the emotion experiment

i am fascinated by moods, emotions. i suppose that is why the experiment began. it was a simple idea: the comprehension of feelings both positive and negative (with room for central moods) but it just got out of control. now it's like a strange disease.

you see, whenever i am feeling pleasant or uplifted, there is a spark that sets off that asks me why, with all this to be joyful about, i have down-trodden moods. this is an of itself is nothing unusual. i suspect everyone does this when at one extreme or the other of emotion. what is strange is that when i find that happening, i deliberatly change my format, i change my input: begin readin sade books carefully, disecting morose songs, staring at maudlin paintings, deconstructing famine documentaries or the holocaust. i do this until i am so down-trodden that i can barely breathe, at which point i catch that same spark, inverted, that asks me why anyone can be so lively with all of this going on around us. the process is sometimes cyclical in that i will switch myself back and forth for several days on end until i am restless from so much emotional turmoil and find myself passed out on my bed, waking hours and hours later feeling completely objective about everything.

i suppose in all of this i began to get a sense that something about emotions were trickery. i didn't know what, but something seemed awry. so i began taking mental notes of my physical and mental sensations in the extremities of emotion. i began characterizing the feelings i had, until the feelings themselves took on their own personality. i began to categorize them and in some ways, each thought and feeling was unique, each sensation had it's own personal overtones. in other ways i began to notice that there was an undercurrent of sameness. i began to notice that emotions cause a sharp reaction in my nervous system. this is true of both positive and negative emotions. i began to notice that the physical sensations were the same with each (adjusted for extremity based on the circumstances) and i labeled them based on a (sometimes conccious, sometimes subconcious) understanding of what was causing them. i began to realize that emotions are not a mental sensation, but a physical one. once we label that emotion it becomes or at least seems to become mental. i realized that emotions are nothing more than nervousness of varying degrees, labeled and called something else for a reason i do not understand.

of course, that doesn't make them any less pleasurable or frightening, but that wasn't what the experiment was about it. it was more about understanding what i was feeling and why. i think, at least for me, i've done that.

the experiment pretty much ended about a year ago, but i still catch myself forcing my emotional changes every so often. actually, that's what happened a few minutes ago which is why all this came up.

sorry if it was boring.

2004-06-16 | 4:00 p.m.
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