R. Jean Mathieu's Innerspace

SF/F, sociology, some recipes. Updates every other Friday.

Author: R. Jean Mathieu (Page 15 of 21)

Laying Down my Burdens

4 February, 2011 /

Some of you, who read my Facebook updates, know that I broke up with Marissa a few weeks ago. I’ve also been doing school and looking for work. I’ve found some work, and I’m now hustling to get a proper visa together.

This is all by way of explanation: I haven’t been Learning to Think.
I have to conclude that, between romantic misadventures, accounting exams, and job- and paperwork-hustling, my life is too chaotic for something like LTT. I haven’t even been able to update my blog recently.

I know at least one of you is still going strong, and I’m proud of that. Don’t let me stop you. Hell, I’ll probably come asking you for advice when my life is settled down enough to try again. And I am going to try again. But, right now, I have to get bills paid.

I am going to try and update this blog more frequently, starting with an update on Chinese New Year’s celebrations. See you soon.

Six Tips for Better Mnemonics

20 January, 2011 /

Having now spent a few weeks working on my mnemonics, and gotten four lessons into the 21-lesson Memory Master course, I’ve discovered a few things.

1) Be Stanley Ipkiss. Watch old cartoons.
It’s not as easy to come up with wacky links as it looks. Especially if this is your fiftieth of the day, and you’re a bit tired and hungry, and you know you’ve got another forty minutes of work ahead of you before you can even think about starting dinner. Putting it in the context of a Looney Tunes or Animaniacs cartoon (or Terry Gilliam animation) helps. Invoking that kind of spirit in your associations (whatever they are) helps. Trying to use violence or disgusting subjects actually makes it harder for me to remember, my brain seems to shy away from remembering those images. Sex helps, but not as much as you’d think. Comedy, comedy, comedy’s the thing.

2) Write it down.
It’s a quantum leap easier to remember information as I write it down. Yes, with a pen. Yes, on paper. Yes, I know they belong in a museum. It slows me down, seems more real…Initial Awareness, remember? We’re trying to raise it. Writing the list down in a notebook raises it, even if I throw the paper away right afterward (or hand it to Marissa so she can check me). It works much better for me than reading the list (from paper or screen) or hearing them aloud. I am working on making my intake of the latter stronger, so that I can apply mnemonics to things which are not easily written down (people’s names, for example).

3) Walk through the list in reverse.
Even if you don’t (or can’t) write it down, walk through the list backwards after you’ve finished forming all your links. This reinforces all the images, and familiarizes you with what it “feels like” in reverse. And, I don’t know about you, but I find it a lot easier to start at the end and work backwards. I used to solve mazes the same way as a kid.

4) Read this list.
My mother sent this to me (thanks, Mum!). Number eleven is basically mnemonics systems in a nutshell, and number fourteen talks about associations. Although it’s geared towards studying for school, most of them are applicable to other situations as well. Seriously, go read it. Memorize it, if you like.

5) Apply spaced repetition.
Use spaced repetition to really cement associations in your mind. Spaced repetition is remembering the material at longer and longer intervals (after one minute, one hour, one day…). Sounds simple, but according to studies like this one from UC San Diego, it’s a remarkably effective way to keep things in mind longer. I can offer my own testimony, in that I memorized the list of observation exercises through spaced repetition over the course of forty-eight hours, first an hour later, then twelve hours later (over my Five Will Get You Twelve, no less), then the next day…

6) Remember your limits.
By that, I mean, keep a few things in mind. Remember that, by and large, you have been memorizing lists of discrete information. They are data, and not knowledge. Knowledge comes from putting things in context, how your data (or facts) are important or relevant. You need savoir faire, not just savoir. You need to know how to use it, not just what it is. Mnemonics will help you keep facts around, but making those facts relevant and putting them in a logical framework to use later is your job.

Roscoe Learns to Think – The Second Week in Review

16 January, 2011 /

I started school this week. I’ve also been running to job interviews, English Corners, and so on. As a result, I haven’t been all that great at budgeting my time, and I’ve found myself squeezing out one aspect or another of Learning to Think all week.

