxed state of labor space.</p>
<p>My body began to push spontaneously at about 4:30PM. Mackenzie said she heard it in my voice: Mixed in with the moans, I started making a sound that was more like a growl.</p>
<p>By 5:30, my contractions had spaced out again. They were eight minutes apart. I still felt the pushing when they happened, but the times in between had become comfortable, and I was really enjoying my rest.</p>
<p>Mackenzie alerted me that things might not be moving in the direction I wanted. She offered me a couple options: I could take a cotton root tincture, which might increase the pace of the contractions on its own. Or, I could get out of the tub, maybe go for a short walk on the deck, to try to pick things back up again.</p>
<p>I definitely did not want to get out of the tub, so I asked for the cotton root tincture. However, by the time the tincture was ready, I’d changed my mind. I wanted to try stimulating contractions myself without leaving the tub, just by moving around differently. I used several tactics, including alternating lunges, pelvic tilts, and lifting my body out of the water. Basically, I just needed to make myself the right kind of uncomfortable as soon as I felt ready.</p>
<p>It worked! I rested for what felt like “just as much time as I needed” after each contraction, and then I began moving again to bring on another. Although the contractions seemed to begin as a result of my own decisions, Mackenzie said my pace was just perfect not long afterward.</p>
<p>I used my hand to touch inside my vagina, to see what I could feel. What I felt was a taut little water balloon very close to the opening: The amniotic sac was still intact. I re-checked after every couple contractions, to see if I could perceive any progress, but I could not.</p>
<p>I began to feel frustrated. I was working so hard, but as far as I could tell, nothing much was happening. I didn’t feel Cadence moving as much as they had earlier in labor, either. I really wanted my water to break.</p>
<p>This period of yearning for change was probably the most uncomfortable part of labor for me. The raw physical sensations weren't any more extreme, but emotionally, I felt almost as if I were in an argument with my body. Perhaps if I put more energy into pushing, I thought, then my water will finally break, and things will move again. But it didn't break, not then. I felt a little stuck.</p>
<p>At 6:02, Mackenzie asked whether I felt like I was pushing against my body, or with it. I told her I thought I was pushing with my body, but I wasn’t completely sure, because the sensations were all new to me, and I was frustrated. I asked for another cervical exam. I wondered if I might be pushing against my cervix, in which case perhaps I should try to hold off.</p>
<p>But Mackenzie confirmed that I was completely dilated. To me, that meant that everything was fine, and I just needed to be patient.</p>
<p>I began speaking then to Cadence, and a little bit to myself. Not always in words, and usually not out loud. I reminded myself that birth happens when both of us are ready, that I had no interest in rushing them, and that we’re safe to continue like this for a long time if we need to. “It’s ok to take your time,” I murmured. “Take all the time you need. I’ll be here when you’re ready.” It helped me so much. After that, I felt calm and patient again.</p>
<p>But I wanted to encourage them as well, to invite them out. I told them the thing that’s kept me moving through the roughest patches in my own life: “It’s hard out here,” I said, “but it’s worth it.” There are fireflies out here, and thunderstorms, and poetry. Even though it hurts, you have to live to see them.</p>
<p>At 6:34PM, my water broke as I pushed. It felt like a little pop, like squeezing a water balloon until it burst. I could feel Cadence helping out again after that, moving themselves around and down after every contraction.</p>
<p>My pushes felt clearly productive for the rest of labor. Cadence moved back up a little after each contraction, but each contraction brought them farther down than the last. I could feel their head with my hand at 6:43.</p>
<p>I was able to push two or three times with every wave, two or three exhalations. Mackenzie suggested that I maintain downward pressure between pushes as I inhaled, which I found effortful but intuitive. I kept my pelvic floor open and imagined my breath pooling at the bottom, rather than flowing all the way out.</p>
<p>I felt burning and stinging sensations around my vaginal opening, but they were not nearly as intense as reading about “the ring of fire” had led me to expect. On top of all the endorphins, it was a kind of pain I find pretty easy to tolerate. I was surprised to learn afterward that I had labial lacerations. It really wasn’t so bad while it happened.</p>
<p>Cadence’s head was 13 inches around. I got it out in three pushes, over the course of one contraction. I felt their body turn sideways shortly after their head emerged. I asked for a mirror to find out what it looked like: A furry softball sticking out of my vagina. Just as I’d expected, but fascinating anyway. Not a sight I was likely to see again, or at least not any time soon.</p>
<p>The rest of their body came out on the next contraction. Even though their chest was larger than their head (15 inches! Great big ribcage!), the whole thing seemed to slide out easily once the shoulders were through. At 7:22PM, Cadence was born into the tub, and Mackenzie caught them.</p>
<p>As I held Cadence to my chest, I said to them, “Hi! Hello! …You’re a little person!?” It seemed pretty wild to me that they had a whole human body full of rigid bones, that they were so large, and that all of that had somehow been inside of my abdomen. I rubbed their back to help them breathe while Mackenzie listened to their heart and lungs. Duncan came over to hold both of us.</p>
<p>Then I sang to them, the chorus from their birthday song, and Duncan joined me. I felt so relieved, and so pleased that I’d accomplished this, and that they were all right.</p>
<p>I was excited for the life they would have. I cried a little as I sang, and my voice wavered. I’m glad it’s one of the first things they heard on the outside. I sincerely meant it, and I always will.</p>
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Briennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15624501270714671076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-577854004423770643.post-22215780057961361152023-06-27T11:39:00.007-04:002023-06-27T15:26:38.324-04:00The Nuts and Bolts of Naturalism<p>Man I am so very overdue for this post.</p>
<p>I have been working for the past year on a second sequence in the series that started with "<a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/s/evLkoqsbi79AnM5sz">Intro to Naturalism</a>". Intro was about the worldview. This one's called "The Nuts and Bolts of Naturalism", and it's the step-by-step how-to. This, like the previous sequence, is <a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/s/zLib3j2Fdnnx3aP3F">over at LessWrong.com.</a> </p>
<p>Readers of Agenty Duck will be familiar with most of the things in Nuts and Bolts, but I've spent a lot of time refining the techniques and putting them together into a larger strategy, and from there into a curriculum. Here is a crosspost of the opening essay.</p>
<h3>Introducing the Nuts and Bolts of Naturalism</h3>
<br/>
<h4>What Is Naturalism?</h4>
<p>Naturalism is a general-purpose procedure for advancing one’s art of rationality.</p>
<p>“Naturalism” is the term I use for an investigative process that focuses attention on the points in daily life where subjective experience intersects with crucial information. It is a systematic method for taking your implicit stories and assumptions and holding them up against reality. In the process, you’ll find out whether they survive that contact, or get replaced with new stories.</p>
<p>I’ve previously published a sequence that focuses on the philosophy and perspective underlying this method. In it, I describe what I mean by “naturalism” in a lot of detail, by expanding on the sentence, “Knowing the territory takes patient and direct observation.” Fundamentally, I think of naturalism as the practice of behaving as though you believe that knowing the territory takes patient and direct observation.</p>
<h4>What Is This Sequence?</h4>
<p>My first naturalism sequence was about the worldview. This one is the step-by-step how-to.</p>
<p>The sequence you’re currently reading is the second in a larger series. This second sequence is coherent on its own; however, if you start to read and find yourself wondering, “But why would I bother with any of this?” then you should probably stop and go read the worldview sequence first. (If you instead find yourself wishing that there were many more in-depth examples, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for my third sequence, which I expect will consist mainly of demonstration.)</p>
<p>As I pointed out at the end of the intro sequence, the practice of naturalism is entirely focused on “patient observation”.</p>
<blockquote><p>When a person first begins to study naturalism with me, … I begin by helping them establish consistent habits of observation. … And then, throughout what has so far proven to be about a three month program, I never shift our focus away from consistent habits of observation. It’s not just where I start. It’s the entire curriculum. …</p>
<p>From a practical perspective, this dogged persistence is the foundation of naturalism. “Direct observation of the territory”, without patience, gets you something like a bag of tricks. Valuable tricks, but still tricks. Isolated mental motions made when they are convenient and enjoyable, not when they are most needed.</p>
<p>With patience, though, you get a life-long practice of epistemic rationality.</p></blockquote>
<p>The sort of patience I have in mind is not simply waiting. It is a long series of small, consistent efforts to observe openly and thoroughly.</p>
<p>I’ve developed many detailed strategies and techniques for directing those efforts over time. In the past few years, I’ve woven these strategies together into a comprehensive curriculum that several people have completed, and many more have experimented with in part.</p>
<p>In these essays, I will delineate my naturalist curriculum, piece by piece.</p>
<p>These are the nuts and bolts of my practice, and I’ve done my best to touch on each of them.</p>
<h4>What This Sequence Isn’t</h4>
<p>What follows is a lot like an extremely detailed syllabus. It is not really the curriculum itself in text form.</p>
<p>The full curriculum depends not just on instruction in the techniques, but on practical grounding in the underlying philosophy, plus a whole lot of real-time demonstration and practice. You can’t learn the violin just by reading a book, and you can’t learn naturalism that way either. You have to wrestle with all of it in real life.</p>
<p>That said, I do hope to present here a sturdy framework that especially enterprising students of rationality could personalize and flesh out into a full independent-study curriculum, and from there into a systematic rationality practice. If that might be your aim, I have a few suggestions.</p>
<h4>Tips For the Ambitious</h4>
<p><strong>Tip 1: Read First</strong></p>
<p>Even if you do plan to attempt a full naturalist study by following the instructions in this overview, I recommend reading through the whole sequence before you begin. I think it will help a lot to be somewhat familiar with a bird’s eye sketch of the process before finding out all the ways things go sideways and require creativity down on the ground.</p>
<p><strong>Tip 2: Prepare For the Unexpected</strong></p>
<p>As you read, I encourage you to keep in mind that no naturalist study goes exactly like the curriculum suggests. As Eisenhower said, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” What I’m sharing with you is a plan for naturalist study.</p>
<p>Direct investigation is invariably messy and complicated, because the world is messy and complicated, and so are investigators. If I describe something that seems off to you, or that doesn’t sound like it fits your situation or the way your own mind works, you’re likely right. Generate alternatives, or at least be ready to look for them in the future.</p>
<p><strong>Tip 3: Invite a Friend</strong></p>
<p>Some people study best independently, but many don’t. Social engagement is a fundamental part of my curriculum, and building some into your own work could make a huge difference. When you’re trying to see familiar things in new ways, meeting regularly with someone else who’s doing the same can be both supportive and usefully challenging. They may ask questions you haven’t thought of, or notice things you’ve missed. They’ll also be one more external structure to help keep your progress consistent.</p>
Briennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15624501270714671076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-577854004423770643.post-8852990066557620682022-08-03T15:00:00.001-04:002022-08-03T15:00:08.643-04:00A Month Of Ocumare<p>I have a chocolate blog! Mostly I just post my tasting notes there, but sometimes I say more stuff too. This time I said a whole bunch of stuff, because I tasted the same chocolate every day for a month and then wrote about the experience.</p>
<p>You can <a href="https://www.loganstrohl.com/tasting-blog/a-month-of-ocumare?fbclid=IwAR2-YCw5J53vrbA7sUUsVPzV-RkM3S4iYgXTzb3npxMPbOBw6_kbkcVNYPo">read it here</a>. You might like it if you enjoy my writings on phenomenology, perception, and original seeing.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_Il6TBdA4Jbf_-i39UcAfImlEtwWTEWF9XhM1VK2jWYwZRMNSIl3SOm53YdA2SOIw_sLXGHheIDP_z9M9f3XjM3wWQfOVLv8sRrKx3Po_hss2pphxH9J_lnsDNUsKKFFBNMbDX2NaDzE9lKgt3rAt8UeheRelJTMUf9L3ZPxAZ3e3WZhxx5uZbzAg/s4032/PXL_20220630_215034457.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_Il6TBdA4Jbf_-i39UcAfImlEtwWTEWF9XhM1VK2jWYwZRMNSIl3SOm53YdA2SOIw_sLXGHheIDP_z9M9f3XjM3wWQfOVLv8sRrKx3Po_hss2pphxH9J_lnsDNUsKKFFBNMbDX2NaDzE9lKgt3rAt8UeheRelJTMUf9L3ZPxAZ3e3WZhxx5uZbzAg/s320/PXL_20220630_215034457.jpg"/></a></div>Briennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15624501270714671076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-577854004423770643.post-86778764882824054762022-02-24T15:59:00.000-05:002022-02-24T15:59:26.530-05:00Intro To Naturalism Sequence<i><p>I've written an entire sequence introducing "naturalism", and I've just finished publishing it on LessWrong. You can see the whole thing at <a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/s/evLkoqsbi79AnM5sz">this link</a>.</p>
<p>Here's the first post:</p></i>
<h1>Orientation</h1>
<p>A note on how to approach this sequence:</p>
<p>If you were exactly like me, I would ask you to savor this sequence, not scarf it. I would ask you to approach each of these essays in an expansive, lingering, thoughtful sort of mood. I would ask you to read them a little bit at a time, perhaps from a comfortable chair with a warm drink beside you, and to take breaks to make dinner, sing in the car, talk to your friends, and sleep.</p>
<p>These essays are reflections on the central principles I have gradually excavated from my past ten years of intellectual labor. I am a very slow thinker myself; if you move too quickly, I expect we’ll miss each other completely.</p>
<p>There’s a certain kind of thing that happens when a person moves quickly, and relies a lot on their built-up structures—their familiar, tried-and-true habits of thought and perception. There is a <em>different</em> kind of thing that happens when a person can step back and bring those very structures into view, rather than standing atop them. I'm hoping for the latter. </p>
<p>But since you’re <em>not</em> exactly like me, there might be a better way to approach this sequence, in your particular case, than the exact one I’d suggest to myself. I hope you’ll take a moment to check.</p>
<p>What matters to me is not how fast you read, or how many sittings it takes; what matters is that you create for yourself enough <em>space</em> to explore, to observe the real world beyond all these words, to watch how your own thoughts and experiences unfold in dialog with mine. Any method that allows you to maintain that kind of space as you read is perfect, as far as I’m concerned.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>“Naturalism” is a label for a conceptual framework, investigatory discipline, and semi-formalized way of looking at and learning about the world. I’ve been developing and teaching naturalism for the past couple of years, if you start counting on the day I chose the term, or since 2013, if you take a more historical perspective. I’ve made some relevant content available, but I’ve had trouble writing a straightforward introductory post.</p>
<p>The reason for this, as far as I can tell, is that the naturalist perspective is suspicious of categories, projections, and preconceptions, and seeks to move closer toward (relatively) unfiltered, direct observations. It’s specifically a frame-breaking and frame-escaping discipline, so it’s hard to describe in frame-terms without being importantly misleading.</p>
<p>I ardently desire not to mislead anyone.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>There’s a saying I like a lot, which goes: “A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two is never sure.”</p>
<p>(When I first heard this, I needed to pause for a moment, to let it sink in. It helped me to actually visualize wearing a watch on each wrist, then checking the time.)</p>
<p>The reason I like this saying is that it reminds me to be confused, in an appropriate fashion. “Confused” might even be too weak of a word—it’s almost like it reminds me to be <em>scared</em>, in an appropriate fashion.</p>
<p>I mean, sure—for most things, I don’t have to know what time it <em>actually</em> is, with sufficient precision that the off-ness of my watch makes a meaningful difference. The claim here is not that absolute clarity is required at all times.</p>
<p>But there is indeed an unfortunate property of having-a-watch, which is that it provides me with an <em>answer</em> to the question “what time is it?”</p>
<p>It provides that answer clearly, and specifically, and unambiguously. It provides that answer with <em>more confidence</em> than it ought to, like a calculation that doesn’t attend to significant digits. And if I’m not careful, then with my watch right in front of me, it’s very easy to lose track of the fact that I do not, in fact, know exactly what time it is. To forget that what I really know is what time it <em>almost</em> is.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>This is what our concepts do for us. They are usually a strict upgrade over “entirely too much information for us to even begin to process or handle”; but if you lean on them too heavily, or too unthinkingly, they become actively misleading. Actively <em>harmful</em>, in cases where precision and accuracy genuinely matter, and being subtly wrong is disastrous.</p>
<p>And concepts <em>encourage</em> us to lean. They’re sturdy! Sensible! Comforting! They soothe confusion, make the world seem more predictable and comprehensible, give us the surface sensation of control (or at least understanding). It’s nice to have <em>answers</em>.</p>
<p>But the map is not the territory.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>It’s easy to look up at the sky, and name the constellations, without losing track of your knowledge that there isn’t really a Great Bear up there. We know that the constellations aren’t “real,” that they’re just there to help us chunk and cluster and orient and discuss.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://39669.cdn.cke-cs.com/rQvD3VnunXZu34m86e5f/images/3784f22468044c0ae4029aec83f55ff89ab50b08e2650fdf.png/w_1958" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="787" src="https://39669.cdn.cke-cs.com/rQvD3VnunXZu34m86e5f/images/3784f22468044c0ae4029aec83f55ff89ab50b08e2650fdf.png/w_1958"/></a></div>
