The title is a quote from The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which I reread on my birthday, followed by a screening that I hosted at an event space with arguably the best projector in the city of Chicago. Anyhow, I wanted to post about this deep sense of elation I have been feeling lately […]
Read more "Five minutes of a lifetime were truly spent."Languages riddles out my experiences and reflections while tango dancing through the in-betweens. It is with writing that I can play with plausible combinations, unifications, and loopholes. In The Book, Alan Watts addresses this idea that true wisdom is comprised of awareness of the unification of appearing opposites and dichotomies. Throughout all of my experiences, […]
Read more "Unification and Derivation"It’s nice to just let go, type, write, speak, and be in a way that feels quintessentially natural and that flows with ease. It’s rare and oddly difficult to find this place of free communication. We strive for structures that can mask our limitations and imperfections, and yet we then have the task of describing their […]
Read more "Autumnal Nostalgia"A box of acrylic paints peeked out from underneath a cardboard box topped with a blank canvas and this gave me an idea. We painted together. My brush strokes were delicate and small, bright and colorful, whereas his were large and sweeping with dark, deep colors. The combination could have worked until he announced, “Oh! […]
Read more "Lightly Colored Specks of Paint"I am writing this to capture this moment and this feeling. Right now. I am filled with this sense of joy, wonder, and the calmness to approach opportunities with grace and honesty, if still a bit cautiously. I remember feeling this way in spring, shortly after I had registered for the summer program in Copenhagen. […]
Read more "The woman vanishes, laughter fading in the mist"We were like children discovering our existence and its supposed boundaries for the first time. The levity of our method was held taut by the thoroughness of our investigation. Our fingertips grasp only rays of light that flicker through the dust and do not yet hold onto the forms and shapes upon which it lands. […]
Read more "Flickers Through Dust: The Creative Mind"Intentionality is often posited as one of the first characteristics of mind, referring to the mind’s innate tendency to be directed towards something other than itself. However, self-awareness is also a feature of the mind, and self-awareness seems counter to intentionality in that it reflexively stares back into the conscious state itself, almost as though […]
Read more "Intentionality and Self-Awareness"What are the greatest endeavors of human thought? In Western culture, understanding, knowledge, and empirical precision are heralded as though they comprise the zenith of all human understanding and the ultimate conglomeration of all of our efforts. Towards the end of my undergraduate studies, I began to realize that the arts had this extraordinary ability […]
Read more "Endeavors of Thought"Response Notes from Self, No Self?: Perspectives from Analytical, Phenomenological, & Indian, a collection of essays edited by Mark Siderits, Evan Thompson and Dan Zahavi (2011): Diachronic identity is a component of the substantialist view of the self. It refers to the persistence of an enduring entity over time, and can be used as a […]
Read more "Overview of Theories of The Self"The natural attitude in the sciences operates on an ontology that suspends subjectivity in favor of conceiving pure nature as the grounds for all being, and hence all understanding. The body is viewed as a condition of possibility within the context of other physical objects in objective space, wherein which it can be defined by […]
Read more "The Expressive Body"
What is Experience? 