Meditation

I meditated for the first few days in the room, wrapped in a blanket, with my hands covered with the heat pillow. Those were wonderful. For a few minutes each day, I felt the “beautiful stillness.” Then I started running around, and when I wasn’t running around, goofing off. So I took my stolen subway minutes and meditated there, or in the teacher’s lounge, or in the café after lunch, times when I had about twenty minutes and the wherewithal to do something productive with it.

That didn’t really work. I haven’t been able to really keep quiet or sit still in those places, mostly because they are so public and many of them involve necessary distractions (such as the stops being read off on the subway). I need to get back to sitting twenty minutes in my room alone, quietly, each day. Well, thirty, now.

Simulflow

Like last week, I missed a day of sitting with Kahne for an hour. However, I did manage to do some of the drills that day, so it wasn’t a total wash. As I mentioned, I wrote up several lists, and had them all memorized, and had great fun interlacing them and transposing them like we did with the alphabet last week.

But the real gains came in the drills. This wasn’t a terrible surprise to me, it was in the drills that I most felt “stiffness” and the brain-stretching sensation back in Yangshuo. On my last night, as it was clear I had achieved the level of mastery that Kahne demanded (despite my spotty attendance record), I did the drills to round out my hour. I felt stiffness and resistance throughout Drill B, that emerged into full-blown simulflow during Drill C. I again felt the sensation, pure and unmistakable, of my train of thought splitting onto two parallel tracks as I manipulated both sets of words.

I’ve discovered something with both simulflow and mnemonics: They must be taken on faith. I can’t set out or see the whole list or the whole of both words at the outset, I have to trust that I will find my way to the end. I can’t, yet, picture all the provinces I’ve memorized at once, but I can remember one or two and run from there. If I spell out t-i-k and write y-r-d, I can’t necessarily picture the “k” and the “d” when I’m writing “t” and “y,” but I have to trust that they’ll come to mind when I get there.

Have you felt this sensation? The sense that you’re running on parallel tracks, for however short a time?

Petit Perception

I’ve taken to skimping on this one. And I’m sliding back, in terms of being able to see and notice the things around me. Bad form. I still get it one or two a day, clocking a few things or scanning the room, but it’s not enough. Petit perception is difficult, because it’s not something that I sit down and do, like mnemonics practice or Kahne’s course. It’s something that I need to carry with me, running in the back of my mind, all day. And I haven’t progressed enough in Kahne to pull that off yet.

I don’t feel quite ready, or confident, about adding the concentration exercises to my routine yet. But I’m going to press on, if only because I need to memorize some poetry for Kahne’s Double Concentration drill.

However, I want to make note of something. Last night, just after I turned out the lights, I noticed how remarkably quiet it was. The traffic was muted, there were no cries or shouts from the street, the city seemed hushed. I practiced layered listening, listening to the hum of the modem, the trickle of water through the pipes, the muted roar of the city, the honking of the streets below…until I realized, with amazement, that I could go no quieter. I heard the ringing in my ears.

It was a strange moment. I’m glad I was there for it.

Mnemonics

This side of my practice has probably suffered worst this week. No sooner did Marissa and I agree to memorize the provinces of China than we set the list aside and promptly forgot about it. I made a go at remembering the first eight or so (Guangzhou, Guangdong; Fuzhou, Fujian; Hangzhou, Zhejiang; Shanghai, Shanghai; Nanjing, Jiangshu; Jinan, Shandong; Shijiazhuang, Hebei; Beijing, Beijing; Tianjin, Tianjin; Shenyang, Liaoning; Dalian, Jiling; Harbin, Helongjiang; Hohhot, Inner Mongolia) but then kind of dropped off.

I’m not very good, yet, at coming up with substitute words, and I’m not going to get any better without more practice. Therefore, I’m repeating Session C this week, in addition to doing Session D.

However, I got plenty of practice remembering long lists of things that don’t require substitute words (or at least, not very much) in the form of this week’s Kahne exercises, and I can look forward to more, in the form of next week’s.

This Week

This week, Session C (repeat) and Session D in mnemonics. That’s substitute words and people’s names and faces, for those of you playing the Home Game. We’re extending anapana to thirty minutes, and picking up some of the concentration exercises if you’re ready. Exercise III in Kahne, and keep up with the drills when you’ve got a spare moment.