<p>But constellations are an unusually transparent construction. In the set of fake concepts that we impose on messy reality, they’re unusually candid about their fakeness. Their arbitrary nature is kind enough to be apparent and obvious.</p>
<p>Many concepts are much less wearing-their-fakeness-on-their-sleeve. Constellations don’t bear all that much resemblance to actual stars, so it’s easy to avoid getting confused. But a lot of concepts really look quite similar to the thing they’re modeling, and are therefore much more seductive, mesmerizing, convincing, befuddling. Much more in-the-way, much more likely to distract, much harder to set aside and see past.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The concept Harry's mind had of the rubber eraser as a single object was obvious nonsense.</p>
<p>It was a map that didn't and <em>couldn't</em> match the territory.</p>
<p>Human beings modeled the world using stratified levels of organization, they had separate thoughts about how countries worked, how people worked, how >organs worked, how cells worked, how molecules worked, how quarks worked.</p>
<p>When Harry's brain needed to think about the eraser, it would think about the rules that governed erasers, like "erasers can get rid of pencil-marks". >Only if Harry's brain needed to predict what would happen on the lower chemical level, only then would Harry's brain start thinking - as though it were >a separate fact - about rubber molecules.</p>
<p>But that was all in the <em>mind</em>.</p>
<p>Harry's mind might have separate <em>beliefs</em> about rules that governed erasers, but there was no <em>separate law of physics</em> that governed erasers.</p>
<p>Harry's mind modeled reality using multiple levels of organization, with different beliefs about each level. But that was all in the <em>map</em>, the true >territory wasn't like that, <em>reality itself</em> had only a <em>single</em> level of organization, the quarks, it was a unified low-level process obeying >mathematically simple rules.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is <em>genuinely difficult</em> to notice that an eraser is something other than “an eraser”—to circumvent the well-intentioned shortcutting that our brains are so practiced at doing.</p>
<p>And to be clear: it’s usually not necessary to notice that the mental category “eraser” is glossing over a bunch of detail. It usually does not matter; our concepts are ubiquitous in large part because they tend to be sufficient, adequate for our purposes.</p>
<p>But there are times when it’s absolutely crucial to be un-hypnotized, when it’s absolutely crucial to be aware of the difference between [what’s happening] and [the layer of interpretation we’ve draped like a blanket over what’s happening]. </p>
<p>And there’s something frightening (to me, at least) about the idea of such a crucial moment arising and people <em>not noticing it</em>, because they <em>aren’t even aware that they’re draping a blanket</em>. Or noticing that they need to set aside the blanket, but not knowing how to actually do so.</p>
<p>Which is why I’ve devoted so many of my resources to developing naturalism. It’s an important facet of mature rationalist practice, and it’s mostly missing from our collective toolkit.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>Notice, though, that “naturalism” is <em>itself a concept</em>. It’s a constellation painted somewhat arbitrarily over a multidimensional cluster of phenomena, pretending to be real. It’s easy to say that X is a part of naturalism and Y is not, and to forget that there <em>just isn’t any boundary</em> out there in the territory.</p>
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<p>But in order to properly draw your attention to the cluster, I think I sort of have to paint those lines. Human brains (mine included) have a really hard time getting excited about vast collections of vaguely adjacent points; in order to produce something useful and comprehensible, I have to pretend that there’s a Thing, there.</p>
<p>I think doing so is instrumentally useful, and I think that (when done honestly, as this intro sequence is attempting to do) it’s not actually misleading, or self-undermining. This is a fundamental thesis of naturalism: that there are points, and there are paintings we superimpose upon them, and that <em>these things are different</em>. That the constellations are of a wholly different nature than the stars.</p>
<p>Doesn’t mean we don’t need the conceptual overlay. We just want to know, in any given moment, whether we’re dealing more with paintings, or more with the things they’re meant to depict.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>The constellation I will paint in this sequence is a single sentence. It’s a sentence I built one word at a time, sketched atop a cluster of five stars I’ve picked out from my view of the night sky. </p>
<p>The sentence is a summary of naturalism after-the-fact. It will do almost nothing to help you understand the stars themselves, the real thing that I try to do with my mind day in and day out. </p>
<p>But it may serve to guide your attention to those stars. It may prompt you to look more closely, for yourself, at the reality hidden behind the tidy painting.</p>
<p>The sentence, which I will discuss piece by piece throughout my introductory sequence, is this: </p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://39669.cdn.cke-cs.com/rQvD3VnunXZu34m86e5f/images/79bd048cbb5b3b899d38236afb01d94ab4d4acbcf2c551c2.png/w_2550" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="68" data-original-width="800" src="https://39669.cdn.cke-cs.com/rQvD3VnunXZu34m86e5f/images/79bd048cbb5b3b899d38236afb01d94ab4d4acbcf2c551c2.png/w_2550"/></a></div>
<p>The sentence forms the outline of my sequence, more or less:</p>
<ul>
<li>Knowing</li>
<li>The Territory</li>
<li>Observation</li>
<li>Patient Observation</li>
<li>Direct Observation</li>
</ul>
<p>My only goal in this sequence is to communicate what I mean by the sentence, “Knowing the territory takes patient and direct observation.”</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>Here is what will happen in this sequence: I will pick out the concepts that seem central to my understanding of naturalism; I will name them with words; and I will do my best to tell you what I mean by those words.</p>
<p>That is all.</p>
<p>There are a few things you might expect from an introductory sequence that I will not even try to accomplish. I want to be clear about my intentions.</p>
<p>I will not try to argue for the truth of the proposition the sentence picks out. It’s true, I think, that knowing the territory takes patient and direct observation. But I won’t try to convince you of that here.</p>
<p>I won’t tell you what would change my mind, or what I’d expect to see if I were wrong. I won’t tell you how I think you could find out if I were correct, or if I were not. I will not present evidence. I will not engage with counterarguments.</p>
<p>Inasmuch as I’m making a claim, you’re right to want that sort of thing from me. But I’ll disappoint you, for now, on this front. I cannot do very much at once; for me, just saying what I mean without misleading anyone is <em>quite</em> enough to be getting on with.</p>
<p>I will not try to argue that naturalism is important, either. Or, at least, not directly or on purpose. I won’t say much of anything about when it matters, or why. This is also a worthwhile topic, but it’s beyond the scope of this sequence.</p>
<p>Finally I will not try to help you learn naturalism. I <em>do</em> have a sometimes effective curriculum at this point, and I’ve even published a sort of [proto-naturalism introductory course] (https://www.loganstrohl.com/nature-study) that you can take at your own pace online; but I will not be presenting anything like that here.</p>
<p>What I <em>will</em> try to do is pick out the concepts that are central to naturalism, name them with words, and tell you what I mean by those words. </p>
<p>It will take me seven-and-a-half essays, the first of which you have nearly finished.</p>
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<p>When we are done here, I will write more things. When I write those things, I will sometimes use the term “naturalism”. And if this sequence is successful, people who have read it will know what I’m talking about. </p>
<p>People who have not read this sequence will say “What is naturalism?”, and I will finally be able to answer their question to my satisfaction.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>Knowing the territory takes patient and direct observation. Let us begin, then, with “<a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/s/evLkoqsbi79AnM5sz/p/S8kAJamj66gekjBwC">knowing</a>”.</p>
Briennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15624501270714671076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-577854004423770643.post-15823183320771807182021-11-12T01:12:00.003-05:002021-11-12T01:12:48.920-05:00Investigating Fabrication<p>I've got an essay up at LessWrong that definitely belongs here as well, but that's where it's all nicely formatted so I'm just gonna <a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NjZAkfio5FsCioahb/investigating-fabrication">link</a>. It's a demo of a naturalism study; Duncan wrote a great essay about "fabricated options", and I did a report on my attempts to learn the thing myself.</p>
Briennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15624501270714671076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-577854004423770643.post-45768742212424057142021-10-01T00:52:00.000-04:002021-10-01T00:52:17.783-04:00Why Is History So Boring?: An Open Letter To My Middle School Self, To Be Read Beneath the Desk During Social Studies Class
<p><b>1. Read one random sentence of a history textbook and pick out the most mind-numbing phrases. </b></p>
<p>I'll go first.</p>
<p>"In 1958, Heinrich Berlin published a detailed analysis of inscriptions on the sarcophagus lid from the Temple of Inscriptions at Palenque, identifying the ten figures on the sides of the sarcophagus by their name and glyphs."</p>
<p>Most mind-numbing phrases: "In 1958", followed by "Heinrich Berlin", followed by "Temple of the Inscription at Palenque".</p>
<p><b>2. Write down what exactly happens in your head as you read each phrase. How do you feel? What do you imagine? What kinds of thoughts pop up?</b></p>
<p>Here's mine.</p>
<p>"In 1958": Irritation, dismissal, skipping-over.</p>
<p>Whoah, slow down. What happens right before the irritation? How did you know to be irritated?</p>
<p>When I read something, I try to let it into my head and make sense of it. But when I read "1958"... It's like when I'm using my hands to prepare a spot in the garden for a new rosemary plant, and I reach down expecting to grab a handful of soft loamy soil and move it out of the way, but instead there's a buried rock that's bigger than my head. I run into "1958" really hard, and it doesn't yield and incorporate gracefully into my thoughts like ordinary words would, and then I'm all stumbling and disoriented. The dismissal and skipping-over is like having decided to put the rosemary plant six inches to the right rather than contending with the buried boulder.</p>
<p>"Heinrich Berlin": Irritation again, though less than before, and even faster skipping-over. It's almost exactly like coming across a word or phrase written in Russian. It's just some nonsense sounds that maybe mean something to somebody else and could perhaps come to mean something to me in the future given enough context, but I know that right now it's just a pointless name. But actually it's worse than that, because I know that I'm reading a history book, and I've learned that most of the names in history books only show up once or twice. It's not like when a main character in a fantasy book has an unfamiliar name that it would take a while to work out. In that case, I trust that it'll become familiar over time. But in a history book, proper nouns vanish almost immediately after they first show up.</p>
<p>"Temple of the Inscription at Palenque": Same as before, but this time with a feeling of exhaustion, "I'm fed up with this", and a motion of giving up. It's like my attempt to prepare the ground for a rosemary plant ran into three big rocks in a row, and maybe I should just find a pot and put the rosemary on my porch instead of in the ground. By the time I've gotten to the second half of the sentence ("identifying the ten figures on the sides of the sarcophagus by their name and glyphs"), it's like I've completely lost my footing and am tumbling freely down a hill. There's no chance for those words to make it in, because I'm too tired and disoriented.</p>
<p>I've recently learned something about how to read history. Like in the past three days. For my entire life before that, I would read something like, "In 1958, Heinrich Berlin published a detailed analysis of inscriptions on the sarcophagus lid from the Temple of Inscriptions at Palenque, identifying the ten figures on the sides of the sarcophagus by their name and glyphs," feel all of the things I just described, and then be angry at the author for doing this to me and give up in either despair or disgust. Sometimes, especially if I'd been excited about the topic, I'd even feel betrayed.
The problem is, history books <strong>look</strong> a lot like novels, and they even purport to tell "stories" about the past. Because of this surface-level similarity to something familiar, by default I take on pretty much the same mental posture I use when reading a novel.
But that's not the only way to read something. </p>
<p>What happens when you're reading a novel and you come across an unfamiliar word? You look it up in a dictionary, right? What is it like to look up a word in a dictionary?</p>
<p><b>3. Let's try it; let's both look up "jentacular", a word I've just run into for the first time, and keep track of what happens in our heads as we do it.</b></p>
<p>Even before I open a new tab and start to type (I'm using an electronic source instead of an actual book because I'm 32 and the world is different now), I can tell that my mind has already begun to "use a dictionary". There's a sharpness, a focus, a searching. I feel a little like a heat-seeking missile. It's like I've created an open space in my mind, a definition-shaped cavity, that's prepared for the meaning of a word to fall in.</p>
<p>As I open the tab and type "jentacular", it's as though the cavity narrows. Something about it becomes sharper. I'm no longer a heat-seeking missile; I have become more like a diving falcon who has identified a specific mouse.</p>
<p>The dictionary says: "Of or pertaining to a breakfast taken early in the morning, or immediately upon getting up."
As I read the definition, it doesn't immediately make complete sense to me. It takes me a minute to feel it out, to find the associated concepts and experiment with ways for them to fit together until I've found something I can hold onto. I scan up and down the entry a couple of times, and what finally makes the meaning settle in place is recognizing that this is an adjective. I had to adjust a little, because the definition-shaped cavity I'd created was accidentally a little bit more noun-shaped than adjective-shaped. </p>
<p>But I get it now: I have a daily habit of drinking a jentacular bottle of water even before breakfast. The deer are often full of jentacular yearning for my chrysanthemums. It was a bout of post-jentacular study of the Olmec that prompted this demonstration.</p>
<p>I expect you had a similar experience, because you know how to use a dictionary, too.</p>
<p><b>4. Now let's try this same thing with a novel. I'll give us a random sentence from a novel, and we'll track what it's like to read it.</b></p>
<p>"Then she turned slightly, looking to Aitrus lovingly."</p>
<p>Just before I read this sentence, as I look at the page in the novel, it's like I'm letting some kind of barrier dissolve so that the words can flow into me unimpeded. I'm making a welcoming sort of motion with my mind, and I feel a hint of curious excitement. It's as though I'm saying, "I wonder what this book will do to me!"</p>
<p>As I read the sentence, images happen. It feels effortless and automatic. All the work was in the preparation, when I made myself like a canvas. I read, "Then she turned slightly," and my imagination rushes forward to present me with a hazy image of a woman, and the kinesthetic sensation of turning a body a few degrees. I read, "looking to Aitrus lovingly," and the image becomes richer, more specific. The woman is an adult with long brown hair and an apron. My emotions about her become warm, I imagine a smile, and if I focus on the image for a while I begin to smell cinnamon, oatmeal, and chocolate chip cookies, and I know the smooth soft alto voice she will have when she speaks.</p>
<p>None of that is work. It's just happening to me, automatically, as I read. Imagining bits of stories is what my mind does when it rests. When it daydreams, and when it sleeps. So to engage effectively with a novel, all I have to do is get my deliberate thoughts, goals, and distractions out of the way.</p>
<p>Now let's go back to the history book. Why did you feel betrayed by the author?</p>
<p>There are a lot of years between us, so I could be wrong. But if you are like me in this respect, and if my memory of you is correct, it's because you prepared to read the story of history by cooperatively, trustingly, vulnerably getting yourself out of the way. You let your guard down, as though preparing for sleep, to become a blank canvas upon which the author might paint. You did what you thought was your part in the shared endeavor, and then the author failed to do what you thought was theirs.</p>
<p>But a history book is not that kind of story.</p>
<p>When it comes to the sort of cooperative endeavor in which reader and author together engage, a history book is much more like a dictionary than like a novel.</p>
<p>It's a little confusing, especially in history books written specifically for high schoolers, or for a popular audience; there's a lot of pressure on the authors of those books to entertain, to not completely alienate people who <strong>don't</strong> know how to read history. So there are sentences like the one we started with, but there are also exciting full-page pictures, sentences filled with action verbs and suspenseful clauses that sound a lot like tabloid journalism, and even artificially constructed novel-like plots.</p>
<p>Really, though, a history book is a kind of <strong>resource</strong>. It is a resource for answering questions. </p>
<p>If you started reading a dictionary, cover to cover, for no other reason than that someone told you to, it would probably be even more mind-numbing than your experiences with history books so far. It would be like that because you would not be <strong>using</strong> the dictionary in the way it was designed to be used. You would not be shaping your mind in a way that let you receive the type of information offered, and you would not be doing the work needed to make sense of the information once you'd begun to receive it.</p>
<p>Ideally, you'd go to a history book when you were already curious about a certain topic and wanted to understand its context. </p>
<p>I've been reading about ancient mesoamerican cultures, for example, because I've been really interested in chocolate, and I want to know where it comes from. What I find in the history books is a curated collection of a whole bunch of <strong>evidence</strong> about what happened in mesoamerica a long time ago, before cacao trees were domesticated. As I read, the work I'm doing is about sifting through and weighing all of that evidence to figure out for myself what the world was like when people first started to eat chocolate.</p>
<p>But since you're in a pretty terrible educational situation where people are going to plop you down in front of a history book and force you to either read or sacrifice your grades, here is what I recommend.</p>
<p>Never just start reading. If you have a history book in front of you, and you notice the getting-out-of-the-way feeling that is like reading a novel or preparing to dream, stop what you are doing. Do not read anything but the title of the section, or at most the first paragraph.
