Abram on Mind Arising
"The human body, in itself, is no more autonomous - and no more conscious - than an isolated brain. Sentience is not an attribute of a body in isolation; it emerges from the ongoing encounter between our flesh and the forest of rhythms in which it finds itself, born of the interplay and tension between the world's wild hunger and our own. ... Mind arises, and dwells, between the body and the Earth and hence is as much an attribute of this leafing world as of our own immodest species." David Abram Becoming Animal Journey into Being "So my journey into an experience began. It was a journey always for fun, with no motive beyond that I wanted it. But at first I was seeking only sensuous gratification - the sensation of height, the sensation of movement, the sensation of speed, the sensation of distance, the sensation of effort, the sensation of ease: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life. I was not interested in the mountain for itself but for its effect upon me, as puss caresses not the man but herself against the man's trouser leg. But as I grew older and less self-sufficient, I began to discover the mountain in itself. Everything became good to me, its contours, its colours, its water and rock, flowers and birds. This process has taken many years and is not yet complete. Knowing another is endless. And I have discovered that man's experience of them enlarges rock, flower and bird. The thing to be known grows with the knowing. I believe that I now understand in some small measure why the Buddhist goes on pilgrimage to a mountain. The journey is itself part of the technique by which the god is sought. It is a journey into being; for as I penetrate more deeply into the mountain's life, I penetrate also into my own. For an hour I am beyond desire. It is not ecstasy that leap out of the self that makes man like a god. I am not out of myself but in myself. I am. To know Being, this is the final grace accorded from the mountain." Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain Walking into the Mountain Here then, may be lived a life of the senses so pure, so untouched by any mode of apprehension but their own, that the body may be said to think. Each sense heightened to its most exquisite awareness is in itself total experience. This is the innocence we have lost, living in one sense at a time to live all the way through. ... Walking thus, hour after hour, the senses keyed, one walks the flesh transparent. But no metaphor, transparent, or light as air, is adequate.The body is not made negligible but paramount. Flesh is not annihilated but fulfilled. One is not bodiless but essential body. It is therefore when the body is keyed to its highest potential an d controlled to a profound harmony deepening into something that resembles trance, that I discover most nearly what it is to be. I have walked out of the body and into the mountain. I am a manifestation of its total life, as is the starry saxifrage or the white-winged ptarmigan. Nan Shepherd, the Living Mountain |
Van der Waals Forces
These gecko foot hairs remind me of the starfish feet in the video. And I like this definition because it makes acquisitive, averse and confused into more fluid ideas characterised by interaction. "Van der Waals forces include attractions and repulsions between atoms, molecules, and surfaces, as well as other intermolecular forces. Intermolecular forces have four major contributions:
Autobiographical Movement "I consider that autobiographical material derives from an ongoing, shifting set of relations, where individual autobiographies intersect with the wider environment to create collective autobiographies. While Davis’s approach to somatic movement practice centres on the subjective experience and impulses of the mover, these come from being in relationship with the inhabited environment including people, places and events. In addition, the mover and audience-participant are informed by embodied personal histories from past interrelationships that impact behaviours and interpretations in the present time." .... "At the same time as recognising that autobiography is developed in relationship, I also see it as experienced subjectively through the body, a result of my training in witnessing and tracking my movement behaviour in Authentic Movement practice. For example, all of my descriptive writings in this chapter describe the effects of the external environment and their impact on my individual body. However, I also hope these writings have a broader scope, moving beyond simply describing my internal experience, and instead, opening a space for writings that value subjective experience over the body as object, as well as acknowledging how bodies are informed by the contexts they inhabit." ... "This reflects somatic trainings where the behaviour patterns of the individual are understood as emerging from their interaction with the contexts they inhabit." Emma Meehan, The Autobiographical Body The Habituated Body "The bodymind, then, develops a sense of immediate environment—of place—through both physical interaction, and socio-cultural presentation. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Fundiering Model (1962) suggests a disarmingly simple way to envision how this conjoint habituation of place forms. The communication, interpretation and response of self and world can be seen as emanating from the perceived, experienced world, but sedimenting itself through the communal world and through shared emotional reactions within a shared community. