Cato Puppy trotted beside me, as I picked up sticks that had fallen into the steep-pitched grassy meadow in front of our house. When I scooched to snag the end of a good-sized stick, the other end, embedded in soil, boomeranged into my face. I cupped my right eye and blinked. I could see just fine. “Come on, Cato, let’s get some more sticks.” Soon my right eye was watering—a lot—and I called it quits. In the bathroom, I rinsed my eye with drops then sat down at my laptop for the morning. After a while, I felt the sensation of debris floating in my eye. I checked it in the bathroom mirror then asked Keith to take a look. “I don’t see anything,” he said, lifting my eyelid this way and that. “Your eye looks fine.” But it felt uncomfortable, so I took an anti-inflammatory and returned to write while mopping tears that flowed out of my eye. By the afternoon, whenever I looked up from the computer screen, a needle-sharp jab shot through my eye. I’m going blind, I thought; I’m going to lose my eye. “Keith, you’re going to have to take me to the doctor. This really hurts.” “I still can’t see anything in your eye, and it looks normal. Why don’t you try resting? Using your eye probably caused the irritation.” “But I haven’t practiced my flute yet, and it’s a perfect day to wash Freya and Cato and walk him to the mailbox.” All the things I’d planned to do that afternoon. “You can do those things another time. Now you need to rest.” “Okay, okay, I’ll cover my right eye with a scarf and practice.” Keith rolled his eyes and sighed. While I practiced, looking like a pirate, both eyes watered. Argh! I couldn’t see the music. So, I put my flute away, lay down, closed my eyes, and dozed. When I got up, the sensation of debris in my eye was gone. No more sharp jabs shooting through my eyeball. No sight impairment from watering, only a dull ache. The next day, my eye felt better. So, I did one simple thing then another and another. I didn’t go blind or lose an eye. But it took the sensation of a log in my eye for me to enjoy being able to do life’s simple things.
I’m in the sensation-selling business: event organization. For the past 14 years, I’ve been part of a process which brings runners together from all over the world. The competitors who have signed up for Al Andalus Ultimate Trail, a 5-day, 234-kilometer ultramarathon in Southern Spain, will be experiencing a wide range of emotions as they attempt to finish this grueling July stage race. Many will return year after year, their “joie de vivre”, a challenge of life or death. They become lifelong friends. Everyone enters the week as equals, ready to compete on their own terms. What makes a person sign up to push their physical and mental limits? It is inspirational watching this personal process unfold. To provide a backdrop where these tests are possible has been a great addition to my life.
The 14th edition is coming up in 34 days. Sensations to be had. The path is ready, the journey awaits.
My father and I like to commiserate over the reduced number of words that are used in modern English conversation, variety and nuance being lost to overused and therefore diluted words like Awesome, Love, and Explode. Sensational is a wonderful adjective I reserve for truly moving experiences, although I doubt anyone I'm speaking to realises. While visiting the art gallery at MIT, I stood before an Arthur Ganson piece of “gestural engineering” that was not only captivating but actually induced a physical response within me. It was quite literally arousing. The body of the violin slowly rising to meet the delicate, descending barbs of the ostrich plume, each ever so gently stroking and then falling away from the strings in turn, completing their respective rotations and leaving me thrilled with the anticipation of their next touch. The machinery was slow and quiet, the contact so slight, just a tease. To the full extent of it's meaning, this sculpture was exquisite, electrifying, fascinating, and sensational.
“An emotion is your brain’s creation of what your bodily sensations mean in relation to what is going on around you in the world” - Lisa Feldman Barrett in How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain.
In my work as a child psychologist treating preschoolers, I use shared humor, while gradually incorporating the feared thing into our play, to shift the child’s meaning, and their experience, of everyday sensations that have frightened them. One child becomes intensely agitated, aggressive even, when he hears someone, anyone, chewing nearby, even his beloved sister (“misophonia”). I treat this, not sure if it will work, by getting both kids laughing hilariously as they munch on goldfish crackers and drink juice. We do silly rhymes ("We're eating Mackers and Moose!"), pretend burps, I even let them accidentally spray me, the clumps of chewed concoction bursting out of their mouths as they laugh, bits of juice soaked goldfish crackers landing on my sleeves. Miraculously, humor spins its magic. With all this shared hilarity, the sensation of his sister chewing becomes part of the fun. They are finally, joyfully, eating together.