Then get out a piece of paper, and make a list of questions. Ask yourself, "Given that I'm going to learn about X, what do I most want to know?" Think about what kinds of things you're usually interested in (poetry, philosophy, science, whatever) and try asking questions that have something to do with those topics.</p>
<p>Only once you have filled the paper with questions, or spent at least five minutes trying to, should you begin to consult the textbook. The author will present some evidence that might pertain to some of your questions. See if you can use what they have to say to figure out whatever it is that you care about.</p>
<p>Do not try to care about what they're saying just because they wrote it down. That's not how history books work, any more than it's how dictionaries work.</p>
<p>One of the questions on the list I wrote while preparing to learn about the Olmecs is, "What was going on in Europe at the time?" I knew that chocolate is not native to Europe, and that Europeans did a lot to advance chocolate-making technology once they got their hands on cacao beans. I figured that if I follow the history of chocolate, I will eventually get to the point where cacao arrives in Europe, and I didn't want that arrival to be a floating, disconnected point in European culture. I wanted to understand the context of both sides of the ocean. So I thought I should keep an eye on the paralel history of Europe as I learned the history of mesoamerica.</p>
<p>Thus, when I encountered the sentence, "San Lorenzo is the oldest of the heartland cities, dating from about 1500 B.C.," I did not feel irritation, dismissal, or skipping-over when I got to the number. I did stumble slightly—the number didn't fall right into my head as easily as most words would—but I knew how to recover, just like I knew how to make sense of "jentacular" when it turned out to be an adjective rather than a noun. I made sense of "1500 B.C." by pausing, mulling it over, recognizing that it was a year, recognizing years as shared reference frames across continents, and wondering what was happening in Europe at the time. Was this before Socrates? I think so. Maybe even before Greece, but probably not by more than a thousand years. </p>
<p>In the end, after a bit more work of this sort, here is how I understood the sentence: </p>
<p>"San Lorenzo [an ancient city near the Southern coast of the Gulf of Mexico, just within agricultural zone 11 so probably warm enough for cacao to grow] is the oldest of [the major Olmec population centers], dating from about [a thousand years before Ancient Greece, and two hundred and fifty years before the Olmec (took it over? started calling themselves 'Olmec'? changed in some way that contemporary historians now recognize them as 'Olmec'?]."</p>
<p>It took some doing to fit that sentence into my thoughts, and to understand most sentences I've read in same book. But it's not irritating or frustrating work, because I am eager to do it, and well prepared. That's the state you need to find before beginning to read history.</p>
<p>A final note:</p>
<p>If you're feeling up for a slightly greater challenge, imagine that the author was intensely curious about something genuinely interesting. They wrote this history book as part of gathering evidence about the interesting thing. See if you can reconstruct <strong>their</strong> list of brainstormed questions. Try to figure out what was so fascinating that they had to write an entire book to work it out.</p>
Briennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15624501270714671076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-577854004423770643.post-43582049383662913522021-07-17T13:18:00.002-04:002021-07-17T13:18:38.577-04:00The Importance Of Being Bored<p>One of the assignments I very often suggest to students of naturalism is "be bored".</p>
<p>I'm exaggerating a little when I put it that way. I don't actually mean that painful experiences of weary directionlessness are the goal. The goal of the assignment is to ensure that there are blocks of time in your day-to-day life in which it would be <i>possible</i> for you to be bored.</p>
<p>Naturalism is a System 1 approach. Most of the work is done "in the background", while you're engaged with other things or not trying to do anything in particular at all. It asks your deliberate, solution-driven thought processes to wait in the hall for a while, so the rest of your mind has space to make contact with the world and to process it from all the available perspectives.</p>
<p>But what tends to happen when we stop using our minds to accomplish things on purpose for a little while? What usually happens when you go for a walk, ride in an Uber, or eat lunch? </p>
<p>In my experience, and in the experience of most of the people I've worked with, what happens is usually some form of passive entertainment. We watch Youtube, listen to a podcast, or casually socialize (either through social media or through in-person smalltalk).</p>
<p>I don't mean to demonize passive entertainment. I use it frequently, and I don't think I'm making a mistake most of the time. </p>
<p>I only mean to point out that many of us have our lives arranged such that when we stop making deliberate use of our minds, we tend to hand them over to someone else instead. We are almost constantly occupied with directed experiences, whether or not we're the ones directing.</p>
<p>I recommend that students of naturalism, or anyone trying to do creative and original work, wrest some of their time away from the external forces that sweep in to occupy their unoccupied moments. </p>
<p>Give yourself an opportunity every day to be bored. </p>
<p>If you go for a walk, you could leave your headphones behind. If you commute by train, you could leave your phone or ipad in your backpack. If you eat lunch while browsing Facebook, you could sit on a bench outside instead. And if you meditate anyway, you could try a version with no instructions at all besides "sit quietly". </p>
<p>You'll find that your mind wanders. It daydreams. It thinks about nonsense, and the past, and all sorts of things. That is the point. The more your mind wanders, the more psychological vantage points you will occupy. And the more vantage points you occupy, the more opportunities you have to see things from unaccustomed angles, and to probe them with diverse tools.</p>
<p>If you allow your mind the space to wander freely on a regular basis, more of your mind is available for processing whatever it is that interests you. So if you want to understand something deeply for yourself, do not let yourself be entertained all of the time. Be bored.</p>
Briennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15624501270714671076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-577854004423770643.post-46882404635598997472021-07-08T01:26:00.002-04:002021-07-08T01:26:43.075-04:00Announcing "Original Seeing With a Focus On Life"<p>In May and June of 2021, I ran an online nature study course with about two dozen participants. I had three goals:</p>
<ol>
<li>Help people create or deepen a personal connection with nature.</li>
<li>Learn how to run month-long online courses with over a dozen participants.</li>
<li>Test some hunches about the rationality material I’ve been working on.</li>
</ol>
<p>One of my main hunches was that if you complete this course, you’ll find you’re able to study your own mind, or just about anything else, in the way a naturalist studies nature, with no further guidance. I obviously need more data, but the preliminary feedback looks promising.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.loganstrohl.com/nature-study">A solo version of the course is now available for free through my website</a>, thanks largely to support from <a href="https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/far-future">the Long Term Future Fund</a>.</p>
<p>If you want to get better at original seeing, I know of no better resource. I hope that some of you will try it out and tell me how it goes.</p>Briennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15624501270714671076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-577854004423770643.post-19306347651443764162021-06-16T01:31:00.003-04:002021-06-16T22:47:16.334-04:00How To Get Poetry (Part 2)<p>I think the reason I sat on <a href="http://agentyduck.blogspot.com/2021/06/how-to-get-poetry.html">that last post</a> for two years is because I said what I think people are doing wrong, and I said what the right thing to do <i>is</i>, but I didn't actually say <i>how</i> to do the right thing. So now I'm hoping to correct myself, at least a little.</p>
<p>First, an object of study: “Early One Summer” by W. S. Merwin (from <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Migration-Selected-Poems-W-S-Merwin/dp/1556592612/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Migration+merwin&qid=1623820824&sr=8-1">Migration</a></i>)</p>
<blockquote><p>Years from now<br>
someone will come upon a layer of birds<br>
and not know what he is listening for</p>
<p>these are the days<br>
when the beetles hurry through dry grass<br>
hiding pieces of light they have stolen</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As I said before, the main problem is that we're all used to adopting a certain vantage point as we read: one that reveals to us semantic meaning, implication, and degrees of accuracy.</p>
<p>The thing about adopting a new vantage point, no matter what it is, is that you usually have to un-stick yourself from the old one first. So we'll start with that.</p>
<p>I once did <a href="http://agentyduck.blogspot.com/2018/08/photo-studies.html">a photo study of a slide</a> in which I took many pictures while slowly circling the object. Once I'd photographed the slide from many angles, my object of study seemed less like a "slide", and more like an abundant source of diverse phenomenological affordances. A fountain of experience. Ways to conceive of the object seemed endless, and "slide" felt like such a brusque summary as to be slightly offensive.</p>
<p>I hope to lead you through a similar tour around this poem. I will demonstrate with the first stanza, taking it line by line, and you can try the second.</p>
<h3>Exercise 1: Taking A Tour</h3>
<p><b>1. If it were a boat, what sort of boat would it be?</b></p>
<p><i>Years from now</i>: A very tall, thin boat that's out in search of the edge of the Earth.<br><br>
<i>someone will come upon a layer of birds</i>: A dusty boat marooned in the middle of a desert, half-buried in sand.<br><br>
<i>and not know what he is listening for</i>: A phantom ship with torn black sails emerging from the mist.</p>
<p>Your lines:</p>
<p><i>these are the days<br>
when the beetles hurry through dry grass<br>
hiding pieces of light they have stolen</i></p>
<p><b>2. If it compelled a certain body movement, what sort of body movement would it cause?</b></p>
<p><i>Years from now</i>: A big sweeping motion of one arm, all the way down to the floor and back up again.<br><br>
<i>someone will come upon a layer of birds</i>: Tapping fingers, like at a keyboard or drumming on a table.<br><br>
<i>and not know what he is listening for</i>: Shoulders shimmying back and forth.</p>
<p>Your lines:</p>
<p><i>these are the days<br>
when the beetles hurry through dry grass<br>
hiding pieces of light they have stolen</i></p>
<p><b>3. If this were the title of a song, what would the song be like?</b> (Or, what would be its instrumentation?)</p>
<p><i>Years from now</i>: Slow and melodic, with a quiet tympany and a french horn.<br><br>
<i>someone will come upon a layer of birds</i>: Staccato, fast, and light, with plucked violin strings and a piccolo.<br><br>
<i>and not know what he is listening for</i>: Warbling midrange strings and woodwinds punctuated by harsh low cello chords.</p>
<p>Your lines:</p>
<p><i>these are the days<br>
when the beetles hurry through dry grass<br>
hiding pieces of light they have stolen</i></p>
***
<p>If you're feeling somewhat unmoored at this point, that's a good sign. It means you're not stuck. Time for the next exercise.</p>
<p>We're trying to move toward a certain vantage point. But there is no map. We only know that the destination is "north". I'll describe what I think "north" is for poetry in general, and then you'll build a compass whose needle is sensitive to the relevant electromagnetic field.</p>
<h3>Exercise 2: Building A Compass</h3>
<p>An appropriate mental posture for most poetry involves intimacy, vulnerability, and openness. </p>
<p>It's like a six year old offering half of her candy bar to the new kid. It's like a son calling his father for the first time since the fight two years ago. It's like telling a secret, hearing an echo, or finding a glow worm on the forest floor. Whateer all of those have in common, that's north. When you're in the right place for poetry, your mind is making an invitation, uncertain and hopeful, ready to find out what happens next.</p>
<p><b>1. When has your mind been in that kind of vulnerable and open place?</b></p>
<p>My answer: I was in a place like this while helping a caterpillar cross the sidewalk today. I didn't have a stick or other transportation device handy, and I was worried it might possibly bite or spit acid onto my skin or something. But that seemed unlikely, and I decided to pick it up anyway. The moment when it first began to crawl onto the back of my hand, that is the memory I have in mind.</p>
<p><b>2. How can you tell?</b> When you play through that memory, which exact features of your experience make it clear to you that intimacy, vulnerability, and openness are happening?</p>
<p>My answer: As the caterpillar touched my finger and began to climb onto the back of my hand, I had a feeling like the second to last note of a symphony, or of giving myself over. I'd acknowledged and accepted a risk, and now I was letting myself fall into whatever world we found ourselves in, me and that insect. I can tell it was a poetic posture from the feeling of transition between hanging and willingly falling.</p>
<p><b>3. Make that same invitation as you read the poem.</b> It might take multiple readings to find your way there.</p>
<p>(I'll describe what this is like for me with the first stanza, taken as a whole, and you can follow with the second.)</p>
<p><i>Years from now<br>
someone will come upon a layer of birds<br>
and not know what he is listening for</i></p>
<p>When I first started reading, the lines felt matter of fact, and I listened as though expecting to hear practical information I'd need to make sense of. But I felt a tiny little tug from my compass needle as my head tilted at the phrase "layer of birds".</p>
<p>I recognized a choice there. I felt confusion, and I felt branching opportunities. On one branch, I could try to resolve the confusion by looking for simple literal meaning. On other branches, I could let the confusion be. Just let it hang around, give up for the moment on understanding what a "layer of birds" is supposed to be about.</p>
<p>I asked myself which branch felt more like the transition between hanging and falling, and I chose not to try to resolve the confusion.</p>
<p>I circled back around to the beginning of the poem. I felt a little bit unsteady and afraid, having chosen not to demand sense of the words. I tried to invite them, instead. I imagined opening the door of my house and inviting them in off the patio.</p>
<p>And the second read was very different. It felt quiet and a little bit distant, full of subtle uncertainty, as though listening to almost-silence. I think I am seeing the poem as itself now, but I haven't quite connected with it yet. </p>
<p>My compass says I should not just invite it in, but embrace it. That feels more like giving myself over for the last note of the symphony. My arms open. I imagine hugging the poem and saying "welcome home". I also remember a few of my snapshots from the tour in the first exercise.</p>
<p>Now I see it. </p>
<p>In this read-through, it's hard to describe my experience of reading, because I can't possibly say it better than the poem. I just want to grab your shoulders and shake you while shouting, "Years from now. Someone. will come upon, A LAYER OF BIRDS. and NOT KNOW. What he is Listening for. (!!!)"</p>
<p>As I read, I'm wading in this undifferentiated river of imagery and emotion. The stanza is a wave made of impressions. There is a sweeping grand distant dusty future impression. It rises into an arriving stopped-short unsettling discovery impression. Then it falls into a scattered patient unsteady impression.</p>
<p>Your lines:</p>
<p><i>these are the days<br>
when the beetles hurry through dry grass<br>
hiding pieces of light they have stolen</i></p>
***
<p>I don't know if that worked for you. These are not exercises I have ever tested before now, at least not for this purpose.</p>
<p>Even if it did work, you may not be feeling anything like what I described as you read the poem. But you probably will be feeling something different than you usually do when you read a poem and think that you "don't get it".</p>
<p>I’d love for you to email me at loganbriennestrohl@gmail.com to tell me what happened.</p>
Briennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15624501270714671076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-577854004423770643.post-40564339417991118582021-06-15T21:49:00.005-04:002021-06-16T01:33:21.108-04:00How To Get Poetry (Part 1)<p>[I wrote this in 2019, and just decided to post it here. Then I made <a href="https://agentyduck.blogspot.com/2021/06/how-to-get-poetry-part-2.html">a follow-up post</a>.]</p>
<p>Someone observed to me the other day that poetry does not seem to “land” for them the way that it does for me. I want to try naming at least one thing I think poetry lovers (whom I know) are doing differently than people who don’t quite “get” poetry.</p>
<p>I’m not sure there is one central thing, but if there is, my guess is that it’s a matter of approach.</p>
<p>Anybody reading this is familiar with reading in general. At the very least, you read blog posts. You probably read Tweets or Reddit threads. And you read books.</p>
<p>In all of these, we tend to be focused on <em>what happens</em>, or maybe <em>what it means</em>. The words we write, read, and speak are useful for communicating about events and states of affairs. If we read “the candidate won the popular vote, but lost the electoral vote”, we make an update, then move on to consider the implications. The phrase itself is immediately discarded, like the flesh of a juiced orange. That’s <em>usually</em> how language works.</p>
<p>But it’s not how poetry works. A very common way to prevent a poem from “landing” is to go in, gather info, and get out. You may not realize you’re doing this, even if you are, because it just feels like “reading”.</p>
<p>But it may feel like “reading, plus some other things”. I expect you can tell you’re approaching a poem this way if you recognize a background sense of searching, impatience, or frustration while reading, or if salient questions in your mind include things like, “What is this about?” and “What is the point?”.</p>
<p>I notice I’m delaying describing a better way to approach poetry. I’m delaying because I feel embarrassed. I feel as though I’m taking my clothes off to prepare for an arcane ritual I perform regularly, only today lots of people are watching, and they don’t necessarily know what’s happening. I’ll try it anyway. Here we go.</p>
<p>Poetry is intimate. It’s like a parent breastfeeding their newborn, or a husband comforting his wife with caresses after a loss, or the look of pride shared between a teacher and her favorite student during graduation. The way you would approach one of those situations is similar to how I think you should approach a poem, if you want to receive it as it was designed. Do not juice the words and throw away the rind.</p>
<p>The poetic experience is not one of updates or insights. Poems often ride on described events or on propositions, but they are not the stories they tell, and they're not the claims they make. </p>
<p>The sound of the words, the feel on your tongue, the dozens of associations an image might conjure for you, the felt shifts in your body, the rhythmic patterns, the emotions that dawn or ambush or flow, the way they superimpose, the moments when the pattern stumbles, the tiny pieces of sound or structure or concept that echo in later lines - these are what the purely poetic experience is made of.</p>
<p>And when you set out to read a poem… no, “read” is misleading here. Poetry is language transubstantiated in a chalice. When you set out to ingest a poem, to take it into your body and make it a part of yourself, you have to shift your mind out of its habitual relationship to language, and toward a state of extraordinary receptivity and participation.</p>
<p>Imagine that you are newly in love. When you wake up beside the one you love, you have the chance, for the first time, to watch them sleeping.</p>
<p>How does your mind move, in that moment? What allows you to rest your attention on the shape of their shoulder, the scent of their hair? What invites the full emotive force of your imagination, as you remember the time they kissed your palm?</p>
<p>If you can move your mind deliberately to that place, and let it rest there indefinitely, you are ready for poetry.</p>
Briennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15624501270714671076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-577854004423770643.post-86095705547082857502021-05-14T16:12:00.003-04:002021-05-14T16:24:59.261-04:00Staying Grounded<p>I struggle a lot with mornings. If I'm not very careful about what I do in the hour or two after I first wake up, I become extremely stressed and anxious. It's as though my mind has to take some time to put itself together into a solid structure, or else it gets obliterated by the first obstacle it encounters.</p>
<p>I've been thinking lately about how to design a morning routine that optimizes for building that solid structure efficiently. There are a lot of things that help. For example: being alone, moving to familiar music, watching a candle flame, lifting moderately heavy weights, and drinking chamomile tea.</p>
<p>Things that tend to slow or reverse the solidification process include interacting with humans, reading sentences, doing things in a different order than I'm used to, being near anything loud and fast (such as cars), and planning (the farther out, the worse it is).</p>
<p>What do the helpful activities have in common, and how are they different from the unhelpful ones? Mainly, I think the important thing they have in common is that they're grounding. </p>
<p>But why are they grounding, and what does that mean?</p>
<p>In early 2019, after a month of studying groundedness with Jacob and Nora, I wrote that "groundedness is what happens when your thought patterns are in feedback loops with things that aren't thought patterns." </p>
<p>And I mostly like that. But it doesn't really say <strong>what</strong>, exactly, is happening with groundedness. It only says <strong>when</strong> groundedness happens, or where you should look if you want to find it. It also doesn't account for a what I might call "abstract groundedness", of which "staying grounded in what you care about" is an example.</p>
<p>I've developed a feeling, while designing morning routines, that groundedness involves certainty and uncertainty, and especially movement between the two.</p>
