Words.

All my life, I have been intrigued with words. They beguile me, enchant me, hypnotize me. All words derive from the same alphabet, same coding, same strokes of a pen. They express needs, wishes, desires, delight, frustration - essentially, emotion.
We are told stories every day - on the phone, perhaps about one's day; through the Internet, about one's life or idiosyncrasies; in real life, about events or ideas; on paper, through supporting arguments and theses.
We were taught, in grade school, that there are four types of sentences: to persuade one to take action, to exclaim one's thoughts, to explain one's ideas, and to ask what one wishes to know. Are these like the multiplication, division, subtraction and addition that we memorized, that build up the foundation upon which we construct our mathematical formulas and hypotheses? It is beautiful to see that whatever we have learned, we can always build upon.
It is also beautiful that through reading one's writing, I can always experience what they experience; learn what they learn; see, perhaps feel, how they feel. It is an amazing feeling to get pulled into a piece of fantastic fiction, and to worry for the protagonist's state. It is empowering to read about a journey for someone else, about said person overcoming an obstacle, because through their memoir, one can relate and make connections to oneself. It feels relieving to form one's opinion of the events stated in a news article and to perhaps sign one's name on a petition.
Perhaps that is why I will always be an advocate for education and literacy everywhere.
But enough gushing about the beauty of words; in my next post, I will talk about the psychology of language (or what I know of it.)

A Lament for the Winter.

these lonely streets both wistful and indulgent;
neglectful, tolerant. effervescent, rollicking.
soft whispers that resonate.
frozen to perfection: every droplet manipulated,
every shivering leaf gently placed,
every quivering tree deliberately silenced.
the muted air disorienting.

copyright

This is just a disclaimer that I do not own these pictures unless mentionned.
I have taken these from elsewhere and don't know how to credit them.
However, I DO own the thoughts recorded within this blog.
Thanks for reading! (:

Le Chateau de Versailles.

I really want to start educating myself on things I love. I want to start developing my interests again, and to start thinking for myself. To start catching up on news again, and formulating my own opinions. I want to know more about everything, so I did a little research. Did you know that originally, Chateau de Versailles was originally a hunting lodge built by King Louis XIII of France? However, Louis XIV built the palace on this site, including the Grand Apartments of the King and Queen. Louis XV then built the Chapel and Opera.
The courts of Versailles were actually the place of ultimate political power, from 1682 to 1789. However, with the start of the French Revolution, the royal family had to go back to the capital, Paris. Originally, the names of the rooms for the Grande Appartement du Roi were based after Roman gods and goddesses as follows:
-Salon de Diane (for the goddess of the hunt)
-Salon de Mars (for the god of war)
-Salon de Mercure (god of trade, commerce and Liberal Arts)
-Salon d'Apollon (for the god of Fine Arts)
-Salon de Jupiter (god of law and order)
-Salon de Saturne (god of agriculture and harvest)
and -Salon de Venus (goddess of love and beauty)

the world is a beautiful thing--a life philosophy.

* This was first posted on my other Blog.

the world is yours for the taking,
because we belong to the world, and the world belongs to us.
everything is a divine creation, and yet, some believe that
everything was once a star.

the world is beautiful and bright and dark and hard and firm and strict and soft and pretty and dim and quiet and loud and ugly and perfect and whimsical and tacky and elegant and boasting and arrogant and contradictory and hypocritical and controversy-inducing and high and low and weird and normal and comical and sad and happy and breathtaking and painful and amazing and filthy and despicable and horrible and everything good, bad and in between.
so take it and hate it and love it and know it and ignore it and do everything you want in it
because this world is yours and mine and theirs.

it’s life, it’s everything;
it’s only life. it’s nothing.

Nostalgia, con't con't con't.

*I have already posted this on my other blog, Everything.

Long term memory can store large chunks of information for an extremely long duration. A long-term memory stored, has the potential to be remembered for perhaps all of one's life. Through repetition, information like telephone numbers, or your childhood home phone number, can be stored in the long-term memory.

Short-term memory uses audio to store information, as I mentioned earlier; long-term memory stores ideas and information by association/meaning. In 1966, Baddeley realized that his test subjects in general had more difficulty remembering words with similar meanings, even after they had been repeated several times.

While short-term memory is controlled by regions of the frontal and parietal lobe, long-term memory is stored with the help of the hippocampus. Without the hippocampus (I love this name), new memories cannot be stored as long-term memory, and the individual has a short attention span.

One little fact: SLEEP is important when trying to consolidate information. Numerous studies have shown that memory has a link to getting sleep between the time in which the information is absorbed, and the actual test in which the information is retracted.

Nostalgia, con't, con't.

