A Body Makeover, Yet Again!

I've become a disgusting flabby slob. I'm going to do something about it.

Here's my plan, and it's pretty simple. Eat better, much better. No anxious snacking in the evenings, no alcohol Monday through Thursday. Very moderate alcohol on the weekends. Treadmill Monday through Friday. After doing the treadmill every day for two weeks M-F, I'll add more exercise. I will add one minute every day to my treadmill. I'm in such terrible shape, I'm starting slowly. I started at 17 minutes, run 1, walk 2. Each minute I run, I turn up the speed .1 mph. I start running at 4.0, the next time I run 4.1 and so on.

Today was my third day. I ran 25 minutes, burned about 250 calories, ran at a 3% incline.

This doesn't mean I get to do nothing on the weekends. I have a handsome and active fiance who is in excellent shape. He and I love the outdoors and this usually leads us to nature on the weekends. I expect we will hike or something this weekend, maybe take an urban walk.

The film Perfume and caves

Jerry and I have watched pieces of the film Perfume repeatedly. I finally watched it end to end. It's one of those rare films that force you to become metaphysical, deep, to think, to feel. When you encounter a movie that makes you think about it 24 hours after you've watched it, hold on to it, remember it.

I don't know what the critics think of the movie. I know it is visceral and finely narrated with a great voice - I think it is John Hurt. It is a movie so filled with texture, it's almost too much. Your eyes, your brain, your mind are so innundated with texture, it's as if you are in a sensory deprivation tank. Not able to hear or see - but you can feel texture.

The movie is about a young man with one of the best senses of smell on earth. It overwhelms his very existence. He is obsessed with it, wants to save great smells, capture them. His favorite smell is that of beautiful women. (Isn't it the narrow thinking of our culture - in this film -only the beautiful women are worthy of scent capturing?)

As I said, the director places a great deal of emphasis on texture. You would think the emhasis would be on smell not on texture. But- I guess you can convey a lasting impression with a film about texture but not a film about scent. We can't experience the smell of the character.

I've heard about theatres, whether real or theoretical, which try to jerk all your senses. They cause you to feel changes in temperature consistent with the film, and emit vapors which affect the sense of smell and even taste.

The thing which has driven me to blog again though is not about texture. It's about the character, known as Grenouille (pronounced Grenwee), and his sensory experience in a cave.

{Any cavers which read this post, please comment here with your thoughts about cave smell. Please comment everytime you read a post. It makes me feel my efforts are not wasted.}

I wrote down the narrator's quote, word for word:

Grenoille needed a moment to believe he had actually found a spot

on earth where scent was almost absent. Spread all around him

lay nothing but the tranquil scent of dead stone. There was

something sacred about this place. No longer distracted by external scents,

he was finally able to bask in his own existence.......and found it splendid.

Questions:

1. How many cavers feel that a cave was a spot on earth where scent was almost absent?

(Personally I feel innundated by the scents of a cave, the very pungent smell of earth, a smell I am fond of. I wouldn't write that a cave was a spot on earth where scent was almost absent. On the contrary, I believe that square foot for square foot, a cave is one of the more fragrant places. Many cavers know the soap people who make a cave scented scrub).

2. How many cavers feel there is no scent in a cave but only the smell of dead stone?

3. I believe a cave is a sacred place. Whether you believe in a higher being or not, it's a sacred place. It's the depths of earth, made by God or science. Either way, it's a very untouched environment, true to Mother Earth, and sacred because it is deep in the earth. What do you think?

4. I do think, however, being in a cave, helps me bask in my own existence. How about you?

Clapping, a study of crowd psychology

Clapping, for all its sound and fury, a crowd that claps in unsion is not so different from a chorus of chirping crickets

Josie Glausiusz








Clapping. Have you ever thought how weird it is? I was in a room of lawyers (please, no jokes, even in your own minds. Yes, I will find out...lol) and they/we were all clapping for the Governor of Montanta (don't knock him just because lawyers like him). I will write more about him later. Anyway, in some time warp, out of body experience kinda thing, I zoomed in on the clapping. I noticed only the clapping. The styles of clapping. The sound it makes. Why we feel compelled to do it.





Why do we clap? To make noise in order to show appreciation, of course. But, why smacking our hands together? It actually hurts my hands. Sometimes my hands are full and so I smack my leg with one hand. But - why don't we click our tongues, sing, stomp our feet?

Clapping the hands together has several advantages over slapping the body. First of all, it produces a much more emphatic, consistent and easily controllable sound. In clapping, one aims to do more than merely sound skin against skin: think of the flat, insulting patter of applause delivered with gloved hands. Clapping is actually complex action to perform: the truly effective or vital clap aims to compress and explode a little bubble or bomb of air, compressing and accelerating the air momentarily trapped between the palms, just at the sonorous ‘sweet spot’ so relished by tennis players. Despite the association of handclapping with childish glee, children take a long time to learn how to do it properly, though they seem to learn – or are taught - very early on to want to.




Have you noticed that you can't just line your hands up and then smack them together? Well, you could do that but the sound wouldn't resound well. It would be an inefficient way to clap. You have to turn one hand at a 45 degree angle so that the fingers aren't aligned, allowing the palms the most surface area.



There are different syles of clapping among people, which seem to reflect their personalities. I recently observed this. Those who are not as confident, who are shy or young, clap in a more delicate and less hearty sense. Instead of turning one hand at a 45 degree angle, they clap with the hands lined up and do it delicately. I imagine this type of clapping makes very little sound.


Another thing? Clapping is a very very social practice. If you are the only one who claps, you are socially rejected. However, have you noticed that usually once somebody starts clapping, the others feel compelled or guilted to join in? I enjoy experimenting with this sometimes. During a speech, play, dance performance or some other public gathering with clapping, I pick an appropriate time to clap and designate myself as the clap leader. It's great. I can actually make other people join in. It's the herd mentality.



Presumably we speak of a ‘round of applause’ because of a sense of the circulation of energies within it, a transmission, a passage. It is for this reason, surely, that the size of an audience is proportional to the duration of its applause: why does it take an arena full of people much longer to deliver even a perfunctory round of applause than a small concert hall? Presumably because the clapping has to go round more people. Applause and the desire to applaud feeds on itself. Individuals certainly feel the need to clap hands in pleasure and exaltation, but rarely feel the impulse to applaud out of a crowd.