<p>What is most difficult for me in the morning is uncertainty. Humans are harder to deal with than a cup of tea or a pair of dumbbells, because unlike tea and dumbbells, humans are intelligent agents. Their behaviors depend on complex and opaque algorithms. When the behavior of other humans is an input to my perceptions, it's very hard to predict what perceptions I will have. Will they walk across the room? How loudly will they speak? Will they ask something of me? Similarly, fast-moving cars produce huge waves of sound and visual experience at hard-to-predict times, from the perspective of someone on a sidewalk.</p>
<p>Tea does none of that. (Nor, notably, does the literal ground.) Tea just sits there being tea. I am extremely <strong>certain</strong> about the effect tea will have on my perceptions: the air in my nose will be more humid, my mouth and hands will be warm, I will taste a certain flavor.</p>
<p>But predictable things are not grounding in themselves. Blank white walls afford a lot of certainty, but rarely are they particularly grounding. Groundedness is an activity; it exists in the relationship between minds and their objects of attention. Blank walls are <strong>so</strong> predictable that it's a bit hard to maintain any relationship with them at all.</p>
<p>I think that perhaps groundedness is <strong>engagement</strong> with uncertainty by a mind that rests on something certain. </p>
<p>It is easy to drift into a state of ungroundedness while thinking about such topics as AI timelines, social dynamics, or possible career changes, because to get anywhere with those topics, you have to spend a lot of time thinking deeply amidst extreme uncertainty. The more attention you devote to something, the less attention you have left for other parts of your experience; so the more attention you devote to predicting uncertain outcomes of uncertain circumstances, the less grounded you become.</p>
<p>It is possible, and usually preferable, to engage with uncertainty in a grounded way. </p>
<p>The trick to doing so is to find something extremely <strong>certain</strong> and make it a central structural component of your experience. Not only should a fraction of your attention remain with your anchor at all times, but you should return the <strong>majority</strong> of your attention to the anchor at regular intervals.</p>
<p>Moving to rhythmic music is so effective for me because as I move, and thus engagedly experience novel sensory inputs that I cannot perfectly predict, the music encourages a regular returning of my attention to the anchor point of sonic rhythm. I move deliberately toward uncertainty, but a piece of my attention is always on the certainty of musical sound, and most of it returns often to the downbeat of a cycling musical phrase.</p>
<p>This model suggests that if you're concerned you'll become ungrounded during a conversation or activity, you should begin by identifying three things:</p>
<ol>
<li>a certainty you'd like to use as an anchor and a beacon</li>
<li>a strategy for keeping some part your attention on it at all times</li>
<li>a strategy for returning most of your attention to it at regular intervals</li>
</ol>
<p>Since most of this is still armchair philosophizing, I don't expect my suggestions for how to identify those three things will be very good. But I do have some guesses, things I plan to try out myself in the near future.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Anchors are most effective when they are emotionally powerful, but not emotionally fraught. They should be certain, but not entirely inert (since <strong>engagement</strong> with the anchor is crucial). The best ones probably involve properties of the non-social external world. In a conversation, I expect the two of you should choose something you're <strong>both</strong> certain about, something you agree on in the same way you agree that many birds have wings, or that Mount Everest is taller than your mailbox.</p></li>
<li><p>Keeping a piece of your attention on something feels TAPs-shaped. You'll need to recognize when your attention has completely left the anchor; therefore, begin by imagining what it would feel like to leave the anchor behind. That's your trigger. The action will be cognitively cheapest if you have an external symbol to draw you back toward the anchor. So your TAP might go, "If I notice [that I've left the anchor behind], then I'll [look at the phrase I've written down]."</p></li>
<li><p>Returning most of your attention to the anchor will require increased engagement. In more challenging activities, you'll probably need to start by <strong>dis</strong>engaging from whatever uncertainty-focused pattern you've been spinning up, perhaps at the prompting of an alarm that goes off every n minutes. Space-making activities are likely appropriate: getting a snack, taking a walk, five minutes of yoga, that sort of thing. Once you've created a little space for other kinds of thoughts, you can then engage on purpose with your anchor. I would expect one to three pre-designed questions would work well, questions to which the anchor itself is an answer. For example, you might ask yourself, "What matters to me here?", and the act of answering that question anew will remind you of the answer in a way that draws a lot of your mind into the shape of it.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>But like I said, these are just my intuitions. I haven't tried these things yet in a deliberate or systematic way, and I haven't walked anyone else through this process either. If you experiment with this yourself, I'd love to hear about whatever happens.</p>
Briennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15624501270714671076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-577854004423770643.post-18370368912229482392021-04-25T17:37:00.001-04:002021-05-03T18:07:34.609-04:00Study Nature With Me!<p>Starting May 16th, I'm running a nature study course called "Original Seeing With a Focus On Life". In one month of study, we'll become better naturalists.</p>
<p>EDIT: This round of the course is all full up! Thank you to everybody who applied. :)</p>
<H3>Who should enroll?</H3>
<p>I think you should take this course if you want to build a closer personal relationship with nature. The point of the course is to develop your ability to learn for yourself about the living things around you, without relying on someone else to tell you what's worth knowing or what to care about. It's about learning to actually see what you're looking at, and bothering to look at all.</p>
<p>Whether you're a city-dwelling couch potato or a professional park ranger, you should enroll if you want the natural world around you to come alive.</p>
<H3>Who <em>shouldn't</em> enroll?</H3>
<p>Almost all of the coursework will happen as part of your ordinary day, during walks taken on your lunch break, or in evening visits to the park or your back yard. The whole thing depends on using your attention a little differently, so if there's no slack at all in your current attentional allocation scheme―if you just can't find any time for yourself, or you're too overwhelmed with everything going on in your life to bring something new into it―then this is probably not a good time for you to take this course.</p>
<p>There will also be a one-hour discussion each Sunday for five weeks, starting on May 16th, at 11AM PST; I think you'll get a lot less out of the course if you can't attend most of the discussions.</p>
<H3>How much does it cost?</H3>
<p>Nothing! This is a free course. I see it as part of my R&D work toward helping people gain traction in pre-paradigmatic fields, a project supported by my grant from the <a href="https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/funds/far-future">Long Term Future Fund</a>.</p>
<p><b>Watch this <10 minute video to learn more, and if you're interested, email me at loganbriennestrohl@gmail.com.</b></p>
<br>
<br>
<iframe width="525" height="394" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RNcElAsWK-o" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>Briennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15624501270714671076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-577854004423770643.post-87816213575114023012021-01-30T18:31:00.001-05:002021-01-30T18:31:28.604-05:00Catching the Spark<p>Linkpost: I've got a new essay about curiosity and naturalism <a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9cbEPEuCa9E7uHMXT/catching-the-spark">over at LessWrong</a>!</p>Briennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15624501270714671076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-577854004423770643.post-11039376790134296362020-08-24T01:59:00.003-04:002022-11-25T23:03:43.577-05:00Hey Logan, what do you think of free verse?<p>Great question, thanks for asking! I've been wondering that for a while myself. In short, I think that it’s wonderful, and I’m worried it’s ruining everything.</p>
<p>What is free verse?</p>
<p>Actually, let’s back up even further. What is “verse”?</p>
<p>The English word “verse” comes from the Latin word “versus”, which means “turned around or turned back”. Poetry is written with deliberate line breaks, which usually occur with great enough frequency that each line occupies a single row on a normal-sized page. Thus, when you read a poem, your attention is continually “turned back” to the left margin as you begin each line.</p>
<p>“Verse” is a bit of a folksy term that refers to poetry written in meter. There are a lot of kinds of meter, most of which have something to do with stress, syllable count, or both. In metered poetry, sounds are <em>measured out</em> into little parcels that combine to form complex but regular structures.</p>
<p>In some languages (such as English), these larger structures often include rhyme, usually of the final syllable in a line. Some also include a fixed number of lines. Some include double line breaks, resulting in collections of lines called “stanzas”. When the line number is fixed, there are often standard conceptual patterns hung on these structures. Some verse forms even dictate the repetition of entire words or phrases. An example of a form with all of these features at once is the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villanelle">villanelle</a>.</p>
<p>Accentual-syllabic poetry was by far the dominant type of English language poetry from the 1500s through the 1800s. In the 1900s, though, something changed. I guess people got fed up with the rigidity, or maybe literacy rates rose to a point where it was no longer necessary to <em>hear</em> line breaks with your ears in order to recognize them. Whatever the reason, people started writing poetry that conforms to <em>none</em> of the metered poetic structures, at any level, save the continual turning back at the end of each line. This became the dominant type of English language poetry, and it remains so today. It’s called “free verse”.</p>
<p>To understand how I feel about free verse, you have to understand how I feel about metered poetry: At its best, and even at its not-amazing-but-still-pretty-good, I feel that metered poetry is incantatory.</p>
<p>One of my favorite illustrations of poetic incantation is “<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45134/ode-to-the-west-wind">Ode to the West Wind</a>” by Percy Shelley, which speaks to this quite directly. In the poem, Shelley’s all, “I’d really rather be alive forever, and for the whole world to be that way also. How about I use written words to become like the wind that blows around everywhere in gusts and storms and breathes life into all things forever.” He has some interesting content to convey, but he doesn’t just throw it out there. He conveys it through the meter. It has this inexorable rocking rhythm, and if you give yourself over to it, the spell penetrates and takes hold of you as no bit of mere rhetoric could.</p>
<blockquote>
<br>And, by the incantation of this verse,
<br>Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
<br>Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
</blockquote>
<p>Different verse forms cast different kinds of spells. They incline us to be more receptive to certain kinds of thoughts and feelings: their rhythms, like the call of a coxswain, line up the pieces of our minds to move all at once toward whatever mental posture the poet has choreographed. Sestinas move us into dream-like spiraling rumination. Ballads move us to look again and again from many angles. Sonnets move us to feel three times the force of a single thought.</p>
<p>Consider "<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/14404/recuerdo">Recuerdo</a>" by Edna Saint Vincent Millay, the first stanza of which goes</p>
<blockquote>
<br>We were very tired, we were very merry—
<br>We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
<br>It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—
<br>But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
<br>We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
<br>And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
</blockquote>
<p>The imagery in this is at most half of how the poem does what it does. If I were to replace the words with nonsense sounds in the same rhythm, I think it would still make me giddy; I'd be ready to skip, to fall against someone's shoulder in helpless laughter, or to fall in love.</p>
<p>There’s something very basic about how human minds interact with certain rhythms of language. Over the years metered poetry has learned the shape of it and built the keys that turn our thoughts. There is little more I could ask of an art form.</p>
<p>And yet, in a way free verse does offer more. Without losing access to any particular tool from metered poetry, it gains indefinite potential for precision. At its best, free verse finds a new prosodic key for every thought.</p>
<p>Take these two lines from “<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/44212/the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock">The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock</a>”, for instance</p>
<blockquote>
Streets that follow like a tedious argument<br>
Of insidious intent
</blockquote>
<p>To my ear that’s three troches followed by a double dactyl; then an iamb, a dactyl, and a troche. As far as I know, I’ve never heard that rhythm before, and it doesn't recur anywhere else in the poem.</p>
<p>But I think it's exactly the right rhythm for that exact thought. Starting with three trochees in a row (<em>STREETS that / FO-llow / LIKE a</em>), it <em>feels</em> like following. It feels like walking on a sidewalk down an ordinary quiet street. Then the two dactyls hit you at the end of a line, knocking you down, but in a way that is unexpectedly drawn out. <em>TE-di-ous / AR-gu-ment.</em> There are just more syllables there than you were ready for. Then the next line kicks you around a bit while you’re down. <em>of in-SI-di-ous in-TENT</em> Maybe even without the context of the poem, it’s masterfully done, and it couldn’t happen in accentual syllabic verse without breaking the form.</p>
<p>The thing is, nearly all of free verse is prosodically abysmal.</p>
<p>Which honestly seems kind of inevitable, ya know? When an only moderately skilled person writes in one of the standard verse forms, they’re using a pattern that basically works, and they may manage to cast a decent spell with little more than that.</p>
<p>But casting a spell in free verse, the kind that only poetry can cast, takes extraordinary prosodic sensitivity. I’d be pretty shocked to hear that anyone truly successful at it had not studied verse forms from before the 1900s (or verse forms descended from those). It’s called “free verse”, but in fact you are constrained at every moment to choose exactly the rhythm that fits your precise thought. Otherwise there’s no poetry at all, just pretentious clattering prose with way too many line breaks.</p>
<blockquote>
this is not<br>
a poem.<br>
introducing obnoxiously frequent line breaks<br>
to<br>
some prose does<br>
not make<br>
a<br>
thing poetry and<br>
this fucking style<br>
can<br>
go<br>
die in a fire.<br>
</blockquote>
<p>My favorite poetry is written in free verse. I certainly don’t want it to go away. I just worry that over time, if there isn’t a resurgence of accentual syllabic poetry in the next few decades, English will move so far from the best examples of its most hypnotic rhythms that poets will lose the ability to cast powerful prosodic spells at all.</p>
Briennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15624501270714671076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-577854004423770643.post-19276611759477663882019-12-29T13:49:00.002-05:002021-03-30T00:22:44.742-04:00Shame Processing<p>I wrote up my shame processing method. I think it comes from some combination of Max (inspired by NVC maybe?), Anna (mostly indirectly), and a lot of trial and error. I've been using it for a couple of years (in various forms), but I don't have much PCK on it yet. If you'd like to try it out, I'd love for you to report back on how it went!</p>
<p><strong>What's up with shame?</strong></p>
<p>According to me, shame is for keeping your actions in line with what you care about. It happens when you feel motivated to do something that you believe might damage what is valuable (whether or not you actually do the thing).</p>
<p>Shame indicates a particular kind of internal conflict. There's something in favor of the motivation, and something else against it. Both parts are fighting for things that matter to you.</p>
<p><strong>What is this shame processing method supposed to do?</strong></p>
<p>This shame processing method is supposed to aid in the goal of shame itself: staying in contact with what you care about as you act. It's also supposed to develop a clearer awareness of what is at stake in the conflict so you can use your full intelligence to solve the problem.</p>
<p><strong>What is the method?</strong></p>
<p>The method is basically a series of statements with blanks to fill in. The statements guide you a little at a time toward a more direct way of seeing your conflict. Here's a template; it's meant to be filled out in order.</p>
<ul>
<li>I notice that I feel ashamed. </li>
<li>I think I first started feeling it while ___.</li>
<li>I care about ___(X). </li>
<li>I'm not allowed to want ___(Y). </li>
<li>I worry that if I want Y, ___.</li>
<li>What's good about Y is ___(Z).</li>
<li>I care about Z, and I also care about X.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Example:</strong></p>
<p>I notice that I feel ashamed. I think I first started feeling it while reading the first paragraph of a Lesswrong post. I care about being creative. I'm not allowed to want to move at a comfortable pace. I worry that if I move at a comfortable pace, my thoughts will slow down more and more over time and I'll become a vegetable. What's good about moving at a comfortable pace is that there's no external pressure, so I get to think and act with more freedom. I care about freedom, and I also care about creativity.</p>
<p><strong>On using the template:</strong></p>
<p>The first statement, "I notice that I feel ashamed," should feel a lot like noticing confusion. To master this method, you'll need to study experiences of shame until you can reliably recognize them.</p>
<p>The second statement, "I think I first started feeling it while <em>_</em>," should feel like giving a police report. You don't tell stories about what it all means, you just say what happened.</p>
<p>The rest should feel like Focusing. Wait for a felt shift before moving to the next statement.</p>
Briennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15624501270714671076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-577854004423770643.post-23829386787254566262019-11-26T19:01:00.000-05:002020-07-13T14:51:39.420-04:00Gratitude<h3>What It’s Like</h3>
<p>While remembering a recent discussion with a friend, I find myself feeling grateful. </p>
<p>There’s warmth in my chest. I have an image of watery light radiating out of my upper torso and wrapping around me. My mind flits about across memories of his facial expressions, his posture, the arrangement of the other people in the room. I imagine how he felt as he spoke (self-conscious, a little vulnerable, a searching feeling as he narrowed in on what he wanted to say).</p>
<p>Permeating all of that is a diffuse recognition that he is <em>good</em>. I like what he did, it made my life better, and I am glad to be in a world where he exists and is willing to say those things. Then, after a few moments, there’s a subtle pulling sensation. I have an impulse to find him and to say “thank you”.</p>
<p>Deciding to become grateful on purpose, I choose the narrow bookcase in my living room. I imagine the book case, first its general shape and then in increasing detail, eventually attending to the individual books. A weighing feeling begins. What is the weighing? I seem to be contrasting this world with counterfactual worlds where there is not a bookcase in my living room. Then I feel a broadening, and a growing coherence. I’m telling myself a story. </p>
<p>It’s the story of my life in relation to the bookcase: I have a house to keep the bookcase in, where I and the books and the wood that holds them are all warm and dry. I stay in one place most of the time; I don’t have to haul all my belongings around with me. I grew up surrounded by books instead of by war and famine, and I have a brain that can learn and remember. I have time to read my books, to sit on the couch wrapped in a blanket, letting some author guide my imagination just for fun. I’m literate; it’s effortless for me to decipher English text, which is <em>amazing</em>. I can receive the thoughts of people who have been dead for centuries, learn poetry that no one I’ll ever meet could have written.</p>
<p>I feel excitement, and joy, and love. I feel warmth and light and a solid foundation to stand on. But most of all, I feel that this world is good, because I have a bookcase in my living room. I feel grateful.</p>
<p>Later, I choose a garden as I pass by it on my morning walk. The gratitude does not come so easily this time.</p>
<p>I feel a gap, distance, a lack of connection. This is not <em>my</em> garden. This garden has nothing to do with me. We are two totally separate entities.</p>
<p>I search for another perspective. A more intimate perspective, one where I am not so clearly an independent being separated from everything by a pane of glass.</p>
<p>I stand in front of the garden. For a while, I just watch. I see what I see, and think what I think. The sprinklers are going. They hiss and splash on the leaves. Though it’s November, tomatoes are ripe on the trellis. Nasturtium rambles, but not as much as it would without someone to prune it. The basil’s been allowed to flower in a tidy row with rosemary, thyme, and sage.</p>
<p>There is love here. Care. Someone weeds and prunes and feeds these plants almost every day. Nothing is overcrowded. Nothing is out of place. </p>
<p>Everything in this garden could be purchased cheaply at the store just a few blocks away, and by the size of the house it’s clear this gardener can afford groceries. They don’t need the harvest to live. They just know the satisfaction of black dirt in their hands. They feel life expanding when their seedlings drink the water they pour. They smile when their family eats the squash they harvested earlier that day. This garden is a place where the chaos of the universe is gradually shaped into human joy.</p>
<p>I know this feeling. It is appreciation. I see the garden more directly than when it was simply “not mine”, and I recognize its goodness. </p>
<p>But I can feel that a turn is needed here, one more step to find gratitude. The glass is gone, but I’m still at a distance. Where am <em>I</em>? Why am I glad to be in the world with this garden?</p>