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological lived body in the lived world is recognised in this way as a social as well as a physical, sensate being; indeed, the social, physical and sensual are all intersensory parts of the unified self-in-the-world. The experienced and socially filtered, sedimented response to lived place and lived landscape becomes an organic part of the lived body; it becomes a pre-reflective response that is a major component of the bodymind-self. These habituated responses that help define the ‘self’ in terms of the world, show place, landscape and self as inextricably interconnected and co-defined within the human cogito". Nicholas Hope, The Co-Dependent Body Under the Skin Tuatha Dé Danann is a tribe that lives under the surface of Ireland. Phil's reference to something similar in England. Check it? Maturana on Objectivity "When one puts objectivity in parenthesis, all views, all verses in the multiverse are equally valid. Understanding this, you lose the passion for changing the other. One of the results is that you look apathetic to people. Now, those who do not live with objectivity in parentheses have a passion for changing the other. So they have this passion and you do not. For example, at the university where I work, people may say, ‘Humberto is not really interested in anything,’ because I don’t have the passion in the same sense that the person that has objectivity without parentheses. And I think that this is the main difficulty. To other people you may seem too tolerant. However, if the others also put objectivity in parentheses, you discover that disagreements can only be solved by entering a domain of co-inspiration, in which things are done together because the participants want to do them. With objectivity in parentheses, it is easy to do things together because one is not denying the other in the process of doing them." Desire There seems to be no lessening in the rapacity of desire. When John Berger said that men act and women appear, I imagine it felt like something might shift as a result of the insight. But, as much as ever, men look at women whilst women watch themselves being looked at. If we leave value judgements out of this predicament and simply pay attention to the habit, it seems to bring itself back to the nature of desire. Joanna talks of love_desire and need_desire. Need-desire seems to be what underpins much of our functioning. Men, arguably, want to occupy, possess, capture, own the female. Consumers, less arguably, want to acquire, possess, own, consume. Need_desire underpins consumption. But if we spread desire out like a tablecloth, then there can be love_desire. What's that? A desire to give, to share, to be generous. And where could this lead? Well to other forms of desire. Suppose we take the four mudras seen on the first four levels of Candi Borobudur:
So, the skillful elaboration and cultivation of desire can become a competence of the person of tomorrow - a way of dancing at the edge. Borobudur mudras Thoreau on Mindfulness "Of course, it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods, if they do not carry us thither. I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations, and my obligations to society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head, and I am not where my body is; I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods? I suspect myself, and cannot help a shudder, when I find myself so implicated even in what are called good works — for this may sometimes happen." Henry David Thoreau - Walking |
Understanding
When and how is it that we - some of us - come to expect to understand everything?Infants and children don't understand everything they hear and read, and don't particularly mind. They don't expect to understand. Some people never expect to understand. Others do.
For those who do, everything changes. It's hard to go on reading the book, watching the film, joining in the conversation when something's not understood. Not understanding becomes a disruption. Rewind please. Say again.
Deciding that we should understand everything has taken us in a certain direction. Useful, except when it prioritises chopstick-in-the-mouth rationalism over lived experience.
Perhaps a week a year when we let go of trying to understand everything would be handy.
Creating Needs"It is not that one person cannot satisfy all our needs, but that with each person we create a new set of needs. Each new person shows us that there is something else to want. Seduction, the happy invention of need." Adam Phillips
Bennett on Time
"We exist in a peculiar way that has the successiveness of past, present and future and also the peculiar property of location. We say we cannot be in two places at once - today and yesterday or today and tomorrow. All that is true for our physical body... but it is not true apart from bodies...
There is also an undetermined and uncommitted world where nothing is fixed... The whole world is connected. From one way of looking at it, 'every part of the world is in the same state as every other... When this way of looking operates in us we become aware of another time and another place as being here and now."
...
Time is not of the essence. The difference between the essence and the personality is that the personality has no possibility of existing at all except as a temporal process."
J G Bennett - The Way to be Free
Bennett on the Mechanical
"Our whole attitude towards our personality has to change. The shift of perspective has to be made permanent. One thing that can help is to see the complete mechanicalness of our associations... the very nature of our personality is to be an automaton. That is why it comes under all kinds of influences that are unnatural and absurd for it to come under. Its opinions, attitudes, interests and so on, can be changed without its even noticing."
...
"Fulasnitamnian is the right way to be living... The other way is where one lives by external shocks, particularly by the causes that have arisen in the past. In the way of itoklanoz we are living in the action of our past lives: the bobbin-kandlenosts, the wound-up springs that keep us moving, simply go on until they are exhausted and then leave nothing behind...
