In response to David Abram's The Spell of the Sensuous on page 116, "It is then that Socrates explains himself: "You must forgive me, dear friend. I'm a lover of learning, and trees and open country won't teach me anything, whereas men in the town do."", I felt the need to address the topic of going out of your comfort zone to experience the world. For me, my comfort zone was deeply invaded and destroyed, mostly while traveling through France. I have terrible social anxiety, and it is better than it used to be, but back then, even the thought of going out in public made me sweat and nervous. I had to deal with this to experience the different cultures as I traveled throughout Europe; it was quite easy until I got to Paris and Versailles where my claustrophobia also made it difficult. Small museum rooms, lots of people, didn't matter that it was rainy and about 50 degrees outside and wearing shorts. I was sweating and panicking. I had to rely on my friends to keep me from leaving to go back to the hotel. I made it a point to watch and observe people who seemed to be locals to see how they interacted with tenders and waiters. There was no language barrier to worry about, it was just a gesture barrier for me.

So, for this response, I took two photos from the two places I had panic attacks at while in France. Palace of Versailles-full of people to the point I could hear their tour program in their headphones. The Louvre was the other place. Waaaay too many people, no elbow room and to me that's incredibly important unless you want me in a bad mood or on the floor trying to gasp for air.

I took these two photos and merged them into a beautiful and calm collage and then a collage that looked scary/odd/not pleasing or calm. This represented my interpretation of the experience before the experience and after.