Okay, so let's discuss short term memory!
We usually hear many people talk about "short term memory loss". They say, "Oh, dear, my memory's horrible. I have short term memory loss."
Short term memory allows us to remember ideas, or thoughts, for several seconds without intentional rehearsing. When at Bell Laboratories, George Miller conducted experiments, explaining that short term memory can only store 7±2 items. Did you know that humans can only remember on demand: seven digits, six letters and five words after a presentation?
Mr. Miller's belief is that the working memory can only hold 2 seconds of sound, while the memory span of youth is seven items.
However, it is believed, now, that short term memory actually holds an even lower amount of items--from 4 to 5.
It is easier, however, to increase the amount of things someone can remember, by chunking. Now, what is chunking? Chunking is when one groups individual items of information together. For example, a phone number is expected to be remembered, one usually chunks the area code, then groups the first three numbers, then the last four, or they group the number into two pieces.
Short term memory is usually dependent on what is heard, rather than what is seen. It was found that subjects found remembering letters that sounded the same, quite hard to differentiate. This suggests that the letters were first memorized through hearing rather than visualizing. However, this generalization/assumption cannot be proven.
So there you go.
A quick run-over of the Short Term Memory!

Nostalgia, con't.

*First posted on other Blog.

So this is a continuation of last time's post on memories and nostalgia.
Anyway, so I'll just quickly inform you on the use and workings of our brain in order to help us process memory.
These are the three types of memory: long-term, short-term, and sensory.
Sensory memory is memorization. It is perceiving something through one of your five senses. When one is trying to memorize something that is visual, or uses taste, etc., usually the FULL memory only lasts for 200-500 milliseconds. Sensory memory was first experimented on by George Sperling, who used the "partial report paradigm", where the experimentees were given a grid of three rows of four letters. With this experiment, Sperling showed that immediate sensory memory was all 12 items, but within a couple hundred milliseconds, the memory faded away. This is possibly why when I look at a rose, when I see dust motes, I try to commit them to memory, but I cannot because it grows fainter so easily.

This shall be continued next time! :)
Thanks for reading, lovelies.

Nostalgia

*I first posted this on my other Blog.

At times, when I get a whiff of something, hear something familiar, taste something I remember from a certain experience, I get pulled back to the past.
Let me tell you an example.
I was just settling into bed one day, when across the hall, my mom entered the washroom. She flicked on the light/ceiling fan first, though, and I watched the light spill across the hallway.
That, for some strange reason, made me think of my hometown.
Now, this is public, and therefore I won't mention where I was born, but something just struck me then and there. It made me wish I was back in the midst of that particular big city, listening to cars and trucks rumble by as I sat on my grandfather's window seat. It made me wish that I was complaining about hot weather and dirty washrooms. It made me wish that I was up on the 27th floor of my aunt's apartment building, bathing in air conditioned air and looking down at the world below, where I couldn't hear anything because the windows were never open.
And so this is my nostalgia post.
I know every experience I get, I try to savor fully. I even try to commit it to memory. But our brains are warped and every time I try to bring up a memory, it's fuzzy. There are things that may have happened, that I forget and guess about. Maybe this happened, maybe this did. What I do know, however, are the answers I studied for my test. My test answers are quite important, because they give me that mark that I covet, but I want to remember how happy I felt at a certain occasion, the inside jokes given, the laughter I shook with.
Why is this?
This shall be continued next time.

c'est ma raison d'etre.

*I first posted on my other Blog, Everything.

Well, it's so simple.

Find something you love. Your passion. Your raison d'etre.
Work at the instrument until you have calluses. 'Til it hurts to play the notes because you are pressing on the areas where your fingers have bruised. 'Til your mouth is swollen and your lungs are crying for a rest.
Sketch until you have charcoal running up and down your arms. 'Til you are coughing on the smoke it releases.
Read and re-read the lines until you cannot sleep without your voice reverberating in your mind. Until you start quoting the script. Until someone asks you a question and you end up answering with a part of the dialogue.
Concentrate on a story until you realize, several hours, days later, that you haven't slept in a long time. Write 'til you get tired and sick of the story. 'Til you're purposely making the lead character die so that you'll finally be done with it.
Dance until you have cuts forming along the edges of your feet. Twirl until you're ready to throw up everything. Until you're ready to give up.
Play something that pushes your physical limits to the point where you are ready to collapse. That forces you to work with your team and build a strong defense. Until your shins are cold and muddy with sweat and your dirty tears.
And there you go.