The itoklanoz way of living is the way of a marionette with a lot of threads attached to different parts, each of which are producing reactions and behavior manifestations."
J G Bennett - The Way to be Free
Bennett on Patterns
"We labor under the misapprehension that we have to think up what we have to do. The truth is that this is not our responsibility, because the pattern of things is far greater than we can imagine . . . the direct perception of our pattern belongs to . . . the unconditioned side of our nature...
We are trying to get this pattern of the wholeness of our lives into our awareness...
Rare people can produce extraordinary events in the world because they are endowed with pattern awareness. By taking things within the scale of our own lives we can have a taste of this very special thing. Then our lives are not just the working out of the consequences of past causes, but have a creative feeling in them."
J G Bennett - The Way to be Free
When and how is it that we - some of us - come to expect to understand everything?Infants and children don't understand everything they hear and read, and don't particularly mind. They don't expect to understand. Some people never expect to understand. Others do.
For those who do, everything changes. It's hard to go on reading the book, watching the film, joining in the conversation when something's not understood. Not understanding becomes a disruption. Rewind please. Say again.
Deciding that we should understand everything has taken us in a certain direction. Useful, except when it prioritises chopstick-in-the-mouth rationalism over lived experience.
Perhaps a week a year when we let go of trying to understand everything would be handy.
Creating Needs"It is not that one person cannot satisfy all our needs, but that with each person we create a new set of needs. Each new person shows us that there is something else to want. Seduction, the happy invention of need." Adam Phillips
Bennett on Time
"We exist in a peculiar way that has the successiveness of past, present and future and also the peculiar property of location. We say we cannot be in two places at once - today and yesterday or today and tomorrow. All that is true for our physical body... but it is not true apart from bodies...
There is also an undetermined and uncommitted world where nothing is fixed... The whole world is connected. From one way of looking at it, 'every part of the world is in the same state as every other... When this way of looking operates in us we become aware of another time and another place as being here and now."
...
Time is not of the essence. The difference between the essence and the personality is that the personality has no possibility of existing at all except as a temporal process."
J G Bennett - The Way to be Free
Bennett on the Mechanical
"Our whole attitude towards our personality has to change. The shift of perspective has to be made permanent. One thing that can help is to see the complete mechanicalness of our associations... the very nature of our personality is to be an automaton. That is why it comes under all kinds of influences that are unnatural and absurd for it to come under. Its opinions, attitudes, interests and so on, can be changed without its even noticing."
...
"Fulasnitamnian is the right way to be living... The other way is where one lives by external shocks, particularly by the causes that have arisen in the past. In the way of itoklanoz we are living in the action of our past lives: the bobbin-kandlenosts, the wound-up springs that keep us moving, simply go on until they are exhausted and then leave nothing behind...
The itoklanoz way of living is the way of a marionette with a lot of threads attached to different parts, each of which are producing reactions and behavior manifestations."
J G Bennett - The Way to be Free
Bennett on Patterns
"We labor under the misapprehension that we have to think up what we have to do. The truth is that this is not our responsibility, because the pattern of things is far greater than we can imagine . . . the direct perception of our pattern belongs to . . . the unconditioned side of our nature...
We are trying to get this pattern of the wholeness of our lives into our awareness...
Rare people can produce extraordinary events in the world because they are endowed with pattern awareness. By taking things within the scale of our own lives we can have a taste of this very special thing. Then our lives are not just the working out of the consequences of past causes, but have a creative feeling in them."
J G Bennett - The Way to be Free
Starfish Locomotion
Bateson on Transference
Now I come to the analyst, this newly important other who must be viewed as a father (or perhaps antifather) because nothing has meaning except it be seen as in come context. This viewing is called transference and is a general phenomenon in human relations. It is a universal characteristic of all interaction between persons because, after all, the shape of what happened between you and me yesterday carries over to shape how we respond to each other today. And that shaping is, in principle, a transference from past learning.
This phenomenon of transference exemplifies the truth of the computer’s perception that we think in stories. The analyst must be stretched or shrunk onto the Procrustean bed of the patient’s childhood stories. But also, by referring to psychoanalysts, I have narrowed the idea of "story." I have suggested that it has something to do with context, a crucial concept, partly undefined and therefore to be examined.
And "context" is linked to another undefined notion called "meaning." Without context, words and actions have no meaning at all. This is true not only of human communication in words but also of all communication whatsoever, of all mental process, of all mind, including that which tells the sea anemone how to grow and the amobea what he should do next.