I’ll try to describe one of the strangest sensations of my life.
About ten years ago, I jumped on the metro in Paris to go to work. I grabbed one of the fold-down seats next to the door.
I looked straight ahead – there was a man about my age sitting opposite.
I didn’t turn to my left, but I could feel somebody sitting there; a tall presence. From the corner of my eye, I got the vague sense they were wearing a dark wool coat.
Somehow I knew they were staring at me. My whole body was prickling under their gaze – it felt menacing. The space around my head was almost vibrating. My instincts told me not to look at the person.
At my stop, I jumped off and didn’t look back.
The memory of the man opposite convinces me that I wasn’t imagining the sensation – I remember him looking at the person next to me in alarm, as if he felt the menace too.
Laughing, I agreed with my granddaughter. I am old enough to remember the 1976 Bicentennial celebrations, and to miss some of my lost patriotism. I am old enough to have survived the AIDS Epidemic of the 1980’s, and started my six yearly blood donations because it was a free AIDS test. Now, it’s a free Lyme Disease test, but that’s a different story. Memory is like a feeling of loss and a feeling of delight at the same time. I remember the sensation of my late husband’s hand on my face as we woke up, and I remember the agony of the day he died. New sensations are coming to me as I get older. I feel them in my body as well as my mind. The tingle of watching, up close, a butterfly drink methodically from each of the lilac’s tiny cups. The gentle ache in my chest as my four-year-old grandson runs into my arms for the cuddle he knows will last as long as he wants. The bubbles in my belly as I laugh when my three-year-old granddaughter says, “Nana, you know a lot of things ‘cause you’re old, right?”
Nothing is as sweet and freaky like the temporary disorientation I feel when I come home after a trip. Opening the door and stepping into my hallway gives me a spatial shock that makes me question, "Is this my couch? Has this vase always been so yellow?" Everything seems so much dirtier or cleaner or brighter or darker or bigger or smaller or straighter or more skewed. The fact that there's still stuff in the fridge and cupboards seems silly. As if they should have thrown themselves together in a meal while I was gone. It's not a feeling of disappointment, but wonder.
I always hear about how travel can change you, but could there also be a concurrent change in the belongings we leave behind? While driving over that zig-zaggy road, my bathroom mirror fogged up .001%. In the middle of that conversation with a fellow traveler telling me the secret route to something, my hall light became 3% brighter. While spending 1 hour trying to decide on a purchase at a museum gift shop, my coffee table expanded .05mm. I probably won’t be able to study and prove this since it only happens when I'm not looking for a while.
We were in her car on the way to the mall – the only activity we ever seemed to do together throughout my childhood. I was in town for a visit after moving abroad. I thought I had matured enough to handle my mother, but I was wrong.
As usual, she bombarded me with questions laden with judgement, setting me up to reveal myself as a failure.
Her accusations or rather projections didn’t stop: I was wasting my life, chasing after men, living like a bum. I should come back and get a proper job. Any attempt to justify my choices were futile.
Feelings of shame and frustration morphed into anger. My face grew hot, my vision blurred – indeed like a “blind rage” – and I burst. We stopped at a red light, and I jumped out. It’s enough. Goodbye, I said and slammed the door shut. The light turned green, and she drove on.
Recalling that incident years later, I realized maybe our hormones were in sync and we were both particularly sensitive. Over time, I learned to temper such phases with exercise, nutrition, and supplements. What if she had done the same? Would our relationship have been any better?
Through my Facebook Feed and videos, I can find an array of music programs from Jazz to orchestral works and acclaimed soloists. One evening a clip of Oscar Peterson, a renowned jazz pianist, in a set from 1967, came on and I was immediately transported to my late teen age years when I was first introduced to jazz at the Blue Note in Philadelphia and sat 3 feet away from him listening to his grunts as his hands flew over the keys and seeing the sweat building up on his face. In this dark horseshoe shaped bar, I was transported to another reality by musicians like Thelonious Monk, Stan Getz, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Art Blakey, and many more greats. You could touch them, there were no acoustics, what you heard was what you got. The sensation of comingling with the piano, sax, bass the drums and being taken on a glorious ride was never duplicated when they became recognized and performed on stage. The intimacy was the engine that created this memorable sensation.