We add Double Concentration this week. However, in this case, Kahne suffers from his age. I can barely remember my own address, much less anyone else’s, for the simple reason of I never need them. And email addresses are too short to cut it for this exercise. Any suggestions on what could replace the four-line physical address, something we’ve all got a small collection of in our heads to work from, that we could write down while reading out bits of poetry?

Literacy 2.Ooh Shiny!

14 January, 2011 /

One of today’s Fresh Pressed is the intriguingly-titled “Short Attention Span Theater or Why My Students Can’t Read Books.” It’s a review of a book called The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr. Carr’s thesis is that the Internet as a medium (not in terms of content) is changing the way we think, specifically that it encourages distraction, rather than sustained focus. Carr cites some scientific studies that extensive internet use can aggravate attention defici-ooh, shiny! and reduces memory function.

Continue reading

A Thought

13 January, 2011 /

“Picture, if you will, the New World Symphony and the Rite of Spring, having wild, orgasmic sex the likes of which you’ve never imagined in a decade of pornos. That’s what it was like.”

Another Time, Another Place (Megan’s Game)

12 January, 2011 /

Farmer's Market, San Luis Obispo

This is another petit perception activity, to practice your talents at acute observation. It’s also a great way to pass the time for free if you’re out in town. It was taught to me by Megan Jeffrey, who now lurks over at the Den of the Press Platypus, occasionally emerging on Twitter as well. It goes like this:

While you’re out and about, take a quick look at some of the people around you. Pick one, and try to determine what other place and time that person would best fit in, and what they were doing there. For instance:

(a tough guy who looks like he’d slit your throat as soon as look at you) “Port Royal, 1693. Before the earthquake. Buccaneer, probably full pirate by now.”

(a glamorous woman) “Hollywood, 1935. Starlet, just about to break in.”

(a hipster) “Chicago suburbs, 1986. Works in a record store, will always work in a record store.”

Take as short of a glance as you need to get a snapshot of the person, something to work with, and make snap judgments. This makes an excellent opening to the Faces exercise I described in Petit Perception. But it’s also great fun by itself. How often do you let yourself jump to conclusions?

Also, as you can guess, this is awesome if you have a second (or third or fourth!) person to play with. Megan and I played it in front of Boo-Boo Records and Phoenix Books in San Luis Obispo, one Farmer’s Market long ago when we had to wait around but had no money to wait around with. I seem to remember we had someone else with us, probably one of Megan’s friends. We had a grand old time pointing people out with our chins and debating each other’s placements.

So, if any of your friends wave and ask why you’re writing little words (or the alphabet) backwards, or wonder why you closed your eyes when you walked in, invite them to come play Megan’s game with you.

Roscoe Learns to Think – Momento Contemplari

10 January, 2011 /

So! This week, I start(ed) Exercise II in Multiple Mentality, upped my daily dose of anapana to twenty minutes, started Session C, and continued to practice my observation exercises.

Exercise II, as most of you are now painfully aware, is the assembly of a list of three-letter words, and then the writing of them, from memory, backwards. I’ve found some ‘stiffness’ or ‘resistance,’ unrelated to interest or lack thereof (which plagued me all last week). It is difficult not to write ‘c’ or ‘p,’ for example, backwards. I’ve taken to writing one set in order (taking full advantage of my mnemonics training) and then writing a second (and third) set disordered. It’s hard not to start “going down the list” (writing “miv” [vim] and not following it with the next words: ale, sty, why, how…) when I’m trying to write it out disorderly, and I found myself alternating lists more than once.

So, tonight, I did an experiment. I interwove the list of words I’d selected, exactly as we did with the alphabet last week. I felt a lot of stiffness, trying to write the word forwards, or write it in mirror-script, and getting stuck on items I hadn’t quite linked well enough. I kept jumping ahead to the next item (jumping, by analogy of the alphabet, from B to C, instead of stopping at Y in the middle). But I felt myself start to loosen up toward the end, and felt a kind of brain split.

I’ll try transposing elements from tomorrow’s list.

