Borscht and Burgers

Hey, have any of you ever tried to log the process by which you remember things?

I ask because of several reasons, one of which is what I often talk about, the fact that I sit in lecture and I don’t write notes and no one else in my discussion groups admits to this being even remotely possible for them. And cue me being really confused.

And two, because there’s been an increase in talk about “mind palaces” since the Sherlock episode came out, and I’ve been interested in the talk. I remember reading articles as a kid about people in memory competitions who remember extremely long sets of unrelated numbers, and some of them explained the process as a very visual one. They would build a route and along the route they would set down sets of numbers with established visual indicators that told them what the numbers were. So a purple house with the a car in front would be associated with several numbers. And then they’d move on to build the next thing on the route. And as they walk along it, they’d remember the sequence by seeing the things they placed on the route. In Sherlock, he instead goes to his mind palace, which is just a more complicated version of a route. Apparently, people do this too. There’s an interesting little summary of someone who uses a mind palace out there, but the explanations always confuse me. Because I think of all of the effort it takes to embed these explanations into visual cues that have alternative meanings, and I can’t understand what how it would be worth it.

But I mean, what I do is visual too, but I create a visual image or sequence of the concept I want to play through, and then if I study, I refine the details of the image in my head, so that I can visualize it* in closer detail. So if someone asks me why the structures in the male fetus are the ones that get masculinized by Estrogen, I just replay the image of Estrogen from the mother being immobilized and the Testosterone working its way through the blood into the brain where aromatase turns it into Estrogen once it enters the brain cells. And so when I need to answer a concept, I pull the image forward and play it/work it through, rather than memorizing clear facts. But I don’t place these facts anywhere. I just try to understand the process and then once I finally do it becomes a fact to me, so I can pull the image up. If time passes and I stop pulling the image up, the details wear away, but the general structure of the concept is still there, so I can sharpen it later very quickly.

Also compatriots, I just saw this post from our mind-palace friend. And I don’t mean to judge, but it made me shout “NOOO” in my mind as soon as I started reading it, because if you have to remember C6H12O6 with images like “C is obvious, as it makes most people think of the sea. So you could have a picture of the sea, or hear the sound of the sea in your room, or six shells which all sound like the sea when you take them to your ear.” I may be wrong, but the way my brain sees it, you’re missing the step of understanding exactly what it is you are remembering if you go in a roundabout way such as this one. And then I had a crey.

But anyway, pals, darlings, dolls. Could you be a dear and, if you can explain it, tell me how you think, understand and/or remember things? You know, as a reply to this post, or an ask to me, or a reblog, or whatever. It’s just a pique of curiosity but there’s so much potential for different and very interesting discussion?

Please? Pleaseeee? There’s no wrong answer and you would be making me so very, very happy.

*Dear high school compatriots, it has come to my attention that while two years with Timmreck may not have created the foundation for the way I learn things, it certainly helped solidify it as a viable option that is now the only one available for me. THERE IS NO ESCAPE.

So I’m going in for an eye exam this month, because my left eye is a little wonky, and uh, I’m remembering the time I tried on Moo’s fake glasses.

For the record, me in glasses looks like your Russian Math Professor.

“Purpose, Passion and Perception”

DISCLAIMER: IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M GOING TO WRITE HERE, YOU SHOULD GO READ THIS AGAIN. THIS IS MY VIEW ON THE BOOK, AND ON THE VERY GENERAL IDEA “PURPOSE, PASSION, PERCEPTION.” EVERYONE DID THIS DIFFERENTLY LAST YEAR, AND THIS IS JUST SOME FOOD FOR THOUGHT. ALSO I NEED THIS HERE IF MY DATA DECIDES TO DIE AGAIN AND I NEED SOMETHING TO LOOK BACK AT.

Summarizing what Stebbins wanted us to get from the book by quoting my essay. In short, I’m just giving you my interpretation of the general idea she presented to us, which is cyclicism and the fractal-like embedding of the Purpose, Passion, Perception cycle in the book:

Basically:

The [author] insist[s] that time is more accurately described as cyclical, and emphasize[s] that the ability to move from one stage to another is essential to progress.

