meet me in montauk

Livejournal reminds me so much of those late nights, that seemed even later due to the fact that I had to wake up at 5:30AM the next morning to catch the yellow bus to school.

Some horrible memories, but (maybe because of the distance), also very sweet.

Here I am now:

something-like-saudade.blogspot.com

Just snippets of my college experience, and an occasional rant that blatantly displays my immaturity.

:)

-mal

I opted for a peppy “Good morning!” today instead of a direct “Hi, how do I get to Employee Health Services?” when I asked the elderly man at the front desk for directions. It sounds funny, but I don’t usually greet people cheerfully because I have this awful thing about me that doesn’t allow me to be friendly with strangers. Really, it’s horrible. Well, this particular gentleman responded to my “good morning!” with an enthusiastic “It is now! With a smile like that!” and then insisted on escorting me to the room where my physical would take place. Aside from reaffirming the obvious fact that old people can be such sweeties, it made me wish I smiled more. Honestly.

Sometimes I wonder why I want to go into Clinical Psychology. Why are the main criteria for my future occupation to work with and to help people, when I’m pretty sure I have a slight (or not so slight) case of social anxiety? In so many ways I’m right for it, but I should be able to make people feel comfortable around me. And I tend to fail at this. I am cursed with the ability to make people feel awkward.

Looking at it another way, I’m pretty sure that people who know me are confident that I will hear them out whenever they need attentive ears, regardless of the closeness of our relationship. If a friend who I've lost touch with randomly wants to talk, I don’t think twice about it. I know better than to judge, I try not to give unasked for advice or to pry, and I’m pretty damn good at cheering people up. I listen well. And I like doing it.

I’ve thought a lot about switching my major to English. Nothing really stirs me up like some silly string of words. A writer was the first thing I wanted to be (excluding “bunny rabbit” and “cash register”) when I got the first vague idea of what an occupation was. The problem is, I feel like I’ve lost that sensitivity to everything that bothered me so much throughout high school. I would need that back.

Among many hypotheses, my favorite is the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (maybe because it's the only one I remember ... maybe not). Let's gently put aside the fact that I even have a favorite hypothesis and ignore the very real possibility that it's my favorite because I can't remember any others.

The reason why I remember this one is because of the importance it places on words, on language. It says that your worldview, even your behavior, is dependent on the organization, rules, and words particular to a language. For example, there are words for emotions in other languages that we find hard to comprehend in ours. (The Portuguese word saudade for instance). Emotions that could go unnoticed simply because we haven't named them. Perceptions could be affected by the ordering of words in sentences, the gendering of objects, the use or absence of pronouns. There are cultures that haven't named colors, but only distinguish between light and dark. In Alaska they place snow in so many different categories, while we may tend to only notice icy/soft or white/yellow snow (hehe, ew).

Along those lines, but only somewhat because I can only try to make my tangents related, are the different phonemes of each language that become imperceptible to cultures that don't use them. For those cultures whose language does not use the phoneme /L/ may find it indistinguishable from the phoneme /r/. While in Arabic, they can distinguish between the /k/ sounds of cool and keep.

I mean, it's always fascinating to think that there are emotions unnamed and sounds unheard, but exist whether they are available in our perceptions or not. It's like, no matter how well we think we've figured out the world, or how jaded we get, or how expected we feel every gesture is, there are still so many dimensions we're not aware of. And thank goodness. I personally love it.

This weekend I lost my voice for the first time in my life, which means I had a really good time.

There's the guy who walks on the grass when there's pavement cause he just don't giveashit and he doesn't look anywhere but straight with the 4 walls of his headphones and the loogie he spits onto the ground but it doesn't matter cause he's the only one walking there. I slow down or speed up my pace to avoid the few seconds when you are walking towards someone and the distance is short enough for recognition, but long enough that a wave won't suffice. Hi. Wave. An awkward day passes in which you contemplate starting up a conversation and decide you're too lazy besides you don't want to be a phony and finally you pass each other. Breathe. All clear. Count the leggings on the girls with the sunglasses, one, two, twelve. They travel in packs. And I think, that girl would be pretty if she wasn't orange. But Lindsay Lohan says fake tans are in, and natural skin color is like so last century. And everyone is trying, and it's so visible that it's painful, but trying to be different is so unoriginal these days.