Also, Exercise II makes the practice in mnemonics dead easy. Every day, I have to come up with and remember a list of at least thirty items (I’ve been doing fifty and will probably up it). Funny, I learned how to do that last week…I’m still having times where I stumble, of course. But practice, constant practice. Ostinate rigore!

I do believe, ladies and gentlemen, we are doing better than Kahne. He expected us to do only one list, whereas you and I, if we have been doing our homework like good boys and girls, can make seven, or fourteen, or as many as we please, and commit them to memory in shorter time. We can make a new list every day. Or, as I did yesterday, we could remember the entire fifty-item list from the day before…and then create an entirely new one.

I hasten to remind everyone, we could not have done this at the beginning of last week. If you wanted proof, there it is, we are better today than we were yesterday, at least when it comes to remembering sequential lists.

Marissa has climbed on board, at least as far as memory is concerned. She’s at her parents’, now, helping her sister move, and she took my copy of Memory Master with her. We’ve committed to memorizing the provinces of China, by region, by the end of the week. For me, this is a test of my ability to substitute words. For her, a test of associative memory.

And she’s testing me. She had me memorize the account number of our landlord for when I have to deposit the rent myself, then she teased me with her phone number. Tonight, she called me, and asked me what her phone number was. At a slow, measured pace, I recited it to her.

She was much pleased. Tom Smid was right, a better memory can improve your sex life social life.

As to meditation, my suspicion at the end of last week was right. Twenty minutes gives my brain time to settle down, get used to the idea of stillness, and lets me climb deeper into the breath. My notes on meditation have become rather …poetic. For example:

“Touched breath, once deeply: beautiful stillness. Hard to focus, Marissa next room (music, dryer, laughter). Looking forward to tomorrow. Roomscanned before opening eyes, felt languid, rich, all the time in the world.” (Thalass, is this similar to the slowing you felt?)

“Everything seems richer, fresher now. Beautiful stillness.”

“The breath is always there. It is patient, like Lila, like Laurie. Like a lover. Always there for me, always waiting. I need only turn to it, and let all else fall away.”

Harry Lorayne’s “final test of meditation” holds: I feel better after my daily sit. This is very different from last week, where I didn’t feel very different at all. I must revise Learning to Think to start with twenty minutes of anapana, unless some of you have a different story to tell?

They don't know where they're going either.

I’ve still been in a bit of a rut, when it comes to petit perception. Room surveys, window shopping, room surveys, window shopping…when Marissa comes back, I’m going to ask her to sit down and play Kim’s Game with me. Maybe even buy some beers or oranges and taste test, or describe the three or four kinds of incense we have. I could be doing more layered listening, I suppose, it’s quick enough. But Shenzhen is so painful to the ear…if you’ve got any suggestions, please do lay ‘em on me.

So how have you been? Thalass, I remember you were doing the futharc, and wraith, your meditating in the steam room, er, inspired me to try meditating while getting a foot massage. And I know there are more of you out there, plodding along with us. Tell us what it’s like for you.

“As Ye Deal With My Contemners, So With Ye My Grace Shall Deal.”

9 January, 2011 /

I just heard about the shooting in Arizona, of Representative Giffords and Judge Roll and the other sixteen dead and wounded.

Congresswoman Giffords

Judge John McCarthy Roll - Rest in Peace

I’m shaking like a leaf, three thousand miles away in Shenzhen. This kind of thing should not happen anywhere, but especially not in America.

At first, I was full of grief and rage. How could such a thing happen? How have we, Americans, come to this place where congresspeople, judges, pastors of churches, nine-year-old girls are shot because of their politics? I wailed, “what the fuck happened to America?”

Then someone answered.

It was the usual sort of answer, full of conspiracy and fear, full of paranoia and suspicion. It was Sarah Palin, it was the Republicans and the Tea Party, working together to eliminate their rivals using “the crazies.” The kind of answer you look for, the kind of answer you secretly want, when you yourself are shaking with fear and uncertainty.

It was also wrong.

This shooting was politically motivated. No one will deny it. The shooter was a madman. No one will deny it. He may have been working alone, or with accomplices. We don’t know. Hopefully, we will soon.

