It’s interesting to note how naturally I can tune out aspects of my surroundings. In particular, conversations being had at tables next to mine when I am at a restaurant. Anyone sitting next to me can more or less rest assure that their conversation was private or at least unheard by one less person. I wonder what makes us tune in and tune out. I generally have a difficult time tuning out ticking clocks if I am sleeping in the same room as one.

My roommate back in undergrad used to completely sleep through a blaring clock alarm. Another roommate told me a story of this recurring dream he had of some crazy loud sound (I don’t recall of what). He realized later that it was the knocking sound of the heater pipes going off around the same time every night. Once this realization occurred, his recurring dream stopped and he could sleep right through the sound.

The amount of nuanced sounds in our environment is incredible. There is so much noise in the air, whether it’s “white noise” or not. It seems rare that there ever really is true silence around you. Even then, we can hear the sounds of our body working.

This also brings me to vision and how through some other, but perhaps similar process – we fine tune our vision, by blurring or sharpening it – often involuntarily. Today I had a glass of bilberry juice for the first time. Bilberry is similar to blueberries, though it seems at least from the juice I drank – less tart. I was first introduced to bilberries (conceptually) some years ago by someone who told me that they had laser eye surgery to correct their vision. There was problem with his night vision and he discovered bilberries somehow and their supposed night-vision enhancing properties. I read somewhere that WWII fighter pilots used to eat bilberry jam regularly to help their vision while flying at night.

Vision is often affected by stress and in those cases also often self-corrects once the stress has passed. I believe some of childhood traumas helped manifest the onset of myopia and my subsequent astigmatism. In times of stress, we literally and figuratively narrow our field of focus, sometimes losing sight of things. Beyond certain general categories of race, I wonder if specific cultures are more visually myopic (nearsighted) or hyperopic (farsighted).

This entry was posted on Monday, February 15th, 2010 at 1:59 am and is filed under ITP, Thesis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.