I am drawing an analogy between context in the superficial and partly conscious business of personal relations and context in the much deeper, more archaic processes of embryology and homology. I am asserting that whatever the word context means, it is an appropriate word, the necessary word, in the description of all these distantly related processes."
Bateson on Spirals
"...all spirals in this world except whirlpools, galaxies, and spiral winds are, indeed made by living things. There is an extensive literature on this subject, which some readers may be interested in looking up (the key words are Fibonacci series and golden section).
What comes out of all this is that a spiral is a figure that retains its shape (i.e., its proportions) as it grows in one dimension by addition at the open end. You see, there are no truly static spirals.
But the class had difficulty. They looked for all the beautiful formal characteristics that they had joyfully found in the crab. They had the idea that formal symmetry, repetition of parts, modulated repetition, and so on were what teacher wanted. But the spiral was not bilaterally symmetrical; it was not segmented.
They had to discover (a) that all symmetry and segmentation were somehow a result, a payoff from, the fact of growth; and (b) that growth makes its formal demands; and (c) that one of these is satisfied (in a mathematical, an ideal, sense) by spiral form.
So the conch shell carries the snail’s prochronism – its record of how, in its own past, it successively solved a formal problem in pattern formation (see Glossary). It, too, proclaims its affiliation under that pattern of patterns which connects."
Mind and Nature
Bateson on Pattern
"What pattern connects the crab to the lobster and the orchid to the primrose and all the four of them to me? And me to you? And all the six of us to the amoeba in one direction and to the back-ward schizophrenic in another?
...What is the pattern which connects all the living creatures?
The parts of a crab are connected by various patterns of bilateral symmetry, of serial homology, and so on. Let us call these patterns within the individual growing crab first-order connections. But now we look at crab and lobster and we again find connection by pattern. Call it second-order connection, or phylogenetic homology.
Now we look at man or horse and find that, here again, we can see symmetries and serial homologies. When we look at the tow together, we find the same cross-species sharing of pattern with a difference (phylogenetic homology). And, of course, we also find the same discarding of magnitudes in favor of shapes, patterns, and relations. In other words, as this distribution of formal resemblances is spelled out, it turns out that gross anatomy exhibits three levels or logical types of descriptive propositions:
My central thesis can now be approached in words: The pattern which connects is a metapattern. It is a pattern of patterns. It is that metapattern which defines the vast generalization that, indeed, it is patterns which connect."
Mind and Nature
Now I come to the analyst, this newly important other who must be viewed as a father (or perhaps antifather) because nothing has meaning except it be seen as in come context. This viewing is called transference and is a general phenomenon in human relations. It is a universal characteristic of all interaction between persons because, after all, the shape of what happened between you and me yesterday carries over to shape how we respond to each other today. And that shaping is, in principle, a transference from past learning.
This phenomenon of transference exemplifies the truth of the computer’s perception that we think in stories. The analyst must be stretched or shrunk onto the Procrustean bed of the patient’s childhood stories. But also, by referring to psychoanalysts, I have narrowed the idea of "story." I have suggested that it has something to do with context, a crucial concept, partly undefined and therefore to be examined.
And "context" is linked to another undefined notion called "meaning." Without context, words and actions have no meaning at all. This is true not only of human communication in words but also of all communication whatsoever, of all mental process, of all mind, including that which tells the sea anemone how to grow and the amobea what he should do next.
I am drawing an analogy between context in the superficial and partly conscious business of personal relations and context in the much deeper, more archaic processes of embryology and homology. I am asserting that whatever the word context means, it is an appropriate word, the necessary word, in the description of all these distantly related processes."
Bateson on Spirals
"...all spirals in this world except whirlpools, galaxies, and spiral winds are, indeed made by living things. There is an extensive literature on this subject, which some readers may be interested in looking up (the key words are Fibonacci series and golden section).
What comes out of all this is that a spiral is a figure that retains its shape (i.e., its proportions) as it grows in one dimension by addition at the open end. You see, there are no truly static spirals.
But the class had difficulty. They looked for all the beautiful formal characteristics that they had joyfully found in the crab. They had the idea that formal symmetry, repetition of parts, modulated repetition, and so on were what teacher wanted. But the spiral was not bilaterally symmetrical; it was not segmented.