The Sherriff of Pima County, where the deal went down, pointed a finger at several politicians campaigning in the region last year, and the aggressive, inciting nature of their campaigns. The fiery rhetoric we’ve all had too much of for the last three (only three? Jesus) years. I happen to think he’s onto something.

I don't see a relation. What? Crosshairs? What crosshairs?

But that’s not the answer either.

What caused this was ignorance. Being unable to tell rhetoric from truth, unable to tell good reasoning, good thinking, from false. Being susceptible to the kind of people who supply answers, when you’re afraid and uncertain and shivering and demanding to know: What happened? What caused this? Ignorance caused these deaths, nothing less, with other factors contributing. Fiery rhetoric, aggressive campaigning, even conspiracy, they all pale before the power of ignorance.

Thanks for the summary.

Right now, there are people who sincerely believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim terrorist bent on destroying America. They believe he is part of a secret plot stretching back to 1950s Kenya with the single goal of ending the United States. This is ignorance. Others believe that causing the United States to default on its loans in order to “balance the budget” will help America. They believe that gold has some intrinsic value, beyond the socially-agreed-upon material value, that makes it “better” than fiat currency. This is ignorance. Still others believe that we need “a strong leader” who can make “the tough decisions.” This is ignorance.

Bet you thought I'd put up a picture of some OTHER strong leader who can make tough decisions from 1930s Europe. But I'm classier than that.

I’m not going to give you an answer to “what happened to America?” or “why did he pull the gun?” Don’t worry, plenty of people will volunteer. I’m going to ask you to, in the middle of your fear and your uncertainty, keep asking the questions, and keep questioning any answers you get. That is how we can stop something like this from happening again, by using our reasoning skills and our ability to think, not to give into fear and uncertainty.

Fear and uncertainty are true, especially now, especially for those of us who support public health care, are pro-immigration and pro-choice, who believe that society is measured by how it treats the least among them. They are true, and I do not think we should deny them. But we should control them, or they, and the people who can manipulate them, will surely control us.

If we let fear get the best of us, the terrorists have won.

To help with this, I am singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic, here in China. I’d like you to have a look at the words and, just once, in the shower, in your bedroom, out on the street, or onstage, alone or with your family or your friends or both, sing all six verses. It helped calm me down, and it might even help you. With a little luck, it will remind us of the things we are defending, the reasons to hope, rather than fear.

—–

EDIT: My friend Will Walker has an insightful message of his own about the shootings over at LiveJounal, to whit, this does not meet the definition of terrorism.

Roscoe Learns to Think – The First Week In Review

7 January, 2011 /

Simulflow:

I wrote in the notes section of one of my pages, ”HAET HARRY KAHNE!” I think many of you can agree with me on that one. But I remember this from the first time around, and the second week is not nearly so … tedious.

The biggest problem that I faced this week, insofar as multiple mentality is concerned, was attention span. As Loweko commented, “I have found Kahne’s exercises magnificent meditation in their own right.” Which is true … it’s almost easier to focus on the breath. I found a couple of ways around the issue of paying attention.

First, I played with the lines. I did variations, like transposing the alphabet in a different order or interlacing “wrong” (ZA instead of AZ). For the past four days, I’ve done the transposed alphabet four ways in one sitting. This usually gets my interest back and makes me pay much closer attention, to make sure I don’t confuse them.

In interlacing the alphabet, I felt “brain split,” like I did back in Yangshuo…but it seemed to happen at random. Tonight, I worked out what it was. As long as I was paying attention to something else, besides what I was writing, I could split my attention. That sounds obvious, but you try getting distracted intentionally. 🙂

The easiest way I could figure was to focus on the last letter in sequence, so I would stare intently at “B” while I was writing “C,” then move on to “Y” while I was writing “X.”

I also found less…sophisticated ways to get it done. Yesterday, when I was gritting my teeth through yet another round of transposed alphabet (ACBD… or alternately ZXYW…), I played “okay, just one more,” with myself from lines 30 to 50. Just get to 30, ok. OK, now 33, that’s the end of the page. OK, just two more and you’re at 35, nice round number. Do one more, just to be a bit over the top, give yourself an edge when you pick up tomorrow. Yes, I know it’s already been an hour. Well, you’re next to 40 now…

I realized earlier, as I was finishing my interlaced alphabet (AZBYCX…) that Kahne probably meant that his students should do Part 1 each day until you got it, then move on to Part 2, then Part 3…instead of, say, trying to write 150 lines in an hour, like some of us who are insane.

