I've always liked simple words with complex meanings.

I wonder to what extend I can listen when no one is talking. There is so much more to listen to...

I'm thinking that listening is much more than just the sense of sound. Hearing can be fairly passive, but I believe that listening is (or should be?) active. Interesting--can someone listen with all their senses? Listen to what they see and taste and smell and touch and also what they hear?

When we were talking about pop-up books in class Prof. Moss used the phrase, "A more dimensioned reality." I like that idea. Can we learn to listen in a more dimensioned reality?

Focusing in on listening to images and specifically photographs... We talked about these photo projects in class, and I find them incredibly compelling.
What the World Eats
Material World

End thoughts for this blog: (Copied right out of my class notes so they are nice and vague and jumbled)
Super interesting idea- Is appreciating poetry for its beauty different than trying to understand it? In order to experience the beauty we have to listen to the poem (by listen here I mean really listen, not just hear the words) but it seems that in this act we are also always searching for meaning. To identify something as beautiful, don't we have to understand some part of it? Wouldn't we have had to listen to its essence?

Listening... sometimes it seems infinitely complex, but sometimes, well sometimes, it seems so simple. Today it seems as though it should be simple. Ask, "How are you?" Listen to the answer.

Oh, so when you said family tree you really meant origami.

Take a sheet of paper. Fold it. Unfold it. Can you ever make these folds go away?

It is very difficult, maybe impossible, to erase a fold. Even if you rip or tear at them they will not go away, they will just become torn. It seems to me that the memory of folds works much the same way with people. Maybe once we have been folded or imprinted a certain way it is difficult to undo... can it ever be undone completely? This relates well to the idea of listening and understanding since you would need to understand one's memory folds in order to try and understand them. Could we also listen to these folds?

*I am afraid of what I cannot unlearn*


We have two strands of beads. I am holding one and someone else is holding the other. Prof. Moss asks if the two strands can come together. Someone answers, "No, I don't think it is that easy. They are each separate circles with no spaces to join. They are far apart and they are held by different people with different intentions." But we do bring the two strands of beads together, at least for a little while. There is an apparent connection, but it is all about perception. Are the two strands really joined? (If two people are married 30 years are they happy?)

Maybe if we listen we can bring two separate strands together. Maybe if we listen we will discover the places or fleeting moments where the two are connected. Maybe if we listen we will find all the places the two will never meet.

The bringing together of two unlike things may be a way to create a new form of understanding.
Here is an example of death and beauty.

American Beauty (the ending)