Bewilderment & Our Life - Caronina Reyes

From the very interesting readings, my definition of bewilderment would be, the way humans are unfazed, unmoved, baffled and unresponsive to a certain situation or a specific experience.

Certainty is based on how well we know and are confident about something. From the readings author Edward Abbey and Fanny Howe use certainty as simply a concept of life. Abbey uses it in his essay “The Serpents of Paradise” of how certain the many animals live. From how they look, lay down and even crawl. He is very specific with the snake, and even calls it a “snake story.” Even stooping down to its own level of life. In “Bewilderment”, Howe only uses the concept of her public or known life as the certainty in it. She explains that her public life is certain because it is basically what she wants to show the public and what she knows she is displaying to them. These authors ideas of certainty lead back to my opinion of it, how by being certain we know how well and how confident we are about something. This is necessary in our lives because it creates a mode of satisfaction for our brains and even our heart. I believe that having a concept of certainty in our life provides us with relief. We are able to be certain with our actions, our tests, our mind, our answers and our lives.
Bewilderment is necessary in our life because of the act of surprise. The true definition of bewilderment is that it is “a state of being confused and puzzled.” Bewilderment means not understanding, but it goes way beyond that, it implies a state of complete mystification. People experience bewilderment when they are utterly baffled by the situation at hand. This bafflement either includes complete shock, daze, no words, anger, or sadness. However bafflement can also include positive emotions such as, amazement or surprise. An example of negative bafflement is death of a loved one, an example of a positive bafflement is an engagement. Examples of bafflement in the essays are the fact that the narrator in “The Serpents of Paradise” lives in the desert, living day to day with surprises from the local animals, while in “Bewilderment”, the author simply wants bewilderment to not be a state of mind from which she wishes herself released. Rather, for it to be “an enchantment that follows a complete collapse of reference and reconcilability.” Howe simply wants for bewilderment to be her life, she doesn’t want life to be certain.  Howe’s essay doesn’t just acknowledge the confines of logic, but her essay explores the potential inbred layers of multiplicities, complications, and contradictions of our life.

Which of my senses is the most/least trustworthy

After reading How We Listen, and listening to Colors I feel like my least trustworthy sense would be ophthalmoception, which is sight. I believe this because when i see something my eyes can be interpreting this in a completely different aspect from someone else who is looking at the same object. Even if we discuss what we see, their view of this can still be completely different. We can be looking at the same object and only recognize the colors we are each able to see and our entire life we've only known the colors we have been able to see. Even if they're wrong in our eyes, we don't really know.  Someone else can possibly see much more or much less of that object depending on their color deception. Just the fact that some people are born without being able to see at all makes me wonder... However, I think my strongest sense, or most trustworthy, would be tactioception, which is touch. I think this because no matter if l am blind or not, we will all be able to feel exactly what a figure is like physically. Sometimes it might take longer to realize what a figure was like physically, if you were blind, but that just depends on the shape, texture and a few other things. Regardless of what the shape of this item is, I can still figure out if this object is smooth, rough, hot, cold, or even pleasant and painful. 

Most and Least Trustworthy

In the radio lab "Colors" and the short essay "How We Listen" by Aaron Copland I think the most trustworthy out of our five senses would be our sight and our least trustworthy would be our hearing. In reading "Colors" Copland talks about how when we listen to music there are three separate planes to which each person may or may not listen on. He lists these planes as the sensuous plane, the expressive plane, and the sheerly musical plane. He later goes on to talk about how when some people listen to music they aren't really listening because when they listen to the music their mind takes them to a place where it is easier to dream. Not many notice this because they think that by listening to the music they are able to be expressive which they aren't really doing because they aren't listening to the music. In truth are tuning out the music that is tuning out the world around them. We can listen to different and each of us get different feelings from the music. When I listened to Bach's  Well Tempered Clavichord  I could tell when the tune of the notes that were played each changed to a different feeling from sad to happy or from calm to erratic. When I asked my room mate to listen to the same piece I had listened to to her the music was just the same note the whole time she could not determine when the piece changed its tune. Our hearing is the least trustworthy of our senses because out of all the things we hear we don't all hear the same things as someone else. To someone else a song may give them a different feeling or represent something else that someone else would think was wrong. In the radio lab "Colors" they talked about colors with different people and how they each did different tests and how colors to them either had a lot or a little bit of colors. When they talked about the color they got from the sap of the tree and how when they added water to it the color would then be noticed. Behind the making of the sap though they found out that a bullet had been found in the sap that they had used. When they talked about how some women were known to be tetracolor that they may be able to see more colors than most people. When they were with the mother that was an interior designer and was able to see the little difference in the shades of cloth. She described the sky as blue but having hints of pink in it. Our sight is most trustworthy to me because we can see so many different shades of colors to some a rainbow may only have six colors but to other people it may consist of up to sixteen colors like the mantis shrimp can see. Our sight tells us when there is a change in something whether it be in weather or a change in color. So to recap our hearing is the least trustworthy because we don't always listen when we hear music or speak to  person. Our sight is the most trustworthy because even without being able to see all colors we still notice the different tints and shades in our lives.   

