Tag Archives: senses

13 March 2010

Your Senses – Touch

By Nicki

Touch.  A few weeks ago, Big Little Wolf wrote a piece about touch.  Are you a toucher?  What does your body language mean to those on the receiving end?

I am not a big hugger.  Imagine my startled feelings when someone I had only spoke to online came to a party I was throwing and gave me a hug in greeting.  I don’t believe I pulled back but I know I was a bit thrown, a bit shocked.  We hardly knew one another but he was willing to pull me inside his personal space.  When he left the house that night after a few hours, he hugged me again.  This time I was a bit more ready for it.  I did not believe I knew him any better but I was more ready for it.

On the other hand – pun intended, I am a person who touches once I get to know you.  I do not necessarily hug you upon greeting you.  I do, though, with people I am good friends with, reach out as we talk.  I may put my hand on your forearm for emphasis.  I have been known to drape my arms over the shoulders of a friend sitting at my kitchen table for a quick hug.  Somehow, when touches such as these occur, I can feel the energy from one person to another.  It is almost an osmosis-like process.  The one who needs the energy takes it.  The one who has extra gives it.

Again, though, I say I am not a big touch person.  Imagine my surprise as I sat at a local establishment with a man I had known a short period of time.  We were sitting across a table from each other and he was talking, digging, and analyzing the things I had been saying previously when more of us had been there.  Some of his analysis scared me and brought tears to my eyes.  He reached out and took my hand.  I did not recoil – although I think that may have been my first thought.  I let him comfort me.  I could feel that energy shift, from one to another.

On the third hand here – yes, the pun is old now – I am a very tactile person when I am with someone I am comfortable with, when I am with someone who may spark my interest in a sexual manner.  I tend to touch.  I will lay a hand on a knee or thigh.  I have been known, in the summer on a deck, to just flop my legs over someone else’s.  I don’t even think twice about these things.  They just happen.  For them to happen, though, I need to be extremely comfortable with the other person.  When I am not, these types of actions would be forced.

So what about you?  Do you touch people as you speak to them?  Are you a hugger?  Are there limits to your tactile experiences in your life?

6 comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Just my Thoughts

8 February 2010

Your Senses – Sight

By Nicki

The senses!  We have five and, generally, it is not until something jars one of them that we give them a second thought.  Yes, I run for the camera when I see something that I like the way it looks – people, storefronts, sunrises and sunsets.  Not everyone does, though.

Sight also draws up memories for me.  A few weeks ago I was driving down a street in a nearby city where I frequently go for work.  This city is close but still approximately 40 miles away so I generally get there once a week, occasionally more frequently.  Last week, for example, I will be there three days as I am going to hear a group play on Sunday evening and then two days for work.  This week I will be there for a class I am taking but not for work at all.  Next week, I am going to a TweetUp there.

Back to the sighting – pun intended.  I was driving down this street.  First I drove by a bar.  At one point in time, my guess would be it had been a hotel but now it seems to be just a bar and nothing spectacular.  The beer is good that they have on tap, always a plus in my book, and they have a pool table.  My memory flashed to a night at the end of September when I was there with a friend.  Just driving past made that night of pool come back to me.

We had spent a bit of time at a Mexican restaurant a couple of blocks away, having margaritas and nachos.  A torrential rain storm had caused me to get drenched out on the patio so we had gone into the bar.  Once the rain stopped, we had gone walking through a shopping area, long closed for the night but still with a few people walking through as we were.  We came to this other bar and went in to play pool.  Beware of playing pool with mobile phones in your pocket – not me, him.  He accidentally dialed someone and left a lengthy voicemail of us discussing geometry because, after all, what are bank shots but geometry proofs in real life?  Got that kids?  You will use geometry again some day.

As I continued on my way heading out of the city as I needed to get home for an activity, I hit the light red at the corner where I needed to turn.  Another memory came rushing back to me.  We had had margaritas and nachos another evening, right after he finished work and I did also.  He needed to catch the bus home so we were waiting where the bus would be stopping except we were a block or so from the actual stop.  We had stood there with some college kids.  They had asked us questions about the bus system which he could answer easily.  Then, his bus had come buzzing by.  He had to run to catch it up the block.  Just thinking about it now is making me smile.  The sight of him running after the bus in dress clothes from work with his brief case/bag is a memory I will always have.

I could go on and on as I have many memories that are triggered by seeing different things.  I still have memories of my son’s football team winning the state championship every time I drive past the Carrier Dome in Syracuse.  Most make me smile as I remember the sights I have seen in my life.  I saw a friend’s photos of some time in the Adirondacks which took me back to the years I lived there.