<p>My gladness has something to do with this stage of civilization, in my little corner of the world. There’s so much abundance, so much wealth. Not all gardens are like this. This garden is a sanctuary, like my own garden. Like calligraphy and libraries and music. We don’t burn all our resources just trying to feed ourselves. There’s space here for beauty. I walk by this sanctuary every day, and I always feel a moment of peace when I do. </p>
<p>A golden lake pours over me and the tomatoes and the whole neighborhood surrounding us. I am glad to be in the world with this garden. I am grateful.</p>
<h3>What’s Up With Gratitude</h3>
<p>My understanding of emotion says that emotions tend to be <em>for</em> things. Anger is for action. Fear is for finding safety. Shame is for protecting the interests of disenfranchised factions in internal conflicts. So what is gratitude for?</p>
<p>I claim that gratitude is for plugging yourself into the world. Specifically, it finds the supportive places in the world, then sets your feet on them in an athletic sort of stance. We are grateful for things we can push off of toward action. The time we spend feeling grateful improves our contact with those supportive surfaces, and establishes contact with new ones.</p>
<p>Consider my gratitude toward the garden. There <em>was</em> at least one supportive surface to be found there — awareness of sanctuaries — but I had to spend some time looking for it. It took a while to plug myself in. The garden still is not mine, but it’s part of my world now in a way it previously was not.</p>
<p>What does my conjecture suggest about social gratitude? </p>
<p>Before I began investigating, I think I implicitly believed that social gratitude was just part of how people track debts and reciprocity. If you make me dinner, I feel grateful so that I will be motivated to fix your car in the future, and the great communal books stay balanced. This way, communities can experience gains from trade in the long run.</p>
<p>My new theory say otherwise. It says that when you make me dinner and I feel grateful, I’ve recognized a supportive surface, and I’ve set my weight there. You are now part of my world in a way that you previously were not.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if you make me dinner and I feel <em>guilty</em>, then I am indeed hoping to balance the books. Guilt is something else, and we’ll get to that shortly.</p>
<p>But if I feel <em>grateful</em> for dinner while I’m offering to fix your car, then I’m trying to plug into the part of the world that is you. I am breaking the glass barrier that makes “me” and “you” totally distinct entities who have nothing to do with each other. Instead of floating in a sky bubble with no opportunities for traction or even direct observation, I’m improving my contact with a part of the world I can push off of toward action.</p>
<p>If you do the same, then we can push off of each other. </p>
<p>Which means, it seems to me, that gratitude expands the self into that larger and more powerful entity known as community.</p>
<h3>Appreciation</h3>
<p>Appreciation shares a lot with gratitude, but they’re distinct.</p>
<p>When I appreciate the new curtains I put up in my bedroom yesterday, I look at them and notice the way their calming color is appropriate to their surroundings. I notice how well they block the light from outside. I think they do a good job as curtains. I recognize their quality, and I’m glad that they exist.</p>
<p>Appreciation is recognition of quality. It’s awareness of what one perceives to be excellent in an object. If I say, “Curtains, I appreciate the way that you harmonize with your surroundings,” I’m telling the curtains that I see something good in them. I’m over here, and they’re over there, and I recognize their quality.</p>
<p>Appreciation is necessary for gratitude, but gratitude goes further. In gratitude, I am glad not only that the curtains exist, but that I share a world with them. When I am grateful to my new curtains, I look at them and think about the effect their color has on me as I relax in my room. When I express gratitude to my curtains, I say, “Thank you, curtains, for contributing to the calming atmosphere I sink into when I enter my room.” In gratitude, I am part of the picture, and my connection with the object is central.</p>
<p>I think appreciation leads to some of the same good outcomes as gratitude, but not all of them. If someone were to practice appreciation deliberately, I expect that they would improve their discernment, or their awareness of their own sense of taste.</p>
<p>They wouldn’t plug themselves into the world, though. They wouldn’t have gumption. That would take gratitude. If someone were to practice gratitude deliberately, I think they’d improve not only their discernment, but also their ability to apply the resources around them.</p>
<h3>Guilt</h3>
<p>When I first started gratitude journaling, one of the most common obstacles was guilt. I’d write “Today I’m grateful for,” then pause. When nothing immediately came to mind, I started feeling guilty. “I’m absurdly privileged, and yet totally ungrateful?! The boomers are right about us. D:” This was strongest when thinking of things I’m <em>supposed</em> to be grateful for, like the fact that I never have to worry about whether I can afford to eat.</p>
<p>There’s something very direct about gratitude. If you want to be grateful, you have to begin by seeing real things with the eyes you have now. Looking at <em>stories</em> about things with other people’s eyes, or with yesterday’s eyes, doesn’t work. Original seeing is part of how gratitude plugs you into the world. It makes contact.</p>
<p>When I feel guilty, it’s very hard to see directly and originally. Guilt is for correcting your own mistakes; it sees through the eyes of the past, and weighs all perceptions against loftier concepts. Whatever I’m doing while guilty, I’m cutting off the vast majority of my experience and only keeping the parts I can compare to “supposed to”. It’s a valuable perspective, but it doesn’t set your feet on the ground.</p>
<p>So when I find myself feeling guilty while trying to practice gratitude, I stop trying to be grateful, and I do original seeing for a while instead. </p>
<p>For example, instead of trying to be grateful for my lack of hunger, I start naming the foods in my fridge. Eventually, I’ll notice some kind of happiness about the yogurt or the eggs. And from <em>that</em> mental state, I move toward gratitude.</p>
<p>Guilt is also super dualistic. “Is this what I’m supposed to do? Is that what I’m supposed to do? Am I doing it wrong?” Whatever It is, It is over there, while I am over here. Guilt does not encourage the “part of one thing” perspective that gratitude relies on.</p>
<h3>NVC</h3>
<p>The “part of one thing” perspective is, I think, much of why I have more trouble feeling grateful toward people than toward inanimate objects. There’s something a little rude about gratitude, if you’re used to NVC-style socialization. </p>
<p>Imagine saying to someone, “Thank you for making me feel safe.” That sure blurs the two of your together! Did <em>they</em> “make” you feel safe? Maybe they weren’t even thinking of you at all. You’re the one who felt safe, all on your own, in response to events that may or may not have had anything to do with you, right?</p>
<p>This line of thinking can lead to gratitude journal entries like, “When I heard Jason talking softly at the meeting today, I noticed that I felt safer.” By the time I’m done writing a sentence like this, I feel robbed of whatever gratitude I started with. It’s hissed out through the autonomy valve.</p>
<p>It seems to me that gratitude and violence come from pretty similar places. They’re both brash, intimate, and authentic. They both involve being enmeshed in a world. They both set you up to act. It’s not too surprising if the careful self-pronouncing distance that undermines violence also undermines gratitude.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how to navigate this yet. For now, my rule is that I can thank others as Non-Violently as I feel appropriate, while in my own private journal, I write, “I’m grateful to Jason for making me feel safe.”</p>
<h3>How To Be Grateful</h3>
<br>
<h4>In the Moment</h4>
<p>I usually don’t try to be grateful all at once. There’s a progression. If I move too fast or try to force it, I might get stuck, or I might just get less out of it.</p>
<p>Suppose I’ve chosen the walls of my house. I start by saying hello to them.</p>
<p>Then I just observe them for a while. I try to see them originally, noticing whatever I personally experience of the walls in that moment. They’re cream-colored. There are horizontal indentations in the paint, as though someone held the roller straight up and down. The surface feels firm and cool to the touch. And so on.</p>
<p>I start to pay attention to feelings of affinity, satisfaction, or pleasure in these observations. I ask myself what I <em>like</em> about the walls of my house. I like their solidity. Their tallness. Their color. I appreciate them.</p>
<p>I move toward gratitude when I ask myself, “Why am I glad to share a world with these walls?” The aspects I appreciated are clues or prompts, and I run with them. The walls are solid even in strong winds, even when the ground shakes, even when I feel like I’ve shattered into a thousand pieces and then melted. When I am surrounded by the walls of my house I don’t have to be so solid all the time myself, because the walls surround and protect me. I’m glad to share a world with these walls because they make me stronger just by being there.</p>
<p>I do that part for as long as I want, considering as many aspects as I want. When I am done, I say, “Thank you.”</p>
<h4>Habitually</h4>
<p>I keep a gratitude journal, of course. I add two or three entries each evening. That’s a good place to start.</p>
<p>I did the Marie Kondo thing a while back, imagining how I want to live, tidying all of the objects in my house and keeping only the ones that spark joy. Whenever you come across an object that doesn’t spark joy, that you don’t want to carry forward into the next part of your life, you’re supposed to thank it and send it on its way. I considered and discarded a whole lot of stuff, and so I thanked a whole lot of items in quick succession. I think that’s when I really started to get a handle on gratitude.</p>
<p>I also took Kondo’s suggestion to thank my possessions whenever I put them away. I still do it often. “Thank you, cup, for holding my coffee.” “Thank you, jacket, for keeping me warm.”</p>
<p>I frequently use appreciation as a trigger for gratitude. When I feel the sun and enjoy its warmth, I think, “Thank you, sun, for warming my skin, and for powering all the life on this planet.” Not in words, necessarily. But I spend a moment in gratitude.</p>
<p>I thank people for things. Not as often as I’d like, because it’s still a little scary for me. I’m never worried about how a tea cup might respond, while people are so complicated. But I often feel grateful to people when I appreciate them. </p>
<p>Even when I’m uncomfortable saying “thank you” directly, I let gratitude flow into my actions. I bake cookies and share them. I wonder how people are feeling, and do what I think might help them. I try to show them in concrete ways that we are part of the same world.</p>
<p>Every morning when I wake up, I drink a bottle of water. Then I sit on my couch saying good morning to everything I think of, and being grateful:</p>
<p>Good morning, crow on the roof. I like your caw. Thank you for the song. Good morning, carpet. I like your squish. Thank you for protecting my bare feet from the cold ground. Good morning, person jogging in the dark. I like your dedication. Thank you for reminding me that progress can happen a little at a time.</p>
<p>It’s a wonderful way to start the day. When I get up from that, I always know that there’s ground to stand on. I feel like whatever I choose to do, the whole world will be there to help me face it.</p>
<h3>Receiving Gratitude</h3>
<p>I’ve noticed that since I started practicing gratitude deliberately, I’ve sometimes felt more comfortable receiving gratitude as well. </p>
<p>It used to be that when someone thanked me, I felt some combination of happy, guilty, scared, and confused, depending on the situation. I think this happened because I really didn’t understand what gratitude was about. I tended to think (not very consciously) things like, “What does this person want from me? Will they expect me to do something in the future?”, “Are they trying to appease me? Do they think I’m upset with them?”, and, “But I didn’t do it for you!” I’d say, “No problem,” or whatever, and try to act like things were fine. But I didn’t really get it.</p>
<p>Here’s what I didn’t get.</p>
<p>“Thank you” is neither a request nor an imposition. It’s an invitation to a certain vantage point. “Thank you” means, “I have noticed that we live in the same world, and I am glad that we do. I’ll go on noticing this and being glad about it even if you float in a glass sky bubble. But you don’t have to float in a glass sky bubble if you don’t want to. You could see us as people in a world together, both of us with feet, both of us able to walk on the ground. There is abundance here. Can you see it?”</p>
<p>When I recognize “thank you” as an invitation to share a world, receiving gratitude feels a whole lot like being grateful myself. It causes warmth in my chest, rather than tightness in my solar plexus. It feels like grounding and connection, rather than uneasiness and distance.</p>
<p>And when I say “You’re welcome” in such moments, I don’t mean, “I agree that I did something nice for you,” nor, “Here are the polite words one says at times like these.” What I mean is, “I welcome you into my world. I welcome this awareness. I walk with you on the same ground, and we both know it.”</p>
<h3>Dark Though It Is</h3>
<p>Gratitude is properly a Winter emotion. </p>
<p>It can happen in the Summer, when things look warm and bright, when I tend to feel that I am powerful all on my own. But I need it more in the Winter. I need it when I might not survive if I fail to recognize a single one of the resources around me. </p>
<p>This is why gratitude should be trained as a skill. Anyone can be grateful with their mouth full of food. It <em>is</em> important to be grateful in times of abundance; it sends that abundance into the future. But to engage gratitude’s power, you have to be grateful when you’re hungry. That’s when every point of contact with the world matters most.</p>
<p>It isn’t hope, or optimism. It’s not about the possibility that food will show up soon, or about pretending you’re full when in fact you’re starving to death. </p>
<p>It’s about going hunting even then. Especially then. It sets you deep in the world, with other people who share your problems, where things can be learned and solutions can be found. When you’re inclined to shiver silently in a ball by yourself, gratitude keeps you moving.</p>
<h3>Thanks</h3>
<p><em>by W. S. Merwin</em>
from <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Migration-Selected-Poems-W-S-Merwin/dp/1556592612/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=migration%3A+new+and+selected+poems&qid=1574534419&sr=8-1">Migration: New and Selected Poems</a></em></p>
<p>Listen <br />
with the night falling we are saying thank you <br />
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings <br />
we are running out of the glass rooms <br />
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky <br />
and say thank you <br />
we are standing by the water thanking it <br />
standing by the windows looking out <br />
in our directions</p>
<p>back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging <br />
after funerals we are saying thank you <br />
after the news of the dead <br />
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you </p>
<p>over telephones we are saying thank you <br />
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators <br />
remembering wars and the police at the door <br />
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you <br />
in the banks we are saying thank you <br />
in the faces of the officials and the rich <br />
and of all who will never change <br />
we go on saying thank you thank you </p>
<p>with the animals dying around us <br />
taking our feelings we are saying thank you <br />
with the forests falling faster than the minutes <br />
of our lives we are saying thank you <br />
with the words going out like cells of a brain <br />
with the cities growing over us <br />
we are saying thank you faster and faster <br />
with nobody listening we are saying thank you <br />
thank you we are saying and waving <br />
dark though it is</p>
Briennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15624501270714671076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-577854004423770643.post-42746418130347353482019-07-13T20:46:00.000-04:002019-07-13T20:46:36.879-04:00Learn the Author's Taste<p>One of the best things I've added to my repertoire of study tools is trying to learn the aesthetic taste of the author. When I feel something in the vicinity of disagreement with X, I write a little essay in which I describe the world from a perspective where X feels good/obvious/beautiful, trying to capture what things <em>taste</em> like at that vantage point.</p>
<p>For example, toward the beginning of the (excellent, highly recommended) prosody textbook <i>The Poem's Heartbeat</i>, Alfred Corn writes, "In no way should the inclusion of stress conferred purely by meter be considered a compositional failing. In the best examples, the slight (incantatory?) departure from ordinary speech patterns afforded by metrical stress makes for a useful rhythmic reinforcement of the content..." </p>
<p>He's talking about the fact that some poetry is meant to be read in a slightly artificial way. He gives the example of a line from "Ode to the West Wind" by Percy Shelley:
<blockquote>And by the incantation of this verse</blockquote>
<p>If that string of words were spoken in conversation, the word "of" would likely receive the same stress as the last syllable of "incantation", or possibly a little less. But the poem is in iambic pentameter, so for the line to fit the surrounding meter, the word "of" needs to receive more stress.</p>
<p>When I read that section, I noticed a discomfort I'd been feeling almost constantly while reading, one that had previously prevented me from focusing on stress patterns in poetry. At that point, I did indeed consider purely metrical stress a compositional failing. I felt that poetry ought to take advantage of the rhythms of natural speech, without asking the reader to modify anything. Doing otherwise was cheating.</p>
<p>But when I read a textbook, it's because I want to gain access to the author's view of the world. I want to augment myself with their perceptions and understanding, to get their models and mine into the same mind so they can talk and work out their differences. In other words, I want to learn from them.</p>
<p>My favorite way of getting someone else's perceptions into my own head is to try to see things as they do, and to pay attention to the details of how the world seems and feels and tastes from that perspective. So I wrote a little essay for myself, trying to do that with what I imagined might be Corn's perspective on metrical stress, stepping into the world where it feels <em>good</em> to stress that "of" just a little more strongly:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Metrical stress is just another tool in the poet's toolbox of prosody.</p>
<p>It's just as legitimate as is musical pitch in the sacred chants of shamans or Gregorian monks, and serves nearly the same purpose. Singing a prayer creates a very different kind of experience than speaking a prayer; in song, more of the mind is recruited to move in a single direction, like a flock of sea birds diving all at once for their fish. Verse with strong meter does the same, but is even more hypnotic. </p>
<p>The more eager you are to give yourself over to the inexorable rocking rhythm of Ode to the West Wind, the more thoroughly Shelley succeeds. His spell penetrates and takes hold of you as no bit of mere rhetoric could. Resisting, insisting that 'that's not really how those phrases sound', is much like claiming you 'can't be hypnotized' while trying to not be hypnotized. It prevents you from receiving the enchantment in full.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I kept this incantatory invitation with me as I read new poems, re-examined old poems, and read the rest of the textbook. As a result, I'm much more aware, now, of the relationship between poet and reader. I think about what experience the poet designed for me, but also about how to be a more fertile soil for the artistic experience. </p>
<p>In fact, I'm inclined to re-learn all the poems I've ever loved, because of how much more they might have to offer if I offer myself as a more cooperative reader.</p>
<hr />
<h4>Ode to the West Wind</h4>
<p><strong>I</strong> </p>
<p>O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, <br />
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead <br />
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, </p>
<p>Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, <br />
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, <br />
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed </p>
<p>The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, <br />
Each like a corpse within its grave, until <br />
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow </p>
<p>Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill <br />
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) <br />
With living hues and odours plain and hill: </p>
<p>Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; <br />
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear! </p>
<p><strong>II</strong> </p>
<p>Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion, <br />
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, <br />
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean, </p>
<p>Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread <br />
On the blue surface of thine aëry surge, <br />
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head </p>
<p>Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge <br />
Of the horizon to the zenith's height, <br />
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge </p>
<p>Of the dying year, to which this closing night <br />
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, <br />
Vaulted with all thy congregated might </p>
<p>Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere <br />
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear! </p>
<p><strong>III</strong> </p>
<p>Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams <br />
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, <br />
Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams, </p>
<p>Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay, <br />
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers <br />
Quivering within the wave's intenser day, </p>
<p>All overgrown with azure moss and flowers <br />
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou <br />
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers </p>
<p>Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below <br />
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear <br />
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know </p>
<p>Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, <br />
And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear! </p>