*koff*

I didn’t realize this the first time through, and if anyone else tried to do all three at one sitting: I’m so sorry. But look at it this way, we got through more than Harry ever expected, and faster!

Meditation:

My apartment has no heat and it’s hovering around 40 right now. I’ve meditated in here twice, maybe three times. Mostly, I’ve been meditating out in the world, on the subway or in Pacific Coffee. I’m finding that my brain actually settles the fuck down at right around the eight minute mark, and I actually feel calmer and can focus on my breath then. I look forward to next week, and sits of twenty minutes.

I’ve also found that setting an alarm actually makes me more antsy and nervous than checking the clock two or three times during the sit. So, yeah, I’ll just do that, instead of trying to use alarms.

My libido has been having a fun time distracting me. Which makes sense: Nothing distracts me quicker or more profoundly. Or, I try to fight it, and end up getting distracted. I’m going to work on letting that stuff go in the coming weeks.

On the plus side, the fantasies that burble up when I’m trying to meditate are magnificent.

Mnemonics:

I have the basic concepts down from Sessions A and B, but my implementation still needs work. I seem to have a “natural” limit of about ten items at a time, or at least I have pretty significant trouble remembering longer lists. I tried the first list after a day, and could remember it just fine. Same with the Petit Perception lists. But the long list from Session B? After an hour, I’d forgotten “soap,” and after a day, I forgot four items, and misplaced a large chunk of the middle.

I think the problem’s to do with my implementation. I didn’t practice my mnemonics nearly as much as I practiced with Mr. Kahne, so I kind of skimped on that homework (boo hiss). And the images I came up with, while funny in a pedestrian way, didn’t really arrest me or tickle my funny bone. It says something that I immediately remembered chicken, melon, because of the image Smid supplied, as well as baked beans, shampoo, for the same reason. I think I might have to watch old Warner Brothers and Animaniacs cartoons to get a feel for the kind of images I need. Quelle horreur.

More lists. More lists. Need to invent more images, memorize more lists. One a day, with a review of yesterday’s and the one from the beginning of the week, would seem appropriate, and a review of all of them at the end of the week.

I wonder how long you can let something “sit” without refreshing it, and still remember, say, 90% of it?

Petit Perception:

At last, some good news! I’m noticing a quantum leap in my involvement in everyday life after one week of practice. Last night, I saw Marissa drop a piece of sausage in the stir-fried vegetables, and I got it with my chopsticks before she did. My ears perk up at the slightest sound of the kettle or the soup boiling over, and like a shot I’m at the stove and taking care of it. Marissa is already relying on me to know where her glasses are whenever they aren’t on her face.

And it’s not just her. We played a round of room survey in the bar the other night, one of my students, two friends, and I, and they were amazed that I could describe the three people behind me without looking, because I’d clocked them as I sat down. I’m amazing myself, really, because now I see things that I passed by so often before. Diwang glitters in the night, and I never knew. There’s a mahjongg gambling den just down the street that I never saw before. I haven’t been working it, and I can even smell more clearly.

However, I noticed myself falling into a rut when it came to the clocks somewhere about Thursday, always “what color was it?” So I started grilling myself on variations: cut of the jacket, then? Number? How about the person next to him, was it a man or a woman? What are they doing? Hairstyle?

And, having overlooked it six times now, last night, I finally sat down and room surveyed the café where I do work.

I’m still amazed.

At everything I miss.

Conclusion:

Coughed and stumbled on Wednesday, but got back up again. Need to work harder on mnemonics, longer on meditation, and vary my petit perception practice a bit more. Harry Kahne, if I remember right, will look after himself just fine.

How about you? Have you been keeping notes, keeping track? Let us see them! Let us know how you’ve been doing, what you’ve noticed about yourself and your practice. I started all this so that no one of us need feel alone.

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