What happiness.

weightless

*Again, I have posted this on my other Blog. 

i wonder what it'd be like.
to feel weightless for a couple seconds,
to be suspended, flying. free.
to glance at birds chirping past like, "hey, what is this big kid doing up here?"

to look out and have the time stopped for a moment for you to take in all the beauty around you. to feel the wind caressing your face.
to feel like you have every single freaking thing in the world by your fingertips,
as if all your problems are diminished and minimized--not by someone else, but by you, you who have suffered through more than you can bear.
to feel as though every thought, every action you ever did, wrong or right, is deemed little, deemed small, deemed insignificant, because you're on top of the world.
or would you feel the pull of gravity? would you feel it tugging on you, like a
dark poison, dragging you down to earth?
would the wind feel like a blanket pressed upon your face? would the sky feel gray and
blank? because up there you are so close, so close.
you can touch these strands of sky that are coming loose. and once you
pull, they furl around your neck and pull tighter. cut off your circulation.
squeeze your airway.
the seams of the clouds are ripping loose. the cumulus clouds they wrap around your head and suffocate you with mounds of cotton.

so tell me, young person, are you willing to risk it?
are you willing to have your air stolen from your lungs as you fly?
are you prepared for the sky to go colourless?
are you ready to get let down?
yes? well, then perfect, child.
you are well-prepared for the world.

This is their childhood.

(I'm posting this here, but I originally posted it on my other blog, Everything, first.)

I volunteer at a learning center to help them with their administrative work. Mainly it's just paperwork, but the part I love most is getting to go into different classes and just helping and talking with the kids there.
Today, I went into a particular classroom.
One of the kids there, a seven-year old girl, warmed up to me for the first time. She was fascinated by my necklace (a golden pendant attached to a piece of string) and proceeded to laugh at herself and her friend in the reflection. "Hey! I look heart-shaped!"
Usually she's off running with her friends, and as much as I love these kids and try so hard to encourage their creativity, I need to maintain a teacher-student relationship, not a friend-to-friend one. Therefore, the most interaction I usually get with her is: "Okay, come on. Stop running around, you're supposed to be doing your homework! Your parents enrolled you in this because they want you to learn!"
Today, for some reason, they were already settled down when I came in to help, so after she played with my necklace, I decided to sit down with her and talk to her. Rather than talking to a bunch of people at a time, my introvert personality likes getting to know each person I interact with, thoroughly; therefore, I like concentrating on one person and getting to know them better.
She and her friend were colouring in a bunch of Easter eggs on a little scrapbook. I asked them about their Easters, they bragged about their egg hunts and how many eggs they found.
I asked her whether I could help her and draw some decorative Easter eggs for her, and she nodded brightly.
I sat down to draw some Easter eggs and I found myself out of ideas. I had not decorated Easter eggs in years, and when I realized that I hadn't participated in one of my previously favourite activities, in a LONG TIME, I was startled. The seven-year old, who was now working on an art project for the class, noticed and began instructing me.
"Just do whatever you want. Imagine, think. How about a couple of stars, a couple of hearts? What about squiggles like mine here?" She flipped to a page in her scrapbook where a bunch of Easter eggs beamed brilliantly at me.
I nodded and began to draw mine. I could not believe how out of touch I was. How my imagination slipped away, how rather than keeping close with my childhood self, simple art projects such as these made me think hard.
The girl kept encouraging me. "Come on, you can do this! Wow, that's amazing; I like that heart there!" She was at ease with me, and treated me with respect. She was nothing like the defiant, loud girl she was before. She surprised me. Last class, I had thought the closest I could get to calming her down was marching her to her desk and sitting her down.

the beginning

Well, hello there! My name is Jennifer, and I'm a pint-sized girl from Canada.

Having hope to someday major in psychology in university, I have many thoughts and questions that demand answers about life. However, to protect the privacy of others when referring to individual situations, I will talk generally about cases rather than name names or name specific situations. I will also be posting my thoughts about news reports pertaining to specific issues!
I am interested in everything about life. At times, I wish that everything in the world were unified as something tangible, like jelly, so that I could step inside it and let it devour me.

I want to pick up parkour, disassembling/reassembling of cars, fencing, rock-climbing, as hobbies. Every activity possible to learn involves seeing life in a different way, seeing the world in a different light (to use a cliche). Free-running involves consideration of everything around you in context to how you move. It is seeing everything as a challenge and thinking about movement and speed. It's making everything, every object, relative to your route. Each action is premeditated.

Rebuilding cars takes patience and time. I am patient, but rarely towards myself. I hope, by learning about car parts and how they work, I can improve on becoming more accepting to my limitations and find out where exactly I go wrong.
So this is just a little snippet of the topics I'd like to post about in the future!:

• the theory of nature v.s. nurture
• case studies in the news
• the ripple/butterfly effect
• strange phenomena and how they work
• my life philosophies
• Rorshach tests and how they work
• disorders and cases in general

So yeah! Hope you enjoyed reading this, and I hope to continue in posting about my inspirations, thoughts, ideas, etc.!
Thanks for reading, lovelies!