Finding Individuality Through The Senses
What exactly is an Autoethnography? What must one include in order to compose an Autoethnography? These are just a couple of the questions that have been running in and out of my mind over the past few weeks. For one of our blog entries in class, we had to find out what the definition of an Autoethnography was. In doing this I learned that many people have different interpretations of what it exactly is; however, they can all come to a consensus that it is based through life experiences. The big debate of this is whether it pertains to our conscious thoughts, our unconscious thoughts, or both. Our conscious would be what we have physically experienced through out our life. However, our unconscious thoughts, are what some people consider having life experiences through their dreams. In my blog entry I used this definition of Autoethnography because I thought it seemed helpful.
Autoethnography is an autobiographical genre of writing that displays multiple layers of consciousness, connecting the personal to the cultural. Autoethnographers ask their readers to feel the truth of their stories and to become co participants, engaging the storyline morally, emotionally, aesthetically, and intellectually. (Anthropology)
After reading this definition and browsing through some other definitions on the internet, it led me to ask one specific question, “What is I?” At the very beginning of the semester, Marlen handed out a paper to our class that pertained to this very question. It was a story about a man who continuously kept getting his body parts chopped off and then they would be replaced with another person’s body part. This went on for a good while until it did not seem like any of the man’s parts were actually his. However, despite the fact that none of his body parts were his own, he never once doubted who he was. Deep down inside, he knew all of the things that made him an individual, and he did not need to physically be himself to show that.
In my blog on “What is I?”, I had said that I did not think there was a specific answer to this question, and that this one simple word could mean so much. Rereading my blog, I also realized that one of the statements I said actually was related to the definition of what an autoethnography was.
The concept of ‘I’ does not just deal with what your name may be or whose son or daughter you are. But instead it deals with your conscious and the actions you can control, along with your unconscious and the things that you are unable to control. To explain this, I used the quote that the monk had stated in the story, “The ‘I’ is a composite of various elements and is only temporarily formed into one thing.”
Going back and examining this seemingly simplex question, I think I have finally came to a conclusion as to what it means to me. By incorporating all of my five senses together and what life experiences I have shared through these senses, it will present a good explanation of who I am. The very first essay we were assigned to complete was on the sense of taste.
The sense of taste is always something that has played a significant role in my life. With taste I have tried and experienced so many different things that I have grown a liking to. In our blog entry on taste I chose to talk about the first time I experienced Pazooka. My dad has always been the one in my life to get me to try something at least once. He is the one who introduced me to Pazooka while I was at Oregano’s in Scottsdale, Arizona.
My dad told me that I had to try this dessert at a restaurant in Arizona called “Oregano’s.” So one time when I was out there, he took me to the restaurant where I got a “Big ol’ Ravioli” which was literally the size of my dinner plate. Next it was time for dessert! We ordered the “Pazooka” and the waiter brought it out on a small pizza pan. In it was warm, soft chocolate chip cookie dough that had come straight out of the oven. On top of the cookie dough was vanilla bean ice cream. I’m not kidding; this is probably the best dessert I have tried so far in my life. It sounds so simple but the taste of it is just phenomenal and it literally melts in your mouth.
As far as the sense of taste goes, my bubba has probably played the biggest role in my life. She is without a doubt the best baker I have ever known. I chose her to write my taste essay on because she is the one who created the biggest impact on food for me. We had to write a narrative for our essay so when I first wrote it, I discussed about all of her hard work over the years and how truly incredible her baking skills and talents were. I also talked about how she no longer is able to bake because of her suffering due to a brain aneurysm she experienced a few years back. However, in my revision of this essay I ended up changing it completely and turning it into a children’s story. I still kept my bubba in it and used her as the main character of the story.
Now who do you think the greatest cook in all of Andalasia was? Yes that’s right! It was Margie. This fairy god mother had a keen sense for cooking. She knew the kinds of foods to cook that would just make your mouth water. Pretty much any kind of tasteful, scrumptious little morsel you could think of, she made it. Margie was truly a remarkable woman and her love for cooking showed this.
I also talked about myself in this essay and included some of my favorite dishes that my bubba would make for me.
Margie had one little granddaughter, Odette, that she spoiled rotten with her goodies. She would let Odette invite her friends over to eat before they had their magic spells and potion classes. Odette loved the fact that all of her friends were so jealous of her grandmother, so she had no trouble bragging about it. One of her favorite things that her grandmother made for breakfast, when her friends came over, were her pancakes. She made incredible pancakes that Odette would literally eat stacks of! Odette
also really enjoyed her scrambled eggs, which came from Margie’s special chickens that she raised and cared for herself.