<p><strong>IV</strong> </p>
<p>If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; <br />
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; <br />
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share </p>
<p>The impulse of thy strength, only less free <br />
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even <br />
I were as in my boyhood, and could be </p>
<p>The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven, <br />
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed <br />
Scarce seem'd a vision; I would ne'er have striven </p>
<p>As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. <br />
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! <br />
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! </p>
<p>A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd <br />
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud. </p>
<p><strong>V</strong> </p>
<p>Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: <br />
What if my leaves are falling like its own! <br />
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies </p>
<p>Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, <br />
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, <br />
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! </p>
<p>Drive my dead thoughts over the universe <br />
Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth! <br />
And, by the incantation of this verse, </p>
<p>Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth <br />
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! <br />
Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth </p>
<p>The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, <br />
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? </p>
<p><em>--Percy Shelley</em></p>
Briennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15624501270714671076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-577854004423770643.post-7274485306129444642019-07-07T17:36:00.000-04:002019-07-07T17:55:45.992-04:00Discomfort During Exercise<p>A friend who is interested in building muscle told me, “I’m curious how you relate to the pain of doing exercise.” I asked them what they meant by “pain” in this case, and they seemed unclear on it.</p>
<p>How to relate to discomfort in exercise is a great question, and it’s one of the reasons I’d recommend most people do regular yoga for at least a month before they get serious about weight lifting. Exercise involves discomfort. Recognizing and understanding what various bodily sensations mean is key to getting stronger without hurting yourself.</p>
<p>In response, I made three mindfulness exercises that might help distinguish types of discomfort during physical exercise, and weight lifting in particular. You might want to do them in the middle of a meditation session, so you’re already in the right state of mind.</p>
<p><H4>Exercise One</H4></p>
<p>Get a sharp pencil, a paper clip, a key, or something similarly pointy. Gently press the pointy thing to the meaty part of your palm, near your thumb. Stopping well before you break the skin, gradually increase the pressure, and pay attention to the details of the sensations at the pressure point.</p>
<p>This is a kind of “sharp pain”. You should associate it with “danger” in exercise. It usually indicates that something is going wrong, and ignoring it will likely lead to injury.</p>
<p>I experienced “sharp pain” similar to this when I lifted too much weight in a squat and damaged a groin muscle (an acute muscle strain). It’s also similar to the pain I’ve recently been feeling in the front of my shoulder when doing front raises and certain other motions, which a doctor confirmed for me is caused by an inflamed shoulder bursa (an overuse injury). I felt it in my feet when my plantar fascia degraded from increasing my running mileage too quickly (another overuse injury).</p>
<p>If you feel a sharp pain while exercising, especially if you seem to feel it where you’d expect a bone to be or where something might connect to a bone, back off right away. Try to understand what’s going on, then re-evaluate.</p>
<p>If a sharp pain doesn’t stop when you stop the exercise, do a little first aid, and if it’s not noticeably better in a day, see a doctor. First aid for muscle and connective tissue injury is <a href="https://www.webmd.com/first-aid/rice-method-injuries">RICE</a>: Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation. You can also take an anti-inflammatory like ibuprofen, which will lesson pain and reduce swelling.</p>
<p><H4>Exercise Two</H4></p>
<p>Hold up two fingers of your left hand in a peace sign. Using your right hand, grip both peace-sign fingers and press the middle knuckles together, so the insides of the knuckles are touching. Gradually increase the pressure, and pay attention to the details of the sensations at your left knuckles.</p>
<p>This is a kind of “pinching” or “joint compression”. It usually indicates danger to joints. Somewhere, your bones are pressing on some intervening tissue with more force than that intervening tissue is designed to take. You should find it a bit less concerning than “sharp pain”, but you shouldn’t ignore it. When you feel it, back off by reducing weight or intensity, or by changing position, until the pinching goes away.</p>
<p>If you’re feeling pinching very frequently in most of your lifts even at very low weight, it might be a good idea to focus for a while on stabilization and range of motion exercises. Do things like yoga and pilates for a while, then come back to lifting. You may find that the little muscles around your joints are better able to take the load off of the joint itself.</p>
<p><H4>Exercise Three</H4></p>
<p>Find something that’s about the size and shape of a can of beans or a water bottle. Set a three minute timer. Hold the can at your left side with your arm straight, then raise the left arm out to the side until the can is at shoulder height, palm facing down. Stay in this position for a full three minutes, and pay attention to the details of the sensations in the muscles of your left shoulder and upper arm.</p>
<p>Most likely, these are the sensations of healthy muscle exertion and muscle fatigue. (This is a static version of a “lateral raise”, an exercise that works the lateral deltoid muscles.) For me, it feels a little like burning deep in the muscle. </p>
<p>If I do it long enough (about six minutes in my case), my arm starts to shake, and the burning becomes intense. My heart-rate increases and my breathing gets deeper and faster. My arm starts to feel like it’s a metal rod that’s on fire during an earth quake. Eventually the water bottle begins to lower, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it short of lifting it up with my other arm.</p>
<p>The experiences that occur toward the end of this exercise are things you <em>want</em> to happen in weight lifting. As I understand it, the physiological processes these sensations correspond to have something to do with the lactic acid produced when glycogen is drawn directly from the muscle tissue to fuel contraction. You don’t feel those sensations in the beginning of the exercise because there’s still local oxygen available to combine with carbohydrates for fuel, which doesn’t produce lactic acid.</p>
<p>I don’t have a satisfactory gears-level model about why, but for some reason, you have to get your muscles to burn through almost all of the fuel stored in them before the magic thing happens that causes them to get bigger and stronger in the future. (I’m aware of some common hypotheses, I’m just not satisfied by them.) That means the immediate sensations of lactic acid and muscle exhaustion, in the absence of sharp or pinching pain, are your best indications of successful muscle building.</p>
<p><H4>On My Relationship With Discomfort In Exercise</H4></p>
<p>I want to insert a disclaimer here. It’s common among people who exercise a lot, and who have done so for a long time, to describe the sensations associated with successful exercise as enjoyable. Maybe those people stuck with something unpleasant until it became pleasant, for whatever reason. (Most of us like to think so.) OR maybe they’re predisposed to enjoy exercise-related discomfort, and are thus more likely to continue exercising just because it’s easier for them.</p>
<p>If the latter, I am definitely such a person. I started gymnastics in pre-school and haven’t stopped moving since. It only took about three months of consistent distance running for running to become just about my favorite activity ever. I lift four times a week, do at least half an hour of cardio three times a week, and do at least an hour of yoga once a week, with many a sun salutation in between. My little brother is similarly active. So I think you should take with a grain of salt anything I say about learning to enjoy exercise. It seems likely that I just don’t have the same obstacles as more sedentary people. </p>
<p>But my experiences talking with others, and completing a yoga teacher training program, suggest you can probably change your perceptions of exercise by at least <em>some</em> amount.</p>
<p>I think it takes some time and/or some skill in internal double crux to develop a happy relationship with sensations of muscle exertion. A foundation of differentiation between types of discomfort is probably important; if you just try to ignore discomfort without knowing what it means, you’ll stay stuck in an internal conflict that saps your energy (and keeps your body safe, if physically weak). I’ve learned to perceive and understand many small details of physical sensation during exercise, so I trust myself to move safely at full power. My mind and body feel aligned most of the time. I don’t have a little voice saying “You need to stop or something bad will happen” unless I really am doing something harmful. </p>
<p>But there’s also something about appreciating the feeling of exertion in itself. Lifting heavy weights until I can’t anymore makes me feel alive and powerful, like a summer storm. It makes me feel <i>on fire</i>. </p>
<p>Becoming stronger, in all senses, is one of my central values. Fully enjoying weight lifting for me involves being in touch with that value, and with the relationship between it and the physical sensations. It’s the pleasure of striving, of overcoming obstacles and finding out what’s on the other side. It’s beginning as a candle and becoming a sun. It’s always difficult and uncomfortable, but I love it.</p>
Briennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15624501270714671076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-577854004423770643.post-57465414507130502018-10-02T17:15:00.001-04:002018-10-02T20:54:28.982-04:00Creative Focusing<h3>1.</h3>
This post will make no sense at all if you don’t know what “Focusing” is. Focusing is a method of making info from squishy automatic cognitive processes accessible to deliberate reasoning processes. <a href="http://www.focusing.org/sixsteps.html">Here’s</a> an official brief summary of the full procedure as taught by Gendlin. <a href="https://medium.com/@ThingMaker/focusing-for-skeptics-6b949ef33a4f">Here’s</a> a post by Duncan I like a bunch, which describes the Focusing-ish thing he does. </p>
<h3>2.</h3>
<p>Lauren taught a class at an alumni workshop (last year? I think?) called “Creative Focusing”. It resulted in me using Focusing, or something like it, <em>way</em> more often. I didn’t memorize her class, but here’s how I think of creative focusing myself.</p>
<p>Pick an expressive medium. Could be sketching, poetry, music, whatever.</p>
<p>Then, get in touch with a felt sense. You don’t have to name it. But try to get inside of it.</p>
<p>What is “get inside of it”? Right now there’s a tightness in my solar plexus. I can describe it “from the outside” like so: It’s the bottom of a sort of hot, slightly vibrating rod of sensation that goes from my solar plexus to the middle of my throat. The sensation responds to awareness of my immediate auditory environment (I’m in a coffee shop); the solar plexus tightness gets tighter when I pay attention to the tapping of a metal spoon against a metal jar, and starts to wobble a little when I pay attention to the music in the background.</p>
<p>Rather than describing it from the outside, I can also let the felt sense express itself “from the inside”. This is a kind of attentional trick, I think, which seems to involve <a href="http://agentyduck.blogspot.com/2018/09/person-framing-language.html">setting down my personhood story</a> and letting the felt sense consume awareness.</p>
<p>Then, while “inside” of the felt sense, I can begin to act on my creative medium. If I choose (just a few) words, the solar plexus felt sense types this:</p>
<blockquote>wobble siren sharp and hot
fight for warming Persian music
hold ready parking alarm to protect
changing changing changing nothing safe</blockquote>
<p>If I choose to sketch, the solar plexus felt sense draws this:</p>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixyoJXV0T_nLNtuq79iTKXL-Q61LexhLqql83AVC5C20wVLA9XVBwYaeFGGdv52wgEKzzrQ6spv9bzIWH36gbj3HSMQVHxsUV5S0bZIlVAuxlTOp9iCFvbSOtCkFpLTs2UmZuSYSwBCro/s1600/IMG_20181002_121701.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixyoJXV0T_nLNtuq79iTKXL-Q61LexhLqql83AVC5C20wVLA9XVBwYaeFGGdv52wgEKzzrQ6spv9bzIWH36gbj3HSMQVHxsUV5S0bZIlVAuxlTOp9iCFvbSOtCkFpLTs2UmZuSYSwBCro/s320/IMG_20181002_121701.jpg" width="240" height="320" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="1600" /></a>
<p>I resonate as I go, noticing when a word or line or movement feels dissonant, as though it’s coming from somewhere else, and adjusting to stay true to the felt sense.</p>
<p>Lauren claimed during the class, and I agree, that this is what artists are actually doing when they create things. They’re doing additional stuff too, because what I’ve described is merely expression, and art is a kind of communication. Communication is a refined form of expression that usually involves design and editing in addition to expression. But I think the unrefined expression is at the core of art.</p>
<p>Without any further modifications, I’ve found this approach to focusing (if that’s even what it is?) valuable for its purity. </p>
<p>By “purity” here, I mean purity of observation, as in “observe first, infer later”. I mean that the product of the process — the drawing or the poem-like thing or whatever — retains a lot of info that’s super intimate with what I’m actually feeling, and is relatively uncontaminated by my concepts of emotions or my stories about why I’m feeling a thing. </p>
<p>There’s a lot of room for me to go back afterward to examine my drawing “from the outside”, and perhaps reason about the experiences it expresses, without compromising my original sight of the experience. For example, I can step out of the felt sense, look at the drawing, and recognize “ah yes, this looks like my mind marshaling defenses to protect the soft round parts from the sharp chaos of the outside world”. I didn’t need to boot up anything resembling a hypothesis to make the drawing, so my perceptions weren’t (as) warped by the hypothesis while I drew. Now that the drawing exists, I can look back and reason about it, like having a transcript of an important conversation that happened six months ago.</p>
<h3>3.</h3>
<p>My use of this method has evolved over time.</p>
I no longer draw stuff on paper very often, or make words or move my body. I do all of that sometimes, especially when I'm having trouble concentrating. But mostly I use my imagination. I go inside of a felt sense, then let it “sketch” on my imagination, using whatever imagined medium it likes. I get images, sounds, other bodily sensations, dance moves, scents, and even concepts and stories. </p>
<p>Doing this with the chest tightness (which is now more in the center of my chest and a bit less in my solar plexus): There’s a cold iron vice squeezing something like mochi, a bee hive with visual imagery and sound of bees, and a fairy woman dressed in blue with her hair in a messy bun and longing body language, who splits into two people, one of whom shifts to resignation and slumps over a table and the other of whom flies upward into warm sunlight.</p>
<p>I also use this at different times than I used to. Originally I mainly used it when I felt “something’s wrong”, and wanted to know what. Now I use it as a very general tool for original seeing, any time I expect my stories and concepts are limiting me. I used it to <a href="http://agentyduck.blogspot.com/2018/08/how-to-smell.html">get much better at smelling</a>, for instance, following the guess that food-concept orientation drastically limited my ability to perceive scents.</p>
<p>But my favorite use is when I “find the felt sense of the ground of a proposition”. For example, the coffee shop I’m in right now is a 501(c)3 non-profit that (somehow) helps refugees. So this proposition has been floating around in my head the whole time I’ve been here: “a non-profit coffee shop must be terribly altruistically inefficient”. </p>
<p>To do (something like) creative focusing on this proposition, I first need to find the “ground” of the proposition. It’s sort of a summary of the proposition that contains nearly all of the oomph. In this case, if I articulate it in words, it’s something like “altruistic coffee shop dumb”.</p>
<p>The ground of a proposition is half-way between a System 2 representation of a belief, and the squishy System 1 stuff where expectations live. This kind of “ground” of a proposition is usually associated with a bodily felt sense. Once I find that felt sense, I can get inside of it. (I’ve found that propositions aren’t always in my body. They’re often near my body but outside of it, especially ones I think are false.)</p>
<p>“Altruistic coffee shop dumb” lives in the back of my head where my skull meets my spine. It’s warm and buzzy with a little pinching. When I go inside of it and let it express itself in my imagination, I get a crab with pinching claws, a bunch of pennies pouring through a sieve, a hot lava flow moving outward from the back of my head in all directions, and a mob of dusty yelling people having a giant fist-fight and trying to climb on top of each other.</p>
<p>I can now ask myself, “what about each of these images feels somehow related to expectations?” For instance, the crab with claws involves precision and uncompromisingness and the ruthless reality of supply and demand.</p>
<p>I also use approximately this method, sometimes, when someone asks me a question and I don’t know how to answer. I’ll often find myself scrabbling for a coherent response that I don’t necessarily believe. When I notice this happening, I stop myself, and instead I say, “When I consider that, I imagine [some crazy imagery].” From there I start analyzing the imagery, and drawing conclusions. </p>
<p>The conclusions may or may not make sense, but at least they have more to do with my genuine thoughts on the subject than with some story I want to tell about how my model of the world is coherent and my mind is unified and consistent.</p>
<p>What is "original seeing"? I'm not sure, but when I consider it right now, I imagine falling apart into a million particles of dust that seep into the crevices of the world.</p>Briennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15624501270714671076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-577854004423770643.post-32359791368394673232018-09-29T15:43:00.000-04:002018-09-29T15:43:28.028-04:00Person-Framing Language<p>Starting last weekend and going until March, I’ll be spending every other weekend in yoga teacher training, learning how to be a yoga instructor. </p>
<p>I have a lot of reasons for doing this, one of which is that I would in fact like to teach yoga from time to time. But the reason that really convinced me to finally do it is this: My own yoga practice suggests that yoga relies a lot on original seeing, and I have a strong hunch that yoga instructors are largely in the business of inducing original seeing in their students. I’ve recently been pretty focused on questions like, “What are the most efficient tactics for helping other people see what’s actually in front of them?”. So I’m hoping to mine this teacher training program for pedagogical content knowledge about original seeing.</p>
<p>I think I encountered a real gem in the PCK department last weekend, and I’d like to share it with you.</p>
<p>As yoga instructors, we’re encouraged to avoid pronouns during classes. For example, instead of saying “step your left foot forward”, we should say something like, “step the left foot forward”, or just “step left foot forward”. </p>
<p>The meta-teacher gave a few reasons for this, but one of them felt really shiny to me. He said that part of our job as yoga instructors is to “take students out of their stories”. He didn’t elaborate on this, but I think it reveals a lot about what he thinks it’s like to practice yoga and to teach it.</p>
<p>He seems to think that if a yoga instructor says “your foot”, you’re enabling story-telling (whatever that is) in the student, when the target mental state is something counter to story-telling.</p>
<p>I wanted to investigate this, so I invented and tried the following exercise (which you could try too, if you felt like it).</p>
<blockquote><p>Choose a topic, and write about it for at least five minutes. Avoid person-framing language: Do not use words like “I”, “my”, “mine”, “he”, “they” or “one”. </p>
<p>Further (optional) instructions:</p>
<ul>
<li>Begin with a concrete non-social topic like “the breakfast I’m eating right now”.</li>
<li>If you want to do more, move to some innocuous social thing like “last time I saw my friend Jeff”.</li>
<li>Then, if you have the hang of it and really want to apply this as a tool, choose a fraught social topic like “the turmoil going on in my community this past week”.</li>
</ul></blockquote>
<p>I noticed some interesting things when I did this. </p>
<p>The first thing I noticed was that merely avoiding specific words wasn’t enough to really sink into it (unsurprisingly). For example, I originally failed to include “one” in my list of words to avoid, and had to recognize in the middle of the exercise that using “one” was cheating. So if you do this, you’ll need to seek the spirit of the thing as you go, and notice when you’re falling out of step with it.</p>
<p>I also noticed that I spoke a lot, at first, in terms of bodies, as though watching from the outside. I said “The body writing is finishing breakfast.” And I perceived a sort of trap there. It’s well and good to write about bodies, but I was aware of a searching-for-my-keys-beneath-the-lamp-post feeling. I would begin to form a sentence like “I am finishing my breakfast,” realize the sentence didn’t follow the rules, and then slide toward describing an entirely <em>different</em> observation that would be easier to express in a rules-adhering way. </p>
<p>Following the spirit of the exercise lead me to directly confront the parts of the world I tend to describe person-ly. When I leaned into that, there was a lot that sounded like Focusing a la Gendlin: “there is tightness in this chest, and a searching sensation”. </p>
<p>When I leaned into it <em>more</em>, the words seemed to reveal a lot about how I implicitly believe human minds work. Instead of “the body writing,” I began to say things like “the agency and composition processes currently active”. I wrote, “It seems as though attention in this brain has drifted toward an association region that involves memories, imaginings, and expectations about restaurants and headaches”.</p>
