35 likes on this wall post. I guess my friends are kind of the nerdy type...

It seems as though I do not think with my head anymore. In these couple of weeks, I have been basing a lot of my decision making on feelings, intuition and dreams. It might sound strange but it seems to be working very well for me.

Warning POTC spoilers ahead!



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Sometimes, I just 'know' things.

I knew that the white napkin which Jack Sparrow tossed onto the floor beside the dining table was going to help him escape, and that he would eventually get the muffin which got stuck on the chandelier. I knew that the sinking chalices were going to be retrieved. When Serena dived into the water upon being untied, I knew she was going to bring back the chalices and save the day. I knew that Captain Jack Sparrow was not going to kiss Angelica.

Well, being able to forecast movies might not be the best example of how my 6th sense is extra sensitive at the moment, since the director might have left some cinematography trails which I simply caught on to.

But, I knew it was the right time to approach my landlords regarding my leaky tap of one month when I just bumped into Andrew one day while emptying my garbage, as I dreamed about it the night before.

I think just as well as I am responding to signs-in-the-air as I like to call it, the signs are responding to me too? (Paulo Coelho would call it omens in The Alchemist) Just today, I was feeling unusually gloomy. I was frustrated with everything; the amount of work piling up, the pitiful number of hours I had slept the night before, friends who just need to man-up, the crazy weather, I was even unsatisfied with what I had chose to wear for the day, because I just threw on some clothes before dashing out of the house. Seriously, I was quite upset. I was actually psyching myself to list everything that was making me unhappy, to clarify the negative emotions in my head, just in case anything small triggered me that day (like no more subway cookies?), causing the emotions in me to boil over and turn me into a sobbing mess.

And then wonders of wonders, during my power walk pass the carpark to Sturt campus, this middle aged couple, whom I just walked past seconds ago, waved and shouted to me:

"You're beautiful!"


Wow!

My day was instantly made! Firstly because compliments are never ill-received and secondly and perhaps more significantly on hindsight, the signs are reading me too.

Oh well, everything might just be a happy coincidence, but I certainly feel more alive now!




'The boy and his heart had become friends, and neither was capable now of betraying each other.'- The Alchemist

haha if only that comment was a one-way ticket to sleeping in all day. Bliss!)

What are some of the ‘nuts’ and ‘bolts’ of....?

Mind/body dualism

'Debates about the true nature of the body have a long history, dating back beyond a time when scholars such as Descartes and Rousseau began to talk about the mind as distinct from the body (i.e. a mind/body dualism). This idea has tended to privilege the mind as that which defines human 'being', while the body has been treated, at least in intellectual life, as a sort of excess baggage of human agency... the body's importance has been perceived in the main, in terms of the necessity of its careful management in order to enhance, or to avoid distracting from, either mental or spiritual effort...'


'The human body can 'dis-appear' in two senses. The first is non-appearance as background dis-appearance (e.g. some part of our body can be 'put out of play' because it is completely irrelevant to what we are focused on" we can 'lose' our legs if we are typing at a keyboard)... There is also the 'dysappearance' of the body when the body appears as 'Other' to the self, as an 'alien presence'(such as in a time of pain), arguing that this common experience has served to support the mind/body dualism of an essential non-material mind and an all too material oppositional body'

Interesting reading from Week 8 Epidemiology and the Social Determinants of health.
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'To study 'best practice' is always to study what is contingent, complex, fragile and often unruly. This does not license idiosyncrasy or serendipity in the provision of health care. The point is to account more fully for the lived experienced of participants engaged in health care as an embodied and culturally constituted performance.'

I wish I could write like that, to be able to express human-moments (like the alien body experience) in words with such clarity and succinctness. 'Best practice' is contingent, complex even unruly. But this does not license idiosyncrasy or serendipity. Ahhh, words of wisdom written with such flair.....