What memories do sights trigger for you?  Is it a place or a souvenir?  What about photographs?  Do they trigger memories for you?

16 comments   |  tags: , , | posted in Just my Thoughts

4 February 2010

What To Blog About?

By Nicki

This post has been weighing on my mind.  When I started blogging at Yahoo! 360, I didn’t write all that frequently.  When I moved to WordPress, I started writing more often.  There have been days when I have put up three or more posts – short but still.  Then, Yahoo! announced 360 was closing.  There was no import so I started moving posts over manually.  An import was finally made and I imported all my posts.  Some came as duplicates but I think I finally, one day, managed to get all the duplicates down.  So this post, this rambling is my 1000th blog entry.

I wondered.  Should I write about something going on in my personal life?  Should I post the next in the series I started last week about our senses and memory?  Should I write more about my journey to a healthy lifestyle?  Should I write about some of the issues from the State of the Union?  Should I write about other issues that are near and dear to my heart?  Should I do a review?

I did a lot of writing yesterday.  Some writing was for work.  Some writing was personal.  I wrote out an apology and practiced – yes, I said practiced – it so I would not forget anything I wanted to say.  It reminded me of a friend who prepares diligently for job interviews.  I wanted the apology to be perfect.  I forgot most of what I had written when face to face with the person to whom I was apologizing.

So what is my 1000th post going to be about?  It is going to be about writing for my blog.  That is truly ironic.

I write all kinds of things here in my blog.  I noticed, as looked through to pick a post from each month last year for my best of 2009, that I have gotten away from writing about news and politics.  I want to get back to that.  I noticed that I wrote about a lot of great things I did last summer and fall.  I want to continue that.  I noticed that I write a little about my life – though usually through the looking glass of mother.  I want to do more of that.

I also want to continue to write about our senses as mine seem to be developing anew.  Maybe they have always been there – of course, they have always been there – but I am discovery their connection to memories anew.

I am off to get ready for a weekly meeting of Moms.  We call ourselves the Lonely Moms’ Club as, with most of us anyway, we have our children in school and are not employed in a 9-5 type job.  We get together during the school year once a week for breakfast.  Maybe  I will even write about that some day.

28 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Just my Thoughts

30 January 2010

Your Senses – Smell

By Nicki

I have been doing some creative, or possibly not so creative writing involving memories and senses.  Your senses trigger so many things but one of the most important things they tend to trigger is memories.  I am going to, over the course of several days, post different memories triggered by one of our five senses.  These are creative writing pieces but most are based in fact.  Not sure what that makes them – personal essays?  Here is the first.

I folded up the towel he use to use when he was here today, knowing that he would never use it again.  My mind went back to the first time he used the towel, the smell of his hygiene products in my small bathroom, the sight of him getting dressed in my bedroom.  These are things that will live in my memory for a long time.  They will not be in my life again.

The memory of that scent, his scent drew me to another item in my home.  It was a shirt he had given me.  I was his support person for a large event in his life in October.  Two weeks later he had another event and I did not see this accomplishment.  We both have very busy lives.  The time we spent together was whittled out of those busy lives.  As he once paraphrased someone else, if we want to be with people, we MAKE the time.  Anyway, he gave me the shirt from that second event as he thought it was ugly.  Not only did I love the colors, I have memories of putting it on the first time.  I threw it on as a night shirt.  I immediately, the next day, asked what laundry detergent he used as the smell was wonderful.  It was not laundry detergent.  There is atradition to wear the shirt the day/night of the event.  He had showered and worn the shirt that half day and then given it to me.  The scent was him.

The scent of him.  Smell.  A sense we use only infrequently and when we talk, when we write, the sense of smell tends to be associated with food or with stenches.  In my mind, the sense of smell is associated with people.  It may be a stink, that smell after you finish exercising and really need a shower.  It may be a cleanness, that smell after you have showered and done nothing else – no body lotion, no hair products, just soap/gel.  It may be a scent, that smell of his cologne, that smell of his body lotion.

The sense of smell tends to be strong.  I have read a fact that people can recall a smell with 65% accuracy after a year where as visual recognition of a photo is only 50% after three months (http://www.senseofsmell.org).  Now I know why the memory of that scent has drawn me to write this morning.

What smells do you have in your memory bank?  Do they remind you of good times or not so good times?  Are they smells associated with people, events, holidays, food?

6 comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Just my Thoughts

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