In both the video "Love —You're Doing It Wrong" and the essay from the Norton Reader “Strangers." The authors use rhetorical devices of logos and pathos most often. In the essay from the Norton Reader “Strangers”, Toni Morrison describes seeing an old woman sitting upon the seawall, where they talked and had a full conversation about the weather, children, and fish recipes. When they stop seeing this woman sitting on the seawall everyday they begin to question the neighbors, in which they say no one has be allowed to sit on the seawall. This shows the logos aspect of this essay because logistically there are rules against this even happening on top of no one seeing this mystery woman, even though the author seems to remember different. Also in the video, "Love —You're Doing It Wrong” the speaker talks about the logical side to attraction and seduction. He explains the sadness of one-it is and how consumerism and materialism isn’t the same thing when in attraction. Now of pathos, we see the speaker speak of the different feelings between him and an escalope and his wife. He explains how everyone in the modern era becomes narcissistic and wants to feel loved in this new day and age. While in the essay we see hoe the author relates seeing the mysterious old woman to that of envisioning a stranger, this meant to them that they long for and miss someone dearly.

compare/contrast

The two passages To Fall in Love With Someone: Do this and Joyas Voladoras are similar and different. The story To Fall in Love With Somone: Do this is a nonfiction true story about a pychologist that successfully made two strangers fall in love with each other. I believe that her intended audience is people who are interested in romance stories. She describes that the strangers are asked deep questions to quickly bring them to the intimate level of comfortness with each other. People interested in romance stories might enjoy reading this passage. The author’s purpose is to inform readers how to quickly interact with someone in favor of falling in love with them. The setting of this passage is in a public setting and then a more private one where the two strangers stare into each other’s eyes on a bridge. In the other passage, Joyas Voladoras the author Brian Doyle writes to anyone interested in the scientific side of fiction. Her purpose is to inform her readers about the different hearts in animals. Hummingbirds hearts work much harder than most animals, therefore they suffer the most heart problems throughout their life and do not live as long. The context of the passage is wisdom. Brian Doyle states that animals who have lived a long time would know that everyone gets their heart hurt or damaged throughout their lifetime, meaning it is not possible to avoid the pains associated with love.

Text comparison and contrast

      

        In To Fall in Love With Someone : Do this and with the Norton Reader article there are many similarities as well as many differences.  One difference is that in To Fall in Love with someone starts off with a factual statement about how a psychologist named Arthur Aron succeeded in making two people fall in love, while Joyas Voladoras starts off with a hummingbird metaphor.  I believe that Joyas Voladuras has more of a literature and biology  background  since this particular text talks about how different animals' bodies work and their heart structure and compares that to how human hearts work (both literally and figuratively) and even goes on to say that there's "so much held in a heart in a lifetime". To Fall in Love, Do this however, I believe that there's more of an audience that wants to see how people fall in love. Audience wise the thing they commonly share is that both of their audiences want to know more about love.

        In To Fall in Love, do This the author is more spent on setting up her own experiment to see if it's possible to make two people fall in love with each other, while In Joyas Voladoras the author seems to want to explain things more in metaphors and explain how different species' heart systems work (a metaphor in itself) and also how different species feel and express love.

    

       The author’s purpose in To Fall in Love Do This seems to be to scientifically prove if people can be made to fall in love, while the purpose of Joyas Voladoras seems to be explaining how hearts work in other organisms besides humans and also the metaphor of how love comes from the heart.

          The settings also differ because in To Fall In Love With Someone Do This it seems to take place in the lab of Arthur Aron only not physically but in the author's imagination because they're imagining what it would be like to be there in person. In Joyas Voladuras the setting constantly changes depending on what topic the author is talking about. In both texts however, the settings are seen via the authors' mental landscape, in other words they're not there physically.