Cato Puppy trotted beside me, as I picked up sticks that had fallen into the steep-pitched grassy meadow in front of our house. When I scooched to snag the end of a good-sized stick, the other end, embedded in soil, boomeranged into my face. I cupped my right eye and blinked. I could see just fine. “Come on, Cato, let’s get some more sticks.” Soon my right eye was watering—a lot—and I called it quits. In the bathroom, I rinsed my eye with drops then sat down at my laptop for the morning. After a while, I felt the sensation of debris floating in my eye. I checked it in the bathroom mirror then asked Keith to take a look. “I don’t see anything,” he said, lifting my eyelid this way and that. “Your eye looks fine.” But it felt uncomfortable, so I took an anti-inflammatory and returned to write while mopping tears that flowed out of my eye. By the afternoon, whenever I looked up from the computer screen, a needle-sharp jab shot through my eye. I’m going blind, I thought; I’m going to lose my eye. “Keith, you’re going to have to take me to the doctor. This really hurts.” “I still can’t see anything in your eye, and it looks normal. Why don’t you try resting? Using your eye probably caused the irritation.” “But I haven’t practiced my flute yet, and it’s a perfect day to wash Freya and Cato and walk him to the mailbox.” All the things I’d planned to do that afternoon. “You can do those things another time. Now you need to rest.” “Okay, okay, I’ll cover my right eye with a scarf and practice.” Keith rolled his eyes and sighed. While I practiced, looking like a pirate, both eyes watered. Argh! I couldn’t see the music. So, I put my flute away, lay down, closed my eyes, and dozed. When I got up, the sensation of debris in my eye was gone. No more sharp jabs shooting through my eyeball. No sight impairment from watering, only a dull ache. The next day, my eye felt better. So, I did one simple thing then another and another. I didn’t go blind or lose an eye. But it took the sensation of a log in my eye for me to enjoy being able to do life’s simple things.
I’m in the sensation-selling business: event organization. For the past 14 years, I’ve been part of a process which brings runners together from all over the world. The competitors who have signed up for Al Andalus Ultimate Trail, a 5-day, 234-kilometer ultramarathon in Southern Spain, will be experiencing a wide range of emotions as they attempt to finish this grueling July stage race. Many will return year after year, their “joie de vivre”, a challenge of life or death. They become lifelong friends. Everyone enters the week as equals, ready to compete on their own terms. What makes a person sign up to push their physical and mental limits? It is inspirational watching this personal process unfold. To provide a backdrop where these tests are possible has been a great addition to my life.
The 14th edition is coming up in 34 days. Sensations to be had. The path is ready, the journey awaits.
My father and I like to commiserate over the reduced number of words that are used in modern English conversation, variety and nuance being lost to overused and therefore diluted words like Awesome, Love, and Explode. Sensational is a wonderful adjective I reserve for truly moving experiences, although I doubt anyone I'm speaking to realises. While visiting the art gallery at MIT, I stood before an Arthur Ganson piece of “gestural engineering” that was not only captivating but actually induced a physical response within me. It was quite literally arousing. The body of the violin slowly rising to meet the delicate, descending barbs of the ostrich plume, each ever so gently stroking and then falling away from the strings in turn, completing their respective rotations and leaving me thrilled with the anticipation of their next touch. The machinery was slow and quiet, the contact so slight, just a tease. To the full extent of it's meaning, this sculpture was exquisite, electrifying, fascinating, and sensational.
“An emotion is your brain’s creation of what your bodily sensations mean in relation to what is going on around you in the world” - Lisa Feldman Barrett in How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain.
In my work as a child psychologist treating preschoolers, I use shared humor, while gradually incorporating the feared thing into our play, to shift the child’s meaning, and their experience, of everyday sensations that have frightened them. One child becomes intensely agitated, aggressive even, when he hears someone, anyone, chewing nearby, even his beloved sister (“misophonia”). I treat this, not sure if it will work, by getting both kids laughing hilariously as they munch on goldfish crackers and drink juice. We do silly rhymes ("We're eating Mackers and Moose!"), pretend burps, I even let them accidentally spray me, the clumps of chewed concoction bursting out of their mouths as they laugh, bits of juice soaked goldfish crackers landing on my sleeves. Miraculously, humor spins its magic. With all this shared hilarity, the sensation of his sister chewing becomes part of the fun. They are finally, joyfully, eating together.
I’ll try to describe one of the strangest sensations of my life.
