How many ideas can fit in one brain?

 

MIT News, When four is not four, but rather two plus two, MIT neuroscientists redefine the limits of working visual memory (June 2011)

The Magical Mystery Four: How Is Working Memory Capacity Limited and Why? (2010)

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The answer: I don't know for sure after Googling the question, but I do believe it is a lot. Why ask such a question? It is like this, I was thinking again.

5 Years

As I'm searching the Internet for recent articles, 2020 - 2024, I realize that my brain is resisting the fun of learning. To better organize the subject, I decide to start with links to articles. Moving along, I begin to read the text. The more I read, the more my brain says...Think of something else We aren't into a high capacity learning experience!  I understand that because I've been in a depression dip. Learning takes a lot of brain power that depression does not relinquish readily or easily.

To simplify. 

Changing my lifestyle is a challenge. Clearing my mind to think smoother and sharper, (a worthy goal) I've been assessing my thinking history. 

I believe we are born curious. I believe, that when I first began breathing air, my first thought is: Where the F%#& am I!? 

I am sure I was terrified. I can't imagine myself as a chilled new born. As it happens, I spent a lot of time by myself wondering about the initial question. When I learned to speak the language, my mother said I talked myself to sleep, and talked myself awake.

She was not a journaling person. There was no computer or tape recorder. Not even a camera happy parent to take many candid pictures of me.

All that learning, all that brain use is in my memory somewhere, for what I don't know. If there are lives lived one after the other, then in this life of mine, not much of the past life information has come forward. What if what I was talking about are things that did transfer to the new me? Did she listen to what I was saying? I guess, yes because she knew I talked. I think we often dismiss a new person's chats because we think of a baby's brain as not developed. It may be more developed that we know or science is as yet, able to measure. 

Training your brain to think better, be healthier is as important, I believe, as exercising the body. 

I noted that as I've been pondering brain health, on my list of foods to add artichoke hearts rise to the top. I haven't had them in years. They are a good brain food.  The brain knows.

The Why Photograph

A Squished Pinecone*

Do you feel sorry for everything that shows trace vulnerability? 
Think berry picking. Passing up or tossing the ones that are damaged in some way. Do you think about how a person can relate to not being the perfect one on the branch? 

What's this all about? Well, it is like this. On a slow autumn afternoon, as I lightly recover enough energy to accomplish more than I have been, I look once again to old pictures for a get-a-better-attitude boost (shove actually). There has been a lot of thinking going on here.

I posted a poem born out of this mood of mine on my poetry blog, Coffee Frappes & Seashells, A Pervading. The line that sticks with me is...flitters like a dry leaf, clinging to a dead tree.Those words describe how I feel. The mood is the result of pressing myself to figure out how to turn old habits towards the horizons in life that I face, (largely facing the sunset.)

Take a simple thing like a squished pinecone on the driveway to analyze why I stop to take a photograph. Why blares in my brain. Am I just an eccentric artist? I could be. After all, I am a septuagenarian. That comes with a ten year free to be anomalous me license. 

Over thinking can be entertaining.

How are your autumn afternoons going?

*Taken circa 2004

Thinking About Words

Is this right side up?

Fictionophile.com

There are moments when thoughts string together like a party bunting across your mind.

For no particular reason, mine this morning began with feeling grateful I'm up, as in no longer in pajamas mode. Strolling along, I stop to ponder the word, Up. How many ways is it used? Confident no weird thought goes unGoogled, I found a fantastic web page answering my question, (above link).

A few years ago I posted about the word exercise I play by writing down 100 favorite words in random order. In 6 months or so, write a new 100 words' list. The point is the comparisons are fun and a unique way to take a look at your Self.

I made 2 or 3 100 words' lists.

I also lost my lists somewhere in old file folders, hard copy paper files. I don't save them on my computer because I like real paper; and, for such a personal exercise, handwriting greatly enhances the experience.

September begins this week. Next Monday is Reflection Monday September 2023. As usual, I have been brainstorming, pondering the blog feature for thoughts I have yet to post about. I decided to focus on a word. 

Note, the photo is upside down.

Thoughts Over the Cereal Bowl

Thinking can happen anywhere at ant time. In the morning, more than any other meal of the day, my thinking feels more adventurous. 

For example, over a bowl of Cheerios with cinnamon, I was pondering a what if I'm out in the savanna foraging for food. I find a Cheerio tree. Do I eat until I'm no longer hungry or do I eat as many as I can until I feel too full? How would I add the milk and cinnamon? 

When my cereal bowl is empty, I start thinking about blogging.

Reflection Monday October 2018

Events in the news, movements, fads, things all viral appear to sweep a broad stroke over the World in ways that cause many to stop and think, others to react, and many to demonstrate. The #MeToo movement does a tremendous good. I am very grateful in many ways.
Yet, there is a side of that important issue that appears as if anyone that speaks up is Truth to be held above all else while the accused is guilty without due process. One reputation is untouchable/dare anyone to question the validity, while the other is destroyed.

Reflect on this tough and thorny question

What Price is Perfection?