The cycle that’s presented can be summarized as a cycle of Purpose, Passion and Perception:

In Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, the linear world view of the narrator is counteracted by the novel’s construction as a series of cycles within cycles. Each cycle can be broken down into three stages: ‘Purpose,’ ‘Passion’ and ‘Perception.’ These three stages are evident within the course of the narrator’s story, but are also built into the actual framework of the novel. They are directly related to the three sections: the prologue, the story and the epilogue. The motif of water appears frequently throughout the novel to either highlight or foreshadow moments of ‘Passion’ – where the narrator gets so caught up in what he’s doing that he is unable to accurately understand the world around him.

The first step of the cycle is Purpose:

The narrator promises to prove, through the telling of his life story, how he came to realize that he was invisible. This is his Purpose. The Purpose stage of the cycle ties in directly with the struggle to assert one’s own humanity. It serves as the narrator’s reason to exist at a particular moment in time. […] Despite the preaching of cycles from the narrator, we see hypocrisy in his actions. He stays within the underground lair, and seems to live in that one moment. He has no plans for the future but to say underground, and he mentions that “…[T]o see around corners is enough… [but] to hear around them is too much; it inhibits action” (Ellison 13). Therefore, while it is necessary to acknowledge the cyclical nature of time and to “see” it, one cannot view it in its utterly complete state and “hear” it too, without getting overwhelmed to the point of “inhibit[ed] action.” Here we see the author emphasize the catch in the cyclical nature of time. “Contradiction is how the world moves,” so each stage or “node” of the Purpose-Passion-Perception cycle must be carried out to completion in a linear fashion before moving on to the next stage. Since the narrator has completed his Purpose by verbalizing his plan to explain invisibility, he moves on to the Passion, or the actual events in his life that made him realize he was invisible.

Then comes Passion:

The Passion stage is where the character acts on their purpose in some sort of struggle to prove their humanity. The Passion stage continues on until the character is capable of realizing that he has gone overboard and that he is no longer capable of proving his humanity through that route. The realization is the Perception state, but if a character refuses to reflect on their life and their past, like the young narrator, the Passion stage can continue on for a very long time. […] The Passion stage must continue until there is something in that node of time that he refuses to do. Then the illusion of the “real” linear time is destroyed.

And last is Perception:

The epilogue takes place right after the story ends, and the narrator has stopped penning his autobiography. It is the section where Perception occurs, where the narrator realizes that he can no longer rely on his old habits to get him places, and must find a new Purpose to take risks for. […] The narrator has learned more than the fact that he needs to look back on his life more and analyze it in order to be able to grow. He has realized that he can no longer stay underground, that “[e]ven hibernations can be overdone, come to think of it.” He continues on, saying, “Perhaps that’s my greatest social crime, I’ve overstayed my hibernation, since there’s a possibility that even an invisible man has a socially responsible role to play” (Ellison 581). Unlike in the beginning of the novel, where he plans to stay underground, looking back at his past and telling it to his audience has made him realize that more progress must be made. […] His safe place has become his place of distorted reality as time has passed. The author intends to portray the narrator as constantly moving, never able to stop because “…live you must, and you can either make passive love to your sickness or burn it out and go onto the next conflicting phase” (Ellison 576). The stage of “passive love” to a “sickness” are the aftereffects of staying in a state of distorted reality for too long, those moments denoted by the presence of water. The author stresses that the linear bouts of passion that people are bound to experience do not amount to any progress until they have been reflected on and internalized (Perception) and a new path has been chosen (Purpose). Through use of the water motif and the cycle of life, Ellison urges his readers to reflect on their lives and be open to more growth as individuals, and to realize that the path to progress is the boomerang between contradicting “nodal” points in life.

And I somehow managed to tie Hamlet and Crime and Punishment into the same thought on the motif use. I have no idea how I did it, but it was fun.

now I’m just laughing at myself

I just thought to myself: “why isn’t there even a name for this, man. I just want to find someone whose brain is amazing and who respects me and I want to just go oh my god you’re brilliant lets mind meld and then we’ll lay in each others arms and talk about big deep things and have opinions and maybe sometimes I’ll stare at their face for hours and draw them or something, and if I find that and they want to have sex, sure, but the first part is a priority”