About ten years ago, I jumped on the metro in Paris to go to work. I grabbed one of the fold-down seats next to the door.
I looked straight ahead – there was a man about my age sitting opposite.
I didn’t turn to my left, but I could feel somebody sitting there; a tall presence. From the corner of my eye, I got the vague sense they were wearing a dark wool coat.
Somehow I knew they were staring at me. My whole body was prickling under their gaze – it felt menacing. The space around my head was almost vibrating. My instincts told me not to look at the person.
At my stop, I jumped off and didn’t look back.
The memory of the man opposite convinces me that I wasn’t imagining the sensation – I remember him looking at the person next to me in alarm, as if he felt the menace too.
“Nana, you are Daddy’s mommy, right?”
“Yes! He used to be little, like you.”
“You are daddy’s mommy…because you are old.”
Laughing, I agreed with my granddaughter. I am old enough to remember the 1976 Bicentennial celebrations, and to miss some of my lost patriotism. I am old enough to have survived the AIDS Epidemic of the 1980’s, and started my six yearly blood donations because it was a free AIDS test. Now, it’s a free Lyme Disease test, but that’s a different story. Memory is like a feeling of loss and a feeling of delight at the same time. I remember the sensation of my late husband’s hand on my face as we woke up, and I remember the agony of the day he died. New sensations are coming to me as I get older. I feel them in my body as well as my mind. The tingle of watching, up close, a butterfly drink methodically from each of the lilac’s tiny cups. The gentle ache in my chest as my four-year-old grandson runs into my arms for the cuddle he knows will last as long as he wants. The bubbles in my belly as I laugh when my three-year-old granddaughter says, “Nana, you know a lot of things ‘cause you’re old, right?”
Nothing is as sweet and freaky like the temporary disorientation I feel when I come home after a trip. Opening the door and stepping into my hallway gives me a spatial shock that makes me question, "Is this my couch? Has this vase always been so yellow?" Everything seems so much dirtier or cleaner or brighter or darker or bigger or smaller or straighter or more skewed. The fact that there's still stuff in the fridge and cupboards seems silly. As if they should have thrown themselves together in a meal while I was gone. It's not a feeling of disappointment, but wonder.
I always hear about how travel can change you, but could there also be a concurrent change in the belongings we leave behind? While driving over that zig-zaggy road, my bathroom mirror fogged up .001%. In the middle of that conversation with a fellow traveler telling me the secret route to something, my hall light became 3% brighter. While spending 1 hour trying to decide on a purchase at a museum gift shop, my coffee table expanded .05mm. I probably won’t be able to study and prove this since it only happens when I'm not looking for a while.
We were in her car on the way to the mall – the only activity we ever seemed to do together throughout my childhood. I was in town for a visit after moving abroad. I thought I had matured enough to handle my mother, but I was wrong.
As usual, she bombarded me with questions laden with judgement, setting me up to reveal myself as a failure.
Her accusations or rather projections didn’t stop: I was wasting my life, chasing after men, living like a bum. I should come back and get a proper job. Any attempt to justify my choices were futile.
Feelings of shame and frustration morphed into anger. My face grew hot, my vision blurred – indeed like a “blind rage” – and I burst. We stopped at a red light, and I jumped out. It’s enough. Goodbye, I said and slammed the door shut. The light turned green, and she drove on.
Recalling that incident years later, I realized maybe our hormones were in sync and we were both particularly sensitive. Over time, I learned to temper such phases with exercise, nutrition, and supplements. What if she had done the same? Would our relationship have been any better?
Through my Facebook Feed and videos, I can find an array of music programs from Jazz to orchestral works and acclaimed soloists. One evening a clip of Oscar Peterson, a renowned jazz pianist, in a set from 1967, came on and I was immediately transported to my late teen age years when I was first introduced to jazz at the Blue Note in Philadelphia and sat 3 feet away from him listening to his grunts as his hands flew over the keys and seeing the sweat building up on his face. In this dark horseshoe shaped bar, I was transported to another reality by musicians like Thelonious Monk, Stan Getz, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Art Blakey, and many more greats. You could touch them, there were no acoustics, what you heard was what you got. The sensation of comingling with the piano, sax, bass the drums and being taken on a glorious ride was never duplicated when they became recognized and performed on stage. The intimacy was the engine that created this memorable sensation.