Poetic Knowledge: Ch.3 Pt. 1 and Senses

Okay, I had a tough time with this one. Maybe it's because I was distracted while I read it and had to read it over several days in the van while waiting for my hubbie to do errands while I had a massive headache...Really reading it over days usually isn't a problem for me, just the reading tough stuff with a headache.

Anywho...

Since I had a tough time and since poetic knowledge has to do with the senses I thought I'd share some things that have really appealed to me at sundry times and places. Things that I have craved for and had an overwhelming sense of satisfaction yet continual desire for.

Smell: Nearly 15 years ago I had some very tough times with family and personally. I was learning massage therapy along with some students who were very into aromatherapy. They introduced me to the scent of Sweet Orange and Sandalwood. For the longest time I couldn't get enough of that scent. Thinking on the experience now I would like to research those scents and see what their attributes are and see if somehow it was due to those attributes and my needs at the time that it was nourishing me. I'll have to look into that now...

Sound: Beethoven, Symphony 7, Allegretto, mvt 2. You can listen to this and see a fascinating visual display too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uOxOgm5jQ4. My absolute favorite part is the second minute but the who piece is beautiful. I'm not sure why but it really speaks to me at this time in my life.

Visual: When I was in high school (and before then too) I had the great advantage of being in the dance program. It was new in West Anchorage High and for the three years I was there I spent my lunch, dance class hour, and many after school hours in the dance studio (at one point I wasn't able to get into dance so I took typing instead and would speed through my work and the kind teacher would let me go to dance). When I wasn't actually dancing I would listen to music with my eyes closed and visualize the choreography. I still do it from time to time but I really don't have the ability like I used to.

Taste: I'm not sure this counts as a poetic experience per se but there is a dessert I recently discovered that is just divine. I'm a big chocolate lover but this is better! Really the only way to eat it is in snitched bites here and there when you shouldn't be eating it. Don't ask me why. It just is. You can try it, the recipe is here: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2008/02/apple_dumplings/

Touch: Since I did massage therapy I naturally received a lot of professional massages. But in all honesty I find the most relaxing touch is when someone runs their fingers through my hair (hmmmm, maybe I should tell my husband that?). The most thrilling touch I had was when I first met my husband and he would greet me quickly by squeezing my arm then rush off. What a tease he was! Ha ha ha! Again, I don't know if those would count as poetic but like I said, I had a bad headache while reading this and so this is my contribution! *smile*

Okay, I did get some things from this section:

1. "...the habit of poetic intelligence as a way of seeing the world, seeing the significance in the superficial, what most would dismiss, ignore, or never notice. Indeed, 'the way in which ideas arise in our minds,' while not poetry, is poetic." Just tonight a friend wrote to me, "It is so fun to read your thoughts because you make so many connections from so many different sources. The information is wonderfully stimulating word candy." Without a broad base of knowledge and deeper base in many areas it is hard for one to make such poetic connections. Here again is where the public school system fails our children in true knowledge because they keep everything so shallow. Makes me think of the song What I Am by Edie Brickell. I see Satan's influence and trickery all around. I recently saw a TIME magazine cover titled: What If There's No Hell. I didn't read it but I want to testify that Satan is real and there is Hell! The fact that that was the cover of a prominent magazine is evidence of Satan's reality because Satan doesn't want us to think he is real!

Okay, jumping off my soapbox now.

2. I found this part very telling, "...the credibility of intuitive knowledge was a kind of given in the power of the knower. The deliberate treatment of poetic knowledge by Maritain and others becomes necessary only after the seventeenth century and the ascendancy of science as the preeminent method of learning." Especially when joined with a previous section, "Abstraction, concepts, analysis, by themselves, isolate us from the real." These characteristics are all part of science. I believe science had it's place but it should not be isolated from all other sources of knowledge like it is in our world today. The more complicated we make things the further we get from what is real and true and good. I could go on but it's late and I want to post so...

...that's all for now folks!

See other posts on this book: http://www.pelennorfields.com/mystie/poetic-knowledge-book-club/