The second sense that we discussed was sight. In class Marlen had us compose a blog on a time when something we saw was different from reality. The time that came straight to my mind when I thought about this, was when my friends and I had went to Torrence. Torrence is an abandoned insane asylum that is located near Torrence Hospital. This is definitely a time when something I saw was different from reality. I did not believe it was actually haunted until I went there and experienced it for myself. I had straight fear and adrenaline running through my veins the whole entire time we were there, with every noise or weird incident that had occurred.
My one friend had a big spotlight that worked perfectly fine until we got so far into the building. It then shut off and stopped working until we got back outside again and it was fine. Some rooms were also a lot colder than others which I found really creepy. One of the weirdest things though, would have to be when we got home and looked at all of our pictures and videos. In the one video my friend took on her cell phone, you can actually see someone’s face for a split second. The voice of my friend also sounds nothing like him. It is some strange muffled voice where you can hear something say “It’s cold”.
I bet this sounds pretty eerie, doesn’t it? Well this is not the only way my sense of sight has had an impact on my life. For our essay on sight, we had to choose an image that was important to us and write our essay based on that item. It was difficult for me to choose just one image that was significant to me. After some thought, I wanted to choose something that meant a lot to me, and that I know I would have my whole life. I ended up choosing my Autobiography that I had completed my senior year of Honors English in high school. This is something that is very significant to my heart, and I put a lot of time and effort into this project. It made me feel so good to see my work affect others as well as myself. For example, when I finally sat down with my mom to go through my autobiography, I could see in her eyes how important it was to her. For one of my chapters, I chose to compose a letter to my mom. When I finally got the chance to read her this letter, I brought her to complete tears and it actually made me cry as well.
I decided to write my vision essay as a letter to my best friend. I explained to her how I had gone about creating my autobiography. I touched on some of the chapters I included in it and the material I had used to organize it. I also talked about why this image was so special to me, and why it will be important to keep through out my life for my children to see.
While I was organizing the papers in my autobiography, I noticed that I chose a lot of backgrounds that were paintings of the outdoors with trees around. While I was reading A Natural History of the Senses, I came across a passage that discussed why trees hold such significance to us visually. “Trees conduct the eye from the ground up to the heavens; link the detailed temperatures of life with the bulging blue abstraction overhead. In Norse legend, the huge ash tree Yggdrasil, with its great arching limbs and three swarming roots, stretched high into the sky, holding the universe together, connecting earth to both heaven and hell. Mythical animals and demons dwelt in the tree; at one of its roots lay the well of Mimir, the source of all wisdom, from which the god Odin drank in order to become wise, even though it cost him the loss of an eye.” (Ackerman 240)
The sense of smell was our first peer editing project that we did in class. I would have to say that my smell essay was probably my favorite out of all five essays. During class we did a workshop on the sense of smell. Marlen had my classmates and I each bring in some kind of scent that we enjoyed. I brought in one of my favorite scented lip glosses. Next, we paired up with a partner. We then had to close our eyes and guess what our partner was having us smell. After we did that, we had to compose a blog entry on our own advertisement for the mystery scent we had just smelled.
This aroma is essential for any romantic relationship. Just one spray and you’re lover will be head over heels crazy about you. It’s the next best thing to a love spell you would secretly put on your one and only. Wear this scent and you will without a doubt have ever lasting love and happiness guaranteed for a lifetime.
I decided to write an informative paper on why the sense of smell was so important in our everyday lives. It’s very true that you do use all of your five senses as well; however, smell is the most primitive and necessary sense in my opinion. I think Diane Ackerman describes this very well in one of the quotes I used in my essay.
[W]e see only when there is light enough, taste only when we put things into our mouths, touch only when we make contact with someone or something, hear only sounds that are loud enough. But we smell always and with every breath. Cover your eyes and you will stop seeing, cover your ears and you will stop hearing, but if you cover your nose and try to stop smelling, you will die. (Ackerman 6)
I think this quote really explains the true significance of the sense of smell and how necessary it is for life. We breathe around 24,000 times each day, and every time we are inhaling oxygen into our bodies, we are also inhaling the aromas around us. It is so true that you can literally take away any of your other senses, and it would not affect you nearly as much as smell. You will literally die without this scent, since you are using it every single time you take a breath in.
