Sinking into oblivion or holding on for a good while is a vital decision when you find yourself passing through the quick sands. The latter is preferable, but in doing so, you have to keep in mind that it’s all about taste.

If you see someone tossing about in the quick sands, you should stifle your desire to advise him what to do. Whoever he might be, he has his own right to set a liking for the final upturn in his fortune. What seems a wise advice for one could be an ill turn of fate for another.

I moved through the quick sands. The dunes stretched before me like a white immensity as far as my eyes could see. I consoled myself that the quick sands didn’t intend to swallow me yet. Undoubtedly they had existed all the time, so I couldn’t gloss over their unpleasant deserted essence with my appearance and – what bothered me even more – it didn’t deign to respond to my presence anyway. Perhaps I had to pass across the quick sands without a set destination like an accidentally woken fool or a deliberately deceived sage. I hoped that it would become clear in the upshot. But it would not be my whim.

There were white quick sands and nothing else. I had thought that there might be someone’s visible footprints before me pointing in right and wrong directions. They would prompt me how to suit the quick sands so I would not sink, but I was disappointed in my supposition. There were no signs indicating that someone had gone before me. There were no signs that could take me back to the time of beginning and that could help me to get at the tangibility of the end. (more…)

Edward T. Hall, anthropologist and author of The Hidden Dimension (1966), first coined the term, “proxemics” in the early 1960s. The concept deals mainly with how people set up personal and social spaces and interpersonal distances. One of the interesting assumptions, of which humans have been well aware of for centuries, is that different cultures have different rules of keeping distances, that is, the distance between two or more individuals is culturally set. The violation of these spatial rules will put one in trouble. Thus, one can say that the American expression of stepping on one’s toes is probably connected more to distancing than to corporal punishment. In fact breaking established social norms for distancing could be interpreted as something far more serious.

Americans have been said to have closer distancing than, let’s say Germans, and yet, Latin Americans will consider Americans as people who maintain considerable more distance from each other. Apparently, it is this sense of cultural relativity that has attracted and intrigued anthropologists and psychologists to the study of proxemics.

It is most stimulating to observe Americans, and also the various strains of newly arrived Hispanics from Mexico, Dominican Republic, Cuba and Puerto Rico, in these space related close encounters. I, being Puerto Rican, was perturbed one day, after having recently arrived in the States from living in Puerto Rico. I was back again in the “land of the free” after thirteen years on the Island. I asked some fellow in a gasoline station for directions. I had lost my bearing in the drive from Orlando International Airport to Gainesville, Florida. When I posed my question, the person became quite startled and backed off a little. But I just moved towards him making no thought of why he acted the way he did. (more…)