<p>I also noticed that the more I did this, the more I tended to choose phenomenological terminology. Lots of words like “seem”, “expect”, and “a perception of”, things that only speak of the world in terms of immediate experience. </p>
<p>I shied away from statements that bundled together observation, inference, and claim. For instance, just to test it, I wrote, “How strange this is!”, and indeed that statement felt out of sync with everything else I had written. The claim that “the exercise is strange” is <em>such</em> a high-level summary. Reflecting on this, I wrote, “A claim of strangeness follows an assessment of strangeness, which follows a perception of strangeness, which follows small observations, each accompanied by feelings of non-expectation, or dissonance, or other things that together might be summarized as ‘strange’.” </p>
<p>The exercise as stated didn’t actually require adherence to phenomenological terminology, or careful separation of mental motions. A phrase like “How strange this is!” ought to be permitted. It doesn’t obviously presuppose personhood. But for whatever reason, avoiding person-reifying language led me to write like a phenomenologist.</p>
<p>Writing about other people was stifling, but also liberating. It was terribly difficult to write about “the turmoil in my community” without talking in terms of people. But what I did actually manage to write down was quite satisfying. I asked, “What is the current hoping of the active processes guiding composition about which phrases near-by bodies will emit in a week when the brains piloting them attend to association regions involving concepts of ‘community policy’ and ‘consent’?” </p>
<p>There’s a crisp-ness to that question, though its phrasing be cumbersome. The thoughts summoned by that question needn’t pass through complex social filters. Or at least if they do, it’s not the fault of the question itself. It’s a spacious question. It gives about as much room as possible to think about humans as I think about shingles, or music, or any other thing that exists in the universe and doesn’t carry a giant perception-warping story around with it all the time.</p>
<p>And I know there are good reasons to think about people in terms of those big stories we all help each other carry. That’s part of what I like about this exercise: I became much more aware of what work pershonhood stories are doing. Everyone is sort of naked and exposed without them, and perhaps crippled when it comes to complex multi-human relationships. It’s rude to think about people the same way you think of shingles. And “rude” is an extraordinarily person-reifying word.</p>
<p>I also think that social frames may be the greatest obstacle to original seeing. </p>
<p>“One of the things yoga has given me,” said my meta-teacher last weekend, “is clarity to see the truth of the present moment.” I think it gives me the same, and the way yoga teachers talk is probably part of how. A rare and precious clarity is available when I can move, at any time, to a mental space where it would just never occur to me that “I” could step “my” left foot forward.</p>
Briennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15624501270714671076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-577854004423770643.post-33987805040900769712018-08-22T13:34:00.000-04:002018-08-22T21:23:34.469-04:00Photo Studies<p>When I was in Indiana, I took dozens of snapshots of a slide. This slide.</p>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI7w3O98F_eVqq_Ihi4AI0xKFP7ovvH_W7szp23B9q8jdA1TGIeAJ29vGelrMX6asRf6I0c6vlu25vPNICzusQNk7-lLtgyU8OeK9MmOA2dThHuiy9NLJKeeUYloPPQIKkcNGSHMWeigY/s1600/IMG_4124.JPG" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI7w3O98F_eVqq_Ihi4AI0xKFP7ovvH_W7szp23B9q8jdA1TGIeAJ29vGelrMX6asRf6I0c6vlu25vPNICzusQNk7-lLtgyU8OeK9MmOA2dThHuiy9NLJKeeUYloPPQIKkcNGSHMWeigY/s320/IMG_4124.JPG" width="213" height="320" data-original-width="1067" data-original-height="1600" /></a>
<p>It was out in a field with a whole collection of elderly playground equipment, and I found it visually interesting. So I did a study of it.</p>
<p>In painting, a “study” is a sketch (or multiple sketches) done in preparation for the final painting. It’s an exploration of a subject, with attention to the problems you’ll likely encounter while rendering it. If you’re drawn to the way an article of clothing drapes, for example, but you’re not familiar with the fabric, maybe you try a few ways of painting the fabric, to see what happens. You also experiment with design elements like like color, lighting, and composition. You might learn that to illuminate the flower you want to feature, you’ll need the light to come in at a different angle than you first imagined.</p>
<p>The idea is the same in photography, but the execution’s different. In photography, you can’t use a brush stroke to change the shape of the subject. There are filters and focus tricks and so forth, but film is more like a mirror than a canvas. What you see is what you get. If you want a different picture of the same subject, you’ll have to find a new way of seeing it.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how the professionals do it, but my study of the slide was pretty methodical, at least at first. </p>
<p>I began at a distance. I chose a starting position that filled my frame with the subject, focused, and took a picture. Then I moved a few steps to the left, focused, and took another picture. I did this until I’d moved 360 degrees around the slide.</p>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbEK9FZEgiQ4noRyj-gyE1FqKnOhYwB8ubnbdocyH4jYXNFXha7ucK3AqCxJuEkw6mRTUKCPX6Z6wZDiyHW2H0Np7sDqFmNmbQ1KBZwO98hihhVuWOVfbgrGexD83_Y2Bl8b6Ula4d8F8/s1600/IMG_4125.JPG" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbEK9FZEgiQ4noRyj-gyE1FqKnOhYwB8ubnbdocyH4jYXNFXha7ucK3AqCxJuEkw6mRTUKCPX6Z6wZDiyHW2H0Np7sDqFmNmbQ1KBZwO98hihhVuWOVfbgrGexD83_Y2Bl8b6Ula4d8F8/s200/IMG_4125.JPG" width="133" height="200" data-original-width="1067" data-original-height="1600" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjywTZQ56fZZt8Jt8ABu9vd59ugpcKpuqAC5k_L9a8KUDP_n3aad_NUrpQGmNQoQAYMliaBqvotH_Z8LZUwBgsFb8FhBTo1LKdKp6xfOoh7eCsBdkKYWhneuHXC_1hJimSPn3k7sSneDKM/s1600/IMG_4126.JPG" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjywTZQ56fZZt8Jt8ABu9vd59ugpcKpuqAC5k_L9a8KUDP_n3aad_NUrpQGmNQoQAYMliaBqvotH_Z8LZUwBgsFb8FhBTo1LKdKp6xfOoh7eCsBdkKYWhneuHXC_1hJimSPn3k7sSneDKM/s200/IMG_4126.JPG" width="133" height="200" data-original-width="1067" data-original-height="1600" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB5BMIp3IK1_8MdoAdsxHKJn-X6ge9dEzhHHde23YktHW54zgAsP_lJgSszzmkPZgzahC8JZjI-GEpzyXPv1B8MLXPG9xYHzYEtCGvJtvvYgE5xhscNuvWnugC8bOqOm-xcKYQb2kyV6Y/s1600/IMG_4127.JPG" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB5BMIp3IK1_8MdoAdsxHKJn-X6ge9dEzhHHde23YktHW54zgAsP_lJgSszzmkPZgzahC8JZjI-GEpzyXPv1B8MLXPG9xYHzYEtCGvJtvvYgE5xhscNuvWnugC8bOqOm-xcKYQb2kyV6Y/s200/IMG_4127.JPG" width="133" height="200" data-original-width="1067" data-original-height="1600" /></a>
<p>Then I repeated the same procedure, but from my knees instead of my feet, and I started moving closer.</p>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicF0VC_Wwa0SCgmw_Qua3fe0jCS7yEHNhQjHtM6yQaG3kUZwbYUMu8cU9EzMEzTuPel7fCV7a0bGhDIPtjrAHZksY_F8Wid04eXLA7veK_vz4jtsb4k8HlUDNphFDjWvD3xqO7PD99wtw/s1600/IMG_4130.JPG" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicF0VC_Wwa0SCgmw_Qua3fe0jCS7yEHNhQjHtM6yQaG3kUZwbYUMu8cU9EzMEzTuPel7fCV7a0bGhDIPtjrAHZksY_F8Wid04eXLA7veK_vz4jtsb4k8HlUDNphFDjWvD3xqO7PD99wtw/s200/IMG_4130.JPG" width="133" height="200" data-original-width="1067" data-original-height="1600" /></a>
<p>Next I began to explore the visual experiences of playing on the slide. Walking under it, climbing on it, sliding down it.</p>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkOUOOaSOFYleX-xDd_JKye2srHz24pOnWID8kjgFCz_LNiHuUjqarIP9384mAlDwBqhtmQOPSnCR7yLMWRDrcrKgW38r3CF3gFZYcteEkxd9EsusQyonwG4yEdtJNg7yWDty_oThtcls/s1600/IMG_4163.JPG" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkOUOOaSOFYleX-xDd_JKye2srHz24pOnWID8kjgFCz_LNiHuUjqarIP9384mAlDwBqhtmQOPSnCR7yLMWRDrcrKgW38r3CF3gFZYcteEkxd9EsusQyonwG4yEdtJNg7yWDty_oThtcls/s200/IMG_4163.JPG" width="133" height="200" data-original-width="1067" data-original-height="1600" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXs5xL22F5tlJorV748z9eiRpfJZj0WmdXLW2p5A0dVMsK5yruZpHfnr74hzgzgzr_UNToH2iQdFvWZeFY_uSR83F_7uz-HZphnhfoZDdJZGFBsX62WpKuIfa64WBscUp44eHFh8dGIHE/s1600/IMG_4136.JPG" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXs5xL22F5tlJorV748z9eiRpfJZj0WmdXLW2p5A0dVMsK5yruZpHfnr74hzgzgzr_UNToH2iQdFvWZeFY_uSR83F_7uz-HZphnhfoZDdJZGFBsX62WpKuIfa64WBscUp44eHFh8dGIHE/s200/IMG_4136.JPG" width="200" height="133" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1067" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3xH9Wzni2mzqALh7VyhI5KSYooF60FSQmB0XhmMry21SmpmAa9X4aw3GxiQQINfrSad6JuYRLW8CeY_g8JkX4B-1Efy2fM51nAhVHzru3nmHcOaSDOPjLlRamCEzvn7w9EOkpqAJLM_c/s1600/IMG_4145.JPG" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3xH9Wzni2mzqALh7VyhI5KSYooF60FSQmB0XhmMry21SmpmAa9X4aw3GxiQQINfrSad6JuYRLW8CeY_g8JkX4B-1Efy2fM51nAhVHzru3nmHcOaSDOPjLlRamCEzvn7w9EOkpqAJLM_c/s200/IMG_4145.JPG" width="133" height="200" data-original-width="1067" data-original-height="1600" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0wyWu1Nn6YcuKOcYy_66zTFkNoMnxCON-nflg9a9YkppLuSRtaT7IjI117uqtEy4r8ISEoCRQGIyOMZhL1HQkcWMcsp5Ngqmvtx1VZPdpTNbcEPTxJKBaaGTDr0cJjvIWJUBIBkk6dhY/s1600/IMG_4137.JPG" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0wyWu1Nn6YcuKOcYy_66zTFkNoMnxCON-nflg9a9YkppLuSRtaT7IjI117uqtEy4r8ISEoCRQGIyOMZhL1HQkcWMcsp5Ngqmvtx1VZPdpTNbcEPTxJKBaaGTDr0cJjvIWJUBIBkk6dhY/s200/IMG_4137.JPG" width="200" height="133" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1067" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRgFchfHKMS50wTweCqTf8P5SBFS3SzUqgac-j1CHGAh24YnRHWLjYmip7inVqoeth25L6MQ6GJSXlPp2mBCy-P_naH-aj9eqCnIr64pkRZnmPavxl8BH264qHLSAL4rV1i8wdolaj9mo/s1600/IMG_4158.JPG" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRgFchfHKMS50wTweCqTf8P5SBFS3SzUqgac-j1CHGAh24YnRHWLjYmip7inVqoeth25L6MQ6GJSXlPp2mBCy-P_naH-aj9eqCnIr64pkRZnmPavxl8BH264qHLSAL4rV1i8wdolaj9mo/s200/IMG_4158.JPG" width="133" height="200" data-original-width="1067" data-original-height="1600" /></a>
<p>By the time I was done with that part, my state of mind had shifted considerably. I felt much less like “I want to take a good picture of a slide”, and more like “I want to know this object’s every mode of being”. It was almost like I was in love with the slide. </p>
<p>I started to take photos that had nothing to do with my concept of slides, and everything to do with this particular slide. Photos from unlikely angles, photos of details that don’t suggest a slide at all, photos of unique opportunities this slide presents for perceiving the environment.</p>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX6pRc5SohXXYVPG1brETa5vj97_-bio-3m7t1wN4yMSFJrANLN6mqoVyX-R00EibUf0pYUdnmvVtlCI_B9act9LeB8p5TmIOhvbjaX6bUviuq3OWbhzXmIaKy5I_naoyR9HupEFGDmAw/s1600/IMG_4154.JPG" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX6pRc5SohXXYVPG1brETa5vj97_-bio-3m7t1wN4yMSFJrANLN6mqoVyX-R00EibUf0pYUdnmvVtlCI_B9act9LeB8p5TmIOhvbjaX6bUviuq3OWbhzXmIaKy5I_naoyR9HupEFGDmAw/s320/IMG_4154.JPG" width="213" height="320" data-original-width="1067" data-original-height="1600" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir5VqwniviANbmkv4EIngr61lFQh6xKrz1fO809bk1WoGnVufoD4yGXHKekbweGjNg7iaEKK2WGMV7BUfulHDhe_FjTd6e3_CX-IwN7UjCMx3T19z1rm9fYxoPzUO71_9IOGUkp82CIDo/s1600/IMG_4166.JPG" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir5VqwniviANbmkv4EIngr61lFQh6xKrz1fO809bk1WoGnVufoD4yGXHKekbweGjNg7iaEKK2WGMV7BUfulHDhe_FjTd6e3_CX-IwN7UjCMx3T19z1rm9fYxoPzUO71_9IOGUkp82CIDo/s320/IMG_4166.JPG" width="213" height="320" data-original-width="1067" data-original-height="1600" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvRQO4upU5RY_DLz30l8saQwF_pBNBw4pm9uMvvmcEzVUW34J40EZeGA2Wy_3kZ7LqVjUp2gtUOMckt0LI1tom_vNZGX6Tl5-ylHoifLY9gslNcLIirOK6I6SC_W6c3O02KQYwgZcR6HQ/s1600/IMG_4162+%25281%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvRQO4upU5RY_DLz30l8saQwF_pBNBw4pm9uMvvmcEzVUW34J40EZeGA2Wy_3kZ7LqVjUp2gtUOMckt0LI1tom_vNZGX6Tl5-ylHoifLY9gslNcLIirOK6I6SC_W6c3O02KQYwgZcR6HQ/s320/IMG_4162+%25281%2529.JPG" width="213" height="320" data-original-width="1067" data-original-height="1600" /></a>
<p>I did a few photo studies on my trip, and they all felt to me like a gradual spiraling inward. They always began with a concept called “slide” (or whatever) and a vague interest. They ended with a fountain of fascination, intimacy, and love for something that meant almost nothing to me before I started.</p>
<p>And I bring this up because the approach I take to photo studies seems like the very same approach I take to solving vague problems, or training new skills when there’s nobody to tell me how to do it.</p>
<p>I think the photo study is a ritual for inducing Original Seeing. It can work with any sort of medium, including introspective. The trick is to build the right kind of camera.</p>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6No-nhWuT7qYLxL2n7AjeMX0_EVTPiNaisXP0WAqA-nL6nNEX15ZxpBYKlDw7hhOWEss1b3z60hlaEScGmja77eR5l-5KwYapGJmLff87dsWYjoO7Vbwfn8oGLRGlH5qwQPtLT114SVk/s1600/IMG_4150.JPG" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6No-nhWuT7qYLxL2n7AjeMX0_EVTPiNaisXP0WAqA-nL6nNEX15ZxpBYKlDw7hhOWEss1b3z60hlaEScGmja77eR5l-5KwYapGJmLff87dsWYjoO7Vbwfn8oGLRGlH5qwQPtLT114SVk/s320/IMG_4150.JPG" width="213" height="320" data-original-width="1067" data-original-height="1600" /></a>Briennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15624501270714671076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-577854004423770643.post-60342383504061803502018-08-07T20:43:00.001-04:002018-08-07T21:18:43.359-04:00How To Smell<i>Most of the ideas in this post come from the book</i> Being A Dog: Following the Dog Into a World of Smell <i>by Alexandra Horowitz, which is my favorite nonfiction book I’ve read in a long time. She, in turn, took much of what I discuss from Kate McClean, an artist who makes sensory maps of urban environments. But this is certainly my own take, and the instructions as I present them are at times in conflict with what I think each of those people would suggest.</i>
<hr>
<p>Smelling is a skill. Unless you make perfume for a living, you probably don’t know how to smell. Here are what I consider to be the basics of good olfactory practice.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Assume that everything has an odor. Assume that every single physical object around you emits volatile compounds that you, personally, can detect. This may not be true, but that doesn’t matter. Pretend, for now, that it is. You’ll learn faster this way.</p></li>
<li><p>Practice good sniffing. First and foremost, good sniffing means putting your nose right up against the object you want to sniff. Maybe you’re more comfortable picking things up with your hands and holding them a few inches from your face — most of us are — but that’s poor form. Most odorous compounds are heavier than air, and your nose needs to be where the molecules are to ingest them. Plus, when you pick something up, especially a small bit of something, you’re going to be smelling your hand. So pretend you’re a dog. Get down on your hands and knees, if you have to, and bring your muzzle right to the object, until you can feel its surface with the tip of your nose. Then close your eyes, and sniff.</p></li>
<li><p>To dislodge more of the smelly snuff, try a sharp exhalation through your nostrils right before you sniff. If you watch dogs sniffing, you’ll see that they do this all the time. It makes a surprisingly large difference.</p></li>
<li><p>You’ll also find more smells by scratching things first, rubbing them, or otherwise disturbing their surfaces.</p></li>
<li><p>Associate with what you smell. I recommend narrating your thoughts, either by speaking or by writing them down. Let your mind wander, and don’t worry about making any sense. Nouns, verbs, and adjectives are all fair game. So are images, sounds, and dance moves. Treat the smell like an inkblot test. Take a sniff, and say whatever comes to mind. Give it at least ten seconds, but thirty is better. If you haven’t named five things the smell reminds you of, you’re not done smelling it yet.</p></li>
<li><p>Maybe it’s not clear to you that you’re smelling anything at all. Doesn’t matter. <em>Everything</em> has an odor, remember? You’re having an olfactory experience of some kind, even if you haven’t recognized it yet, so just start associating. You’ll learn about what you smell as you go.</p></li>
<li><p>“Good” and “bad” are not smells. They’re mostly predictions about whether something is safe to eat. When you judge that something smells “good”, just pass right by that thought, and keep on associating. Same for anything that smells “bad”. If you get stuck at this step, reach for the specific (un)pleasant associations that come to mind while you’re smelling the object.</p></li>
<li><p>Don’t worry so much about which things smell like which other things. For example, maybe you’ve just sniffed unwashed socks, and thereby invited a familiar compound into your olfactory system. During its stay, you happened upon an association with parmesan cheese. There really is a chemical similarity between your socks and parmesan cheese — namely butyric acid — but what matters is not that the two items smell similar. What matters is that the experience <em>reminds you</em> of parmesan cheese. If you’re always searching for the known relative of a smell, you’ll miss all the scents you’ve never named before. Recognize that “parmesan cheese” has come to mind while smelling, and leave it at that.</p></li>
</ol>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWL9rUB5lzl0RdHpKwBZ716c6IIOiWb840w8CBqHbzMeSmeTT8CPRA9gKKv1aVXlKVRLE_3oRcASg1CJFLxqCO7LR1JXgZf-iAgm7_FnoQ_59C1ZOHE2ETg3RSYcqxIH0vUSKErnYX-R0/s1600/IMG_20180727_141527.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWL9rUB5lzl0RdHpKwBZ716c6IIOiWb840w8CBqHbzMeSmeTT8CPRA9gKKv1aVXlKVRLE_3oRcASg1CJFLxqCO7LR1JXgZf-iAgm7_FnoQ_59C1ZOHE2ETg3RSYcqxIH0vUSKErnYX-R0/s320/IMG_20180727_141527.jpg" width="320" height="311" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1553" /></a></div>
<p><H3>Smell Walks</H3></p>
<p>Now that you know the basics, try going for a smell walk. A smell walk is just a walk, but instead of looking at stuff all the time, you relate to your environment primarily through scent. Here are a few more tips for smell walks in particular.</p>
<ol>
<li>When you arrive at a new location, take note of the background smells.</li>
<li>Elicit three smells per location.</li>
<li>While moving, watch out for momentary smells.</li>
<li>Bring a bottle of water. Your nasal passages need to be a little damp to catch the particles.</li>
<li>Bring tissues. Some of the particles will irritate your nose.</li>
<li>Bring friends!</li>
<li>When there’s an especially interesting smell, invite others to share it with you.</li>
</ol>
<p>I really enjoy smell walks. They feel indulgent and exciting to me, and I love watching the constant discovery and surprise of my friends when I bring others along. There’s a lot of intimacy in smelling.</p>
<p>I’ve done enough smell walks in my neighborhood that I think I can probably estimate my location to the nearest street corner (maybe better) just by smell, if I’m within a few blocks of my house. I think my nose is about as good as average, based on my experiences taking people on smell walks. If that sounds unlikely to you, you’re probably drastically underestimating how good you are at smelling. Humans have much better noses than they tend to think.</p>
<p>Scent is so neglected in human experience. I think it’s largely because we walk on two legs, and use our hands to examine things. We just don’t spend much time down where the smells are. </p>
<p>It makes me sad, because there’s a whole world of olfactory experience that’s never instantiated. If I ask someone about their day, people will tell me what they saw, and maybe what they heard, but almost nobody tells me what they smelled.</p>
<p>And if someone <em>does</em> mention smell, it’s almost always because something smelled either disgusting or delicious. The world is so full of smells, of so many kinds, but hardly anybody notices. I’d like it if more people engaged with the world through scent.</p>
Briennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15624501270714671076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-577854004423770643.post-58414712172583383332017-12-28T14:21:00.000-05:002018-03-05T00:18:14.270-05:00Instead of making a resolution,<h3>meditate on…</h3>
<ul>
<li>What have I gained in the past year? In what ways do I feel augmented compared to the self I remember from this time last year? How do I feel about that?</li>
<li>What have I lost in the past year? In what ways am I diminished compared to the self I remember from this time last year? How do I feel about that?</li>
<li>What important things do I believe now that I did not believe at this time last year? What are the practical consequences? What does it mean for the world to be the way that it is, instead of the way that I thought it was?</li>
<li>What sort of person might I hope to be, if I knew I had a few centuries to become them? What is standing in my way of being that version of myself? What will I need to gain before I can become them? What will I need to <em>lose</em>?</li>
</ul>
<br>
<h3>make a list of…</h3>
<ul>
<li>things I need to <a href="https://relentlessdawn.wordpress.com/2015/12/11/the-art-of-grieving-well/">grieve</a>, but haven’t yet.</li>
<li>grudges I’m holding onto.</li>
<li>things I’m grateful for from people I haven’t thanked yet.</li>
<li>things I’m afraid to ask for.</li>
</ul>
<br>
<ul>
<li>bugs.</li>
<li>things about my living or working environment that get in my way, or could be better.</li>
<li>things I do mostly because I feel like I’m “supposed to”, or “it’s expected”, or “it’s what I’ve always done”.</li>
<li>traits exhibited by the people I admire most.</li>
<li>things that make me feel fear and longing at the same time.</li>
<li>things I think I’m bad at but have never <a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/uh/trying_to_try/">Actually Tried</a>.</li>
<li>good-seeming things that feel impossible, but that I’ve never Actually Tried to cause.</li>
<li>skillsets I want to level up in.</li>
<li>cognitive habits I might like to install or bolster.</li>
<li>limitations, incompetencies, or other obstacles that are in the way of gaining a skill I want.</li>
<li>common experiences it might help to be good at <a href="http://agentyduck.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-mere-noticing-solves-so-much.html">noticing</a>.</li>
</ul>
<br>
<ul>
<li>things I would expect from the upcoming year if I were unrealistically pessimistic.</li>
<li>things I would expect from the upcoming year if I were unrealistically optimistic.</li>
<li>challenges I might encounter in the upcoming year.</li>
<li>opportunities available to me now that weren’t available at this time last year.</li>
<li>things some part of me wants, but that I feel like I’m not allowed to want.</li>
<li>problems I have no idea how to solve.</li>
</ul>
<br>
<ul>
<li>the <a href="https://www.nirandfar.com/2012/01/your-new-years-resolution-is-bound-to.html">tiniest actions I could take</a> that would get me closer to one of my goals.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.lesserwrong.com/posts/v4nNuJBZWPkMkgQRb/making-intentions-concrete-trigger-action-planning">trigger-action patterns</a> that might cause incremental progress toward a skill I want.</li>
<li>trigger-action patterns I have by default that are probably getting in my way.