I think that smell also plays a significant role in our judgment. For most people, if they do not like the smell of something, then they are not going to eat it. I learned while I was doing research for my essay that this can be shown in literally anything we want, such as purchasing a new vehicle. According to Dr. Alan Hirsch of the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago, “People judge a product based on the way it smells. If it smells good, we perceive it as good” (Moran). This could be for anything from food, a type of perfume, an air freshener, or even the scent of a car. The sense of smell also can affect the relationship between a man and woman.
Robert Henkin, from the Center for Sensory Disorders at Georgetown University, had studies done that suggested that about a quarter of people with smell disorders find that their sex drive disappears; this is especially prone to women more than men (Ackerman 43). For example, according to Ackerman, “when a woman’s man is away, or her lover dies, a grief-stricken woman goes to his closet and takes out a shirt or bathrobe, presses it to her face, and is overwhelmed by how she feels for him” (Ackerman 43). This shows how much we as humans rely on the sense of smell.
The fourth sense that I can describe myself through is the sense of touch. In one of our blogs, we had to find sources that defined what touch was. I ended up finding a definition that described the different feels for touch through the nerve endings.
“Different kinds of nerve endings are in charge of picking up different kinds of stimuli. The Krause’s end picks up feelings of cold while the Ruffini endings are in charge of heat. Pacinian corpuscles are encapsulated nerve endings which pick up senses of pressure while the Meissner’s corpuscles picks up light and touch. Baroreceptors are special tactile receptors that detect changes in the blood pressure within the blood vessel” (Your Sense of Touch).
Along with smell, touch is one of the first senses that we experience when we first arrive into this world. As soon as one is born, they are pulled out of their mother’s womb and held by their nurturer. There have been numerous studies done over the years that have proven children are better off in the future if they are touched and loved by those around them. The ones that are not turn into very unhappy and psychologically disturbed adults. I am personally a very affectionate person. Whether it is with my family or in a relationship, I love being close to people. This is also described well in one of my blog entries I composed on the definition of touch.
Touch is the concept of physical contact between two objects. In everyday experience, touch can be perceived as one object applying physical force upon another. However, on the scale of atoms, no two particles ever have zero distance between them. Therefore on different scales of measurement touch must be defined and described in different terms. Additionally, as animal skin is lined with pressure and temperature receptors, the term touch is given to the sense that the brain perceives when skin comes in contact with an object.
The final sense that I am able to describe myself through is the sense of hearing. This sense is one that I know I would be lost without. One of my favorite past times to do is travel to the beach. Without being able to hear the waves crash, I know the ocean would not have the same effect on me. Being able to hear the world around me just puts everything into a better perspective. Another example of this is when I listen to music. Music is something that I listen to when I’m upset, happy, or just need to get into an energetic mood. It’s a way that I can help express myself and my emotions better. If I could not hear music, I honestly think I would be a different person than what I am today.
I decided to write my essay about people who suffer from hearing voices in their heads, specifically focusing on the illness of schizophrenia. I think this is something that not too many people think about when it comes to the sense of hearing. It’s amazing to read stories about people who have gone through this problem because it almost does not seem realistic. While I was researching this topic, I found a story about a man who suffered from this problem. Through the doctors’ amazement, he ended up resolving it completely by himself without the aid of medical assistance.
Michael Crawford, a graduate of UCSC, started to hear voices and was admitted into Alhambra CPC for studying (Crawford). The words that he would hear though, were not disturbing. He would normally just hear a woman’s voice yelling his name, “Mike!” But for Michael Crawford, it wasn’t what the voice said that frightened him (Crawford). Instead, it was the intention he thought was behind it (Crawford). He thought that the woman who was shouting his name was coming out to kill him and he was more scared of her than anything else in his life (Crawford).
I feel that I have truly learned a lot about myself through my senses. These five senses have been with me through every single life experience I have ever endured. When I see a sad image, I feel tears stream down. Whenever I travel to the ocean, I hear the waves rippling at my feet and taste the fresh salt water in my mouth. With every breath that I take in, I take in the odors of the world that surround me. So after a long
time of contemplating the question “What is I?” I think I can finally say that I’ve found the answer to that question. I am taste, I am sight, I am smell, I am touch, and I am hearing. These are the things that make me who I am. This is what makes me “I.”
