For my sensorium assignment I decided to go to the quaint little waterfall behind Brock that I had so much about from my friends, because it was the only place in St. Catharines that I had been meaning to go. It was hard to experience all the the senses because mostly everything was overwhelmed with the winters notion of it being so cold. However with a little concentration and help from my girlfriend who accompanied me, I was able to manage. Firstly I will start with the obvious sense of sight. It was very bright and white, I remember how the waterfall had of course frozen over and I could see the glare of the sun reflecting off the ice, it was a very beautiful sight which seemed so untouched. The next sense that stood out was the sound of the water trickling over the waterfall down onto the earth below. My sense of smell was heavily detained due to the cold and stuffy noses that the cold brings with it, but when I went to hold my girlfriend I do remember smelling her perfume, I believe it's called "cozy up". As far as taste goes I was chewing on gum that tasted like Swedish Berries. Lastly my sense of touch was experienced when I slipped on the way back up from taking the picture and fell in the snow. The sense was cold. Very cold.
I chose to bring back an acorn because of the scenery the waterfall was placed, and one of the things we noticed on our journey were all the squirrels running around everywhere. It took a lot of work to find an acorn in the snow that hadn't been devoured by the little furry natives of the residence. I also chose the acorn because it filled me with the hope of spring and the idea of all the snow melting making way for the growth of new life and new beginnings.
Reading Assignment
At first I did not at all understand or take interest in the essay for the reading part of this assignment. However after reading it and while I was looking through my photography photo's to find something to correlate to, my eyes got fixed onto a picture of palm trees that I took November 2014 when I went on vacation to Punta Cana. Suddenly I understood how the idea that perception and experience extracts data from all of our senses and makes the correlate, so as to say that our brain does not compute them separately. It sounds cheesy, I know, but when I looked at the photo my sight triggered my memory which activated my perceptual senses and I could literally feel the warm breeze down by the beach and hear the palms brushing in sequence with the waves. The only senses I cannot recall are taste and smell. This makes me wonder if I had had a stronger memory of that time perhaps I would have had a stronger activation of my perceptual senses. In any case I would most definitely agree with Socrates that there are senses beyond the 5 basic ones that tie to emotions and correlate with one another to create feelings that are less simple to describe, or even detect.
No comments:
Post a Comment