"To come to the familiar waking self, is this not also a loosely-knit quantum commonweal constellation of selves? Only some of which appear to have much agency...?
Maybe it’s only in the recalling and retelling [of a dream or of a realityworld event] or even in answering questions like 'How are you old fellow?' or 'Why did you do that you oaf?' that a self appears, with its concerns about meaning and implications and morality. If one approaches not just the identified active self in a dream, but all of the objects and events in the dream as selves, or aspects of a quantum self, then what happens...? Do they all have something to say? If one approaches not just the identified active self in daily life, but all of the memories, fantasies, thoughts, habits that inhabit our waking lives as selves, or aspects of a quantum self, then what happens...? Do they all have something to say? On hypnagogging, do we reach into our wardrobe for the hanger labelled My Dream Selves, a multi-faceted patchwork of numerous dream selves? On hypnopomping, do we reach into our wardrobe for the hanger labelled My Waking Self, an alarmingly disparate patchwork of numerous waking selves patched together into some kind of coherent costume drama story, so that we can manage and navigate waking life without dissipating into fragments? EVERYTHING IS FULL OF HOLES"
0 Comments
Softness and sadness both come in pools.
I cannot easily tell one from the other. Perhaps they are not different? From Simon:
"To take a punnet of raspberries to the wood on a likely feeling day, and to slowly eat half with as much relish and focus as you can muster, while chucking, placing, tossing, bestrewing the other half about. To do this without particular care or thought, though I might favour the better lit nearer the edge areas. There can be no wrong or right placements, even up in a bush, in dark shade, or deep in a puddle, for the woodland and its creatures will re-arrange them (or not) in far wiser ways than you or I begin to know. To do this with no attachment or investment in any outcome, but simply as a small, in the moment sharing, a recognition and appreciation of all that the woodland shares with you. A reciprocation, a generosity of thanks, of love, of seeing, and perhaps as apology for the omission of such acts before. And then to walk away and let the whole thing go. The woodland may in its own time choose to grow some of them or not, but you would have offered the possibility along with your gift of gratitude." I had lost touch with the possibility of painting nuts, painting acorns.
Then this morning, waking on the beach, Oh Hello You, surrounded by really very large rocks that had tumbled down and out of the cliff. Bigger than cars. Smooth. And I was able to touch them pink so quickly. (The paint was water-based, used organic dyes and washed off quickly, but art needs to be seen, right?)
I am getting more interested in the shimmering.
Today as I climbed into the copse I came almost immediately to the source of the stream. It issues out of the side of the hill, between three ferns and quickly gather momentum amongst the moss. It shimmered and, seeing it, I was still and shimmered too. Nothing else happened. I quite quickly developed a 'project desire' to build a stone surround for it, to celebrate and mark it in some way and to allow its water to be gathered. Then I let that go. as it became clear to me that this tendency to want to make something of it (in this case the spring), to intensify the experience (marking it with a monument), to register it as MY experience in some way, was completely not the point. The point was the shimmering and I could stretch that experience out by simply being in the shimmering, asking for nothing more. It was a bit of a revelation. Of course, writing this is already making something of it. But I have to have something in my project notebook... I found that I can raise an eye. Somehow it will emerge from the mist or slide up into view, if it's available. If it's not available, something else will come. Then it will look in a certain direction and I can follow its gaze. I feel this has some connection with Zoom - with all those gazes - with the others' gazes gazing at me and my own gaze gazing at me. This exterior eye has its own intention; it chooses where it will look. I can invite it to appear but I cannot otherwise control it. Whose is it? I should like to be writing with pen, again, hear.feeling the scratch of the nib on rough paper; see.feeling the ink seep a little into the fibres of the rough paper.
That would be like meeting to move and talk in a wood. This is like meeting on Zoom. It's perfectly adequate. A friend of mine died on Christmas Day. I say a friend. He was the man my wife went to live with and then married when we were living in Oxfordshire. She left behind the children, who were 3 and 1, to live with me. That turned out to be such a blessing for me. Years later, when he was trying to stop drinking, he came to live with me here for several months - it was far from temptation and he had nowhere to be as my.his wife had chucked him out. I was often furious with him. One time in particular was when he was living here (I was on my own) and he offered to give me what he called "dating lessons". Anyway, he died horribly of lung cancer on Christmas Day. His dying has not apparently touched me. I am a bit quiet. There. Context. I went to sleep last night wanting to write. I woke up full of statements. Hypnopomping. You are owl and snake in my waking. (I love the open face of the owl of Athena, hiding nothing, seeing everything; I love the sinuous movement of snake in grass, snake in water, such a way to move; I love the rigorously tight flesh of snake.) Specifically, you are cobra-spined with the head arched up over your head, its jaws open - but not threatening. And, specifically, you are owl-throated, so that you have three faces: topmost is snake, below it is your human face, below that is open owl face.) I woke with this image - a wonderful conjunction. The statements followed: 1. You do not need to worry what people think. It's an inappropriate scale/measure, imposed from one world onto another. Does it matter to a forest tree or a leopard what people think? 2. Do not be divided. (I don't know what that means.) 3. Actually ask for what you actually want. Trying to adapt/adjust the wanting to make it palatable is what causes the difficulty. This list can be for you or me. At least 1 and 3 do. Perhaps they are for us both. I sometimes wake like this. Full of some energy that flows in through sleep. In love with life and snake flesh and owl eyes. "The hypnagogic state is rational waking cognition trying to make sense of non-linear images and associations; the hypnopompic state is emotional and credulous dreaming cognition trying to make sense of real-world stolidity. They have a different phenomenological character." So I realise that the hypnagogic state (falling asleep hallucinations) is reasonable left brain trying to make sense of weird, dreamy, unreasonable right brain. And the hypnopompic state (waking up hallucinations) is dreamy right brain coming to terms with left brain's daily-life reality. My whole life seems to be a clumsy attempt to knit the two hemispheres together. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
May 2021
Categories |