Serendipity Strikes Again! Coincidence Dreams & Smell

The Andaman Islands are home to a people who actively smell and dream.

Their calendar is based on bloom seasons, cycles of emitted fragrances. Each season presents its vital energies of aroma-forces. Navigation in these islands of fragrance is smell-based ... such as closer to the sea = saltier, further from the sea = sterculia flower. Space differentiation is known by fluctuating olfactory perimeters of village and environment.

Coincidentally, while revisiting the article on smell cultures, I was revisiting Robert Moss' books on dreams, coincidence and imagination. Moss relays that the Andaman Islanders are an active dream culture. This means that people individually and as a community share dream work for life-supporting information, often dreaming as a group. It is documented that they left their fishing areas for hillside shelter prior to the 2004 Asian tsunami and survived, specifically due to heeding their shared dreams. There are nasal-centric and dream-centric cultures.

Coincidentally, perfumer Vedat Ozan's radio show Koku this week covers, you guessed it here is the radio show link, the show is in Turkish.

Ozan's show covers:
- "Calendars that change on aromas/scents, not on the movements of the sun

- Places fixed by aromas/scent, not by meters/latitude/longitude

- Andaman Islands and the Onges

- Rain Forests and the Dassanetchs

- Colombia, South America, and the Desanas

- 'All these primitive savages* stink ! Oh god, why are they not clean as us ??'"

Smelling and Dreaming. lastor says it doesn't get much better!

* Savage comes from the Latin silvaticus "of the forest"

Sources
The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence & Imagination
and
The Secret History of Dreaming
both by Robert Moss
Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell
by Constance Classen, David Howes, Anthony Synnett

for your pleasure may I recommend

On Dreams, Coincidence and Imagination
Dreamers through History
Cultural History of Smell

Coincidentally, Arianna Huffington wrote of her dreaming today read here about Luxor Temple sleep/dream chambers and more.


The Andaman Islands photo: Venkatesh, K

Geeks of a Feminine Persuasion

Caltech Women Rock!

Picture: Before
(Express on South Lake, Pasadena, CA)

the Goddess, the Lover, the Ballerina, the Diplomat, the Fashion Model

Picture: After the Mischief
(Express, on South Lake, Pasadena, CA)

the Chemist, the Astronomer, the Electrical Engineer, the Neuroscientist, the String Theorist, the Geologist, the Chemical Engineer

Once upon a time
in a land of golden sun
there lived some scientists of the girl persuasion and I was witness to some funny doing.

As the on-campus massage therapist offering chair massage and workshops on Stretch: Gain & Maintain Flexibility, a class I had developed incorporating Tai Chi Chuan, body re-education, sports performance, body rehabilitation, stress reduction and energizing and classes on preventative health and health management (a lot of insomnia and TMJ on the campus at that time) 

... I met and conversed with people from all areas of campus life ... ... One day the gossip and giggles were going strong ...

The night before some gal students responded to the window dressing of the local Express store, which caters to their age range, with some creative window dressing of their own. True! Wonderful!

The geeks of the female persuasion got a talking to; the school paid the fine and I thought Express was ridiculous. They missed a massive marketing opportunity. Within walking distance they had a built-in clientele. The $100 or whatever it was Express made on the antics missed many thousands of dollars revenue, they just had to offer 20% off to all Science Girls, or Caltechers, or come on, think of something. 

More importantly, they sadly missed a true message of real life happening in front of their windows. Brilliant, sexy, gorgeous Caltech women with Incredible Minds and Imagination ... and to think, they could've been wearing Express. We all boycotted the store when we could have been girlcotting and spending.

Tip o' the Hat to those Courageous Geeks

quite a few years have passed and I just came across the photo again

Juxtaposition

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Collage 
contains
continuous surprise
meetings of
juxtaposition and serendipity.


Juxtaposing elements frames the previously invisible, allowing us to see something that has always been there, but the attention was elsewhere.

Juxtaposition as the core of collage, can smooth, surprise, transport, humor, and wake us up.
 
collage: Music Circuitry Lura Astor