No thots September

thot #3: on memory, language and unthotfulness

Sep 27, 2021

“ARE YOU SURE YOU’VE THOT THIS THROUGH?”

“What? NO, no shit. How boring would that be”

thots on no thots

There were no new issues of thots in the last few weeks because there were literally no thots in my mind.

this september, i didn't think.
i saw.
and oh the WAY i saw it.
i don’t remember it anymore
but now i know it exists.

and i think i heard too.
the music was loud.
louder than that, the magic pop in my mouth.
but the loudest of all,
a crack of heart.
i’m sure i heard more than one of those
an orchestra of broken hearts
and i, the conductor

i read somewhere that it stands for
learning to slow down
and i think it's true.
because i am now
learning ways i can
slowly..run

I DID IT

I am now that esoteric smallcase only, 5 words a line, basic words, to be slowly read writer gal 🥰 Sorry, I had to do it at least once in here.

Yeah, I’m not Rupi Kaur. But how I wish I were Not Rupi Kaur 😭 She’s my favorite poememe creator, who I obviously found on my favorite social platform, Facebook (yeah FB is the best; I do have an exclusive FB stan issue planned to bare my reasons, but plugging this in right now to simply piss some of you off). Anyway, for you uncultured ones, here’s her twitter.

I have experienced SO much in the past month that I’ve wanted to write about ALL of it, so I…wrote about none :))

And it does get to me sometimes, you know. How I am cognizant of the fact that I’m in the throes of some of the most formative, dynamic and vibrant years of my life. And how I would really want to be able to document it in tasteful forms for future Kaav to materially sip on - to visualize our growth trajectory, but mostly to not fuck up in the same ways as present Kaav (because this one here, is on a rager)

But I’ve never gotten my way around journaling; primarily because I suck big at the two most major components of any documentation - memory and expression.

on memory

I came across, this week, something called the Forgetting Curve. It’s basically a graph by German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus that establishes the relationship between the amount of information retained and the time elapsed from consumption.

So basically our memory fades over time? WHAT A Surprise 😱

No, that isn’t exactly the core deduction to Ebb’s experiment. What I found most interesting was that the biggest drop in retention happens soon after learning which is visible by that steep dip right at the start of the curve above. It explains why, my brain that is over fed with information (as coping mechanism) at ALL times, still feels empty on most days :)) Turns out info-gluttony is also a sin 🙂

To combat the forgetting curve, Ebby boy came up with something called Spaced Learning or Distributive practice

Which basically states that by reviewing new information at key moments on the Forgetting Curve, you can reduce the rate at which you forget it.

In other words, KEEP COMING BACK to smell the shit you dump inside your brain. You can’t expect growth by simply sowing a seed without having to come back to water it. I think it only makes sense.

I’ve personally tried really hard to practice spaced learning to remember things, in the past, but I realized later that to even practice a memory hack, you need to be remembering to do it 🙃

Anyway, a very useful kick-starter to it could be this tweet

on expression

Words are so restrictive man 😠 I’m hardly as articulate as some of you folks are and it’s extremely frustrating for me to be scouring for the right words to accurately express what I’m feeling. There aren’t enough words that exist and I don’t think there can ever be. But there sure are certain gaps in language that are so beautifully filled by words from another language.

To expose and fill in these exact gaps in language, Tim Lomas, a lecturer in applied positive psychology at University of East London, launched the Positive Lexicography Project, an online glossary of untranslatable words.

There were expressions, he realized—words in foreign languages that described positive traits, feelings, experiences, and states of being that had no direct counterparts in English. Wouldn’t it be fascinating, he wondered, to gather all these in one place?
Linguists have long debated the links between language, culture, and cognition. The specific tongue that we happen to speak—shapes our thoughts and perceptions.
Studying a culture’s emotional vocabulary, he said, may provide a window into how its people see the world—“things that they value, or their traditions, or their aesthetic ideals, or their ways of constructing happiness, or the things that they recognize as being important and worth noting

Positive Lexicography Project might help the field of psychology, which is often criticized for focusing too much on Western experiences and ideas, develop a more cross-cultural view of well-being.

Here are few of my FAV-est words from the list:

Mamihlapinatapei (Yagán): a look between people that expresses unspoken but mutual desire😌
Queesting (Dutch): to allow a lover access to one’s bed for chitchat🥺
Ilunga (Tshiluba): being ready to forgive a first time, tolerate a second time, but never a third time🙂
gigil (Tagalog): the irresistible urge to pinch/squeeze someone because they are loved or cherished🥴
mbuki-mvuki (Swahili): to shed clothes to dance uninhibited😽

✨e-date idea: screen sharing the glossary of happiness to find new words to say to each other 🥰

Also, on language:

College Lingo!!

So ya’ll know how different colleges in India have their exclusive in-campus parlance based on region, culture, rituals and routines - that is known ONLY to students from that college!? A jibe on a professor, a special canteen food, a snarky local remark, and sometimes traditions given down by super super seniors with NO breadcrumbs to it’s source. YES, I MEAN THAT!

SOO…I was privileged to have been initiated to some of these fresh new college slangs, in the recent past. For example,

Folks from BITS Pilani are obsessed with taking it "Lite" (read Lyt or Li8)

‘Da’ is something Christ kids will add after EVERY sentence (Come off da, put one scene). While we use (quite literally) ‘fucchas’ here at DU and a few other IITs, very commonly

Next time you meet someone from IIT-Roorki, ask them for Chapo (Chai-Pakodi) for having gone through the A-Z glossary of IIT-R Lingo

Language - of a college, a cult, a community.

My three most favorite C words.

It takes a college to make a community. But what does it take for a community to make a cult? You tell me.

Write back to me with the closest experience you’ve had to being in a cult and I’ll add it when I talk (soon) about mine. Yes, it happens more often than you’d know.

some things I’ve been up to

these past few weeks:

I met more people than I did the past 1.5 years
I found myself a new woman to obsess over for the next month or so
I moved to a new place
I quit my job
I got my first tattoo
I pretended to not make a big deal about some MAJOR life altering events
I lived this entire month in 1 suitcase

so I guess…sorry for being AWOL?

talk thots to me

This was a freewheeling, light, breezy edition of thots. I think I prefer it this way although I couldn’t incorporate my fav Community Thotluck section this time. I truly, truly aspire to make this a collaborative space for thots that are some yours and some mine.

Please fill me in on all your whacky little thots from the past few weeks by sending them here. I will feature them anonymous and out of context.

Also out of context, a picture of my hand:

Small update: thots will now most likely be a bi-monthly issue as against a weekly one. I've realized that the pressure to tell a good story comes with the pressure to do shit, ergo fuck up. And I really think I can use my fuckups to be thinned down and spread across a larger time, at this point. Yeah.

Anyway,

if you liked reading this thot, don’t forget to give me a kishmish (raisin) in the comments so I can enjoy a mild sugar rush 🍒 and
if you have a feedback for me, please send it across with an akhrot (walnut) so I can put some more brain to it 🌰

(yes you can ‘type’ the nuts out if you don’t have the emoji)

And…that’s it.

Thanks for reading; don’t forget to share a nihilist meme on your story today 🤟🏾

thots