once you start searching for something, it's hard to stop. it happens when you've spent all afternoon looking for your passport. even after it's been found, you still start sifting through piles of papers when you walk in the kitchen before you realize what you're doing. it happens when you've been looking into buying a new car (not that I've ever bought a car. the only car I've ever owned came free in a box of rice krispies. it was bright green and I called it tutti frutti.) you drive down the street and notice details on every car that passes. and it happens when you've been doing research. you start skimming every bit of text you see and words pertaining to your topic keep jumping out at you.


that's what I've been doing the last few days. unfortunately, since the topic of my 4000-word paper is whether or not private emotional states can be transferred between individuals through such public stimuli as music, the words that keep jumping out at me are along the lines of consciousness, awareness, descartes, attentional selectivity and phenomenology. it makes my brain feel a bit like it's been doused with powdered sugar and mixed with an egg beater.


and did I mention my paper has to be 4000 words long? four thousand? this might not seem like all that much to an artsy, but to a life-science student? I don't have the faintest idea even of how many pages that's going to be. I've never done a paper that couldn't be written in one day (ok, night) before...


here's my brain, buried in an excess of fluffy white philosophy.