<li>things I could try <a href="https://www.facebook.com/strohl89/posts/10154358190599598">every day for a week</a>.</li>
<li>mental motions I could <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jamesmorrisstudios.com.randremind&hl=en">set a reminder to practice at random</a> for a few days.</li>
<li>things I'd like to journal about at some point.</li>
</ul>
<br>
<h3>write a sentence or three describing…</h3>
<ul>
<li>what I expect this year will be like.</li>
<li>what would happen if I just stopped doing one of the things I’m “supposed to do”.</li>
<li>what I love about a cherished interpersonal relationship.</li>
<li>what I’d like to change about a cherished interpersonal relationship.</li>
<li>how I messed up in one of my projects from the past year.</li>
<li>what I learned from one of my projects in the past year.</li>
<li>an experience from the past year that reminds me of a way I’d like to grow.</li>
<li>an ability that might be unlocked by skills I’ve recently gained.</li>
<li>a best version of myself.</li>
<li>my current bottleneck.</li>
<li>the next act in the story of my life.</li>
</ul>
<br>
<h3>design…</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://malcolmocean.com/2016/03/face-personality-upgrade-ritual/">a transformative ritual</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://agentyduck.blogspot.com/2017/05/meditation-design.html">a meditation</a> that cultivates a virtue I’d like to gain.</li>
<li><a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/o4/leave_a_line_of_retreat/">a line of retreat</a> for something I’m afraid might happen in the upcoming year.</li>
<li><a href="https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Crisis_of_faith">a crisis of faith</a>.</li>
<li>a strategy for capitalizing on the skills I gained last year.</li>
<li>a weekend retreat.</li>
<li><a href="http://agentyduck.blogspot.com/2014/02/trade-shoes-with-stranger.html">a training program</a>.</li>
<li>a strategy for getting out of the way of something wonderful that could happen.</li>
</ul>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWdCWDAQoGATnXkWGG1kKAfkU4XkN7s7J-2_EWnocPQaTdU442o8Zy1tj4pB598h8Ny3GcWeySxwXwJR28oI_7AA-t3zq8NEy41J7KK2ZuQe0JTDq7LlbY8fVgfmWWiItJDk-VkvWMuPc/s1600/Fireworks4_amk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWdCWDAQoGATnXkWGG1kKAfkU4XkN7s7J-2_EWnocPQaTdU442o8Zy1tj4pB598h8Ny3GcWeySxwXwJR28oI_7AA-t3zq8NEy41J7KK2ZuQe0JTDq7LlbY8fVgfmWWiItJDk-VkvWMuPc/s320/Fireworks4_amk.jpg" width="320" height="213" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1067" /></a></div>Briennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15624501270714671076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-577854004423770643.post-22674427387333461432017-09-14T16:57:00.000-04:002018-03-05T00:18:25.852-05:00Softs Review: Noise Cancelling Wireless Ear Buds<p>I want to tell you about my latest cybernetic enhancement: Sony’s new <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074KBHW65/?tag=thewire06-20&linkCode=xm2&ascsubtag=AgEAAAAAAAAAAPOKAAAAAHVlpGoAAAAAWbF2_w">WI1000X noise canceling earbuds</a>. (I’m not getting paid for this, I’m just excited.) Since a bunch of my friends use <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00X9KVVQK/ref=twister_B00ZBA3OSO?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1">Bose Quiet Comfort 20 noise canceling ear buds</a>, and that’s what I’ve used for the past year, I’ll do it by comparing the two.</p>
<p><b><i>Verdict: I prefer Sony WI1000X ear buds to Bose Quiet Comfort 20 ear buds.</i></b></p>
<p>My Sony WI1000X ear buds arrived yesterday. I’ve been traveling around today switching back and forth between them and my old Bose QC20s, deciding whether to keep the Sonys, or return them and stick with Bose.</p>
<h3>Notes On Noise Cancellation In General</h3>
<p>I’ve tried several over-ear headphones with active noise cancellation, a few over-ear headphones with passive noise cancellation, a couple kinds of high-quality earmuffs, and many brands of ear plugs. For me, in-ear active noise cancellation was best, and the Bose QC20s in particular won out last time I was shopping for noise control (which was a bit over a year ago).</p>
<p>Both the Sony WI1000Xs and the Bose QC20s are in-ear headphones with active noise cancellation (meaning they do some kind of high-tech electronic thing to cancel out incoming sounds, rather than just plugging your ears like, well, earplugs.). The first thing I want to say about both of these is that I find them woefully inadequate for noise cancellation. As far as I can tell, they’re the best options currently available; current tech just isn’t up to the job of granting me sufficient control over my auditory experiences. They do not come close to creating artificial silence, unless the natural soundscape is already nearly silent.</p>
<p>But they do substantially <em>soften</em> audioscapes. A car engine sounds more like an annoying clickety thing and less like a scary monster. A crowd sounds more like an incessant murmur. Screechy bus brakes sound like somewhat quieter screechy bus brakes. And to me, that’s worth a lot.</p>
<h3>Bose QC20</h3>
<p>The Bose QC20s are The Wirecutter’s top rec, and they’ve gotten quite popular among my friends. They really are shockingly effective, and represent a substantial QOL boost for me. But they are not exactly a delight to interact with, for two main reasons. </p>
<p>First, there’s a battery that hangs at the end of the cord close to my phone. Whenever I move around, and especially when I walk anywhere, the cord tugs on my ears. I find this unpleasant. I’ve always had this problem with wired earbuds, but the battery pack makes it worse. Running with them is nearly impossible, since it’s the same tugging I get with walking, but harder. Worse yet is when I try to use them in a supermarket, because the cord invariably gets caught on the handle of the basket, or on some item I’m trying to put in the basket, and the ear buds are yanked out of my ears. (I’ve actually given up on going to the supermarket, for the most part.)</p>
<p>Second, it makes a quiet high-pitched whine, presumably a result of the active noise cancellation. Which is HORRIBLE. It’s a lot better than the screechy bus brakes I’m trying to block out, but it’s just infuriating that I have to choose between the sounds of my environment, and the awful sound of this device that’s supposed to be keeping me safe. It’s like, “Would you prefer street sounds, or complimentary tinnitus?”. And the only thing you can do about it is exactly what you do if you’ve got tinnitus: Play music or white noise. Again, better than screechy bus brakes, but still not ideal when I’m trying to get away from sound.</p>
<p>For these two reasons - ear-tugging and artificial tinnitus - I’ve taken to carrying the earbuds with me, and only putting them in at the last possible minute, when I just can’t stand the harshness of the environment any longer. (Sometimes that’s five seconds after I leave my house, but I often last much longer.) Which is a hell of a lot better than waiting until the last possible minute and then <em>not</em> having noise-canceling ear buds to rescue me. But it’s a far cry from making me a care-free autistic cyborg.</p>
<p>My other criticism of the QC20s is more minor, but it’s put me back on the market for new noise-canceling ear buds: They’re not super durable. </p>
<p>The rubber stuff that used to cover the battery pack started to tear shortly after I got them, and after a few months it was bad enough that I just removed the covering entirely. The battery pack isn’t as nice to touch anymore, and it makes a slightly louder sound when I set the ear buds on the table. Which is whatever.</p>
<p>What finally did it is the l-shaped connector. The rubber that covers the wires at the neck of the connector has severed, so now the wires are exposed. I covered them with electrical tape, but it’s just a matter of time before the wires themselves give out. Thus, I seek a replacement.</p>
<p>There’s one more thing to note about my experience with the QC20s, and I almost left it out because I can’t put my finger on what’s causing it. But somehow, using them feels… stuffy. </p>
<p>Maybe it’s the specific frequencies they block, or the shape of the ear buds, or the high-pitched whine. I can’t tell. Whatever it is, it feels a little like being under water, and if I use them for very long, especially if I’m not playing music or an audiobook, I start feeling dissociated. </p>
<p>I figured this was just a property of noise control in general, a result of divorcing my audiotory experiences from my other sensory experiences. But so far, I’m not getting this with Sony.</p>
<h3>Sony WI1000X</h3>
<p>The Sony WI1000Xs are not obviously better at canceling noise. Nor are they obviously worse. </p>
<p>If you told me that you’d measured objectively and found that one blocked more noise than the other, my money would be on Bose. But I wouldn’t bet very much. They’re close enough to equal on that front that despite switching back and forth dozens of times in a few different noisy environments today, I can’t tell if theres a difference in degree of noise cancellation. I suspect they block slightly different frequencies, but I can’t tell which ones. With respect to noise-cancellation, they’re equivalent in practice.</p>
<p>Which is a big deal, since there really weren’t any rivals for the Bose QC20s a year ago. QC20s even outperformed other products in the Bose Quiet Comfort line, including the over-ear QC25s. I haven’t tried the wireless in-ear QC30s myself, but Amazon reviews suggest that people who bought them after owing QC20s were disappointed.</p>
<p>Besides matching the Bose QC20s for noise cancellation, I’m excited about three things with the Sony WI1000Xs.</p>
<p>One, they’re wireless. They’re not as weightless as my ordinary wireless earbuds - I’ve been using Jaybird X3s for running and biking - because there’s still a battery to fuel the noise cancellation. But rather than hanging on the end of a string that tugs at my ears all the time, the battery is a collar that rests comfortably around my neck. It’s very light, and doesn’t bother me at all when I’m walking.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH5ENKdfnoP-gZ78Kc6yJaUA9xfx4_bY7oTFBLX65InzbH21kXtLUcs85D-dmMPYuTztEn2aG_Tz2fdlDnc0hgKcwjvThv8WD3xLf_BnZGjxlGisvMWd7hrWrgHjovIDKS7ZmDL10HeUE/s1600/IMG_20170914_140329.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH5ENKdfnoP-gZ78Kc6yJaUA9xfx4_bY7oTFBLX65InzbH21kXtLUcs85D-dmMPYuTztEn2aG_Tz2fdlDnc0hgKcwjvThv8WD3xLf_BnZGjxlGisvMWd7hrWrgHjovIDKS7ZmDL10HeUE/s200/IMG_20170914_140329.jpg" width="150" height="200" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="1600" /></a></div>
<p>Turns out it’s even light enough that I can pin it to my head with hair clips and use it while working out. It works for inverted yoga poses and everything. Makes me want to replace part of my skull with a battery pack, like a proper cyborg.</p>
<p>Two, THERE’S NO WHINE. There’s a <em>very</em> small static-like noise that I can <em>just</em> make out if I listen for it, but it doesn’t hurt. This tiny static thing is by far the least annoying auditory byproduct of active noise cancellation I’ve encountered so far, and I’m pretty ok with it.</p>
<p>Third, the sound quality is astounding. </p>
<p>High sound quality is something I neither require nor expect in ear buds of any kind, let alone wireless ones with active noise cancellation. But I do care about sound quality; I know it doesn’t matter at all for many people, but I’m one of those music geeks with five hundred dollar audiophile headphones, which I treat like a sacramental religious object. I have a Spottify playlist called “immaculate classical”, and I only listen to those songs on my Sennheiser HD 598s because it sounds blasphemous on any other audio device I regularly encounter.</p>
<p>There’s a specific song I use to test sound quality in headphones: Leopold Stokowsky’s orchestral arrangement of Bach’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_OtfBwqzCE">Little Fugue in G Minor</a>. (That’s a link to Youtube, where the audio quality is too low and WARNING it will probably auto-play. I actually use the Spottify recording, but not everybody has Spottify.) It’s a perfect song for this, because the orchestra comes in a little at a time, instrument by instrument, weaving a few phrases in and out over and over again. You get to hear how the headphones deliver the same melody in different ranges one after another. Then they all come together at the end and you can listen to the whole range of orchestral frequencies at once. </p>
<p>When evaluating headphones with this song, the main questions I ask are, in chronological order, “Are the oboe and clarinet broad or squished?”, “Is the horn rich or muddy?”, “Are the strings warm or cold?”, “Are the flutes shrill or soft?”, “Does the whole bass section lay flat or rumble?”, and “What is the emotional impact?”. </p>
<p>When I hear this song with broad reeds, rich horns, warm strings, soft winds, and rumbling bass, the impact is the same every time: I giggle, gasp, and shiver with awe. But every part has to be in place. On low-quality headphones, this song does nothing for me.</p>
<p>With the QC20s, the oboes and clarinets are squished, the flutes are sharp, the mi-range instruments are muddy, the bass absolutely does not not rumble, and the whole thing sounds thin. Which is, ya know, par for the course with ear buds. They’re not supposed to be audiophile headphones. The sound quality isn’t <em>bad</em> for ear buds in general - in fact it’s quite good, ordinary $40 earbuds are significantly worse at sound quality - but listening to Little Fugue on them feels sad and empty.</p>
<p>Which is exactly the experience I expected with the WI1000Xs. So when I played Little Fugue on them and found that it sounded more like it does on my Sennheisers than on my QC20s, I was more than a little surprised. It doesn’t match the Sennheiser HD 598s, but honestly it’s not that far behind. I am willing to listen to my immaculate classical list on these, and although that’s not what matters to me in a noise control device, it is certainly the most impressive feature of the WI1000Xs from my perspective. Warm oboes, crisp horns, and god damn rumbly bass on tiny little ear buds! I did not know that was currently possible.</p>
<p>There are only two things I so far disprefer about the Sony WI1000Xs compared to the Bose QC20s. The first is that when the battery cut out, Sony didn’t give me a warning beforehand. Bose says something like “battery level low” around twenty minutes before you actually run out of juice, and while I <em>really</em> wish they’d communicate such info by texting my phone or something rather than <em>saying words directly into my ear</em>, I do appreciate the chance to adjust my plans.</p>
<p>The second is that the audio cuts out sometimes. It happens about as often as with my wireless sports ear buds (I use Jbird X2s). It’s super annoying when it happens, but it depends a lot on how far the phone is from the receiver and what’s in the way, so I have some control. If I keep my phone in my back pocket while I’m wearing a backpack that contains a laptop, the audio glitches multiple times a minute. But if I keep my phone in my front shirt pocket, or in my bra, it never glitches.</p>
<h3>Hopes For Future Tech</h3>
<p>Here are the things I most want to see in my next auditory cybernetic enhancement.</p>
<ol>
<li>Better noise cancellation, obviously, especially for the higher frequencies.</li>
<li>Let me turn off spoken announcements from the device, and send the info to my phone as text instead.</li>
<li>Sound recognition. I’d like to be able to point at a particular source of sound, like a single person’s voice, and cancel everything besides that. Which is exactly what Orosound’s Tilde ear buds are supposed to do (though using directionality, not actual sound recognition as I’d like), but I just heard about them for the first time today. I’m pretty skeptical and don’t expect them to measure up to the Sony/Bose standard in noise cancellation overall, but if I try them out I’ll add a note here.</li>
<li>A completely wireless hearing-aid-like design. <a href="http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-true-wireless-headphones/">These exist</a>, but the tech is young and they’re still pretty glitchy.</li>
<li>Precise, highly customizable, speech-focused equalization. Some people’s voices are grating to me, and I hate this because it means I can’t stand bodyspace interactions with certain people I’d otherwise get along with just fine. If I could adjust which frequencies are sent through to my ears, perhaps it would solve this problem. Earbuds with built-in equilizers do exist - <a href="https://hereplus.me/">Here One</a> looks pretty exciting, plus it’s truly wireless - but so far everything I’ve seen “tunes into speech while tuning out the plane engine”, which doesn’t sound precise enough to control my experience of individual voices.</li>
</ol>
Briennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15624501270714671076noreply@blogger.com