They had to discover (a) that all symmetry and segmentation were somehow a result, a payoff from, the fact of growth; and (b) that growth makes its formal demands; and (c) that one of these is satisfied (in a mathematical, an ideal, sense) by spiral form.
So the conch shell carries the snail’s prochronism – its record of how, in its own past, it successively solved a formal problem in pattern formation (see Glossary). It, too, proclaims its affiliation under that pattern of patterns which connects."
Mind and Nature
Bateson on Pattern
"What pattern connects the crab to the lobster and the orchid to the primrose and all the four of them to me? And me to you? And all the six of us to the amoeba in one direction and to the back-ward schizophrenic in another?
...What is the pattern which connects all the living creatures?
The parts of a crab are connected by various patterns of bilateral symmetry, of serial homology, and so on. Let us call these patterns within the individual growing crab first-order connections. But now we look at crab and lobster and we again find connection by pattern. Call it second-order connection, or phylogenetic homology.
Now we look at man or horse and find that, here again, we can see symmetries and serial homologies. When we look at the tow together, we find the same cross-species sharing of pattern with a difference (phylogenetic homology). And, of course, we also find the same discarding of magnitudes in favor of shapes, patterns, and relations. In other words, as this distribution of formal resemblances is spelled out, it turns out that gross anatomy exhibits three levels or logical types of descriptive propositions:
- The parts of any member of Creatura are to be compared with other parts of the same individual to give first-order connections.
- Crabs are to be compared with lobsters or men with horses to find similar relations between parts (i.e., to give second-order connections).
- The comparison between crabs and lobsters is to be compared with the comparison between man and horse to provide third-order connections.
My central thesis can now be approached in words: The pattern which connects is a metapattern. It is a pattern of patterns. It is that metapattern which defines the vast generalization that, indeed, it is patterns which connect."
Mind and Nature
Starfish and 5-way symmetry
Bateson from Mind and Nature:
"ideas about... how we can know anything. In the pronoun we, I of course included the starfish and the redwood forest, the segmenting egg, and the Senate of the United States.
And in the anything which these creatures variously know, I included "how to grow into five-way symmetry," how to survive a forest fire," "how to grow and still stay the same shape," "how to learn," "how to write a constitution," "how to invent and drive a car," "how to count to seven," and so on. Marvelous creatures with almost miraculous knowledges and skills."
Brittle Stars Move Like Humans
"Starfishlike brittle stars have five thin arms and no central brain, but even so, they move in a carefully coordinated fashion similar to four-limbed animals (including humans).
Symmetry is at the heart of the mystery of brittle star movement.
Symmetry influences how an animal moves about. Animals with bilateral symmetry, like humans, have bodies specialized to move in one direction — forward. Many animals with radial symmetry don't move or do so slowly. When they do travel, most of these animals do so in a direction determined by their body's central axis, defined by the location of their mouths. Think of a jellyfish moving up and down in the water column.
This is why brittle stars are strange. Despite their five-way symmetry, the stars don't move according to their central axis. Instead, they move perpendicular to it using their five multijointed limbs to propel them along the seafloor.
Henry Astley, at Brown University, filmed 13 blunt-spined brittle stars crawling in an inflatable pool and digitized their movements to better analyze them.
He found that, about 75 percent of the time, brittle stars oriented their movement around a central limb, which pointed the way for the rest of the body. The left and right forelimbs made large, coordinated movements. To turn, the brittle star simply picked a new lead limb.
When not "rowing" forward, the brittle stars reversed, with a central limb trailing and the other four making large movements.
While these patterns of movement resemble that of a bilaterally symmetrical animal, the brittle stars do not alternate limbs as many four-limbed animals do. (When walking, for example, you alternate between your left and right foot; the brittle stars moved both of their forelimbs at the same time.)
The study is detailed in the Journal of Experimental Biology."
Live Science
Bateson from Mind and Nature:
"ideas about... how we can know anything. In the pronoun we, I of course included the starfish and the redwood forest, the segmenting egg, and the Senate of the United States.
And in the anything which these creatures variously know, I included "how to grow into five-way symmetry," how to survive a forest fire," "how to grow and still stay the same shape," "how to learn," "how to write a constitution," "how to invent and drive a car," "how to count to seven," and so on. Marvelous creatures with almost miraculous knowledges and skills."
Brittle Stars Move Like Humans
"Starfishlike brittle stars have five thin arms and no central brain, but even so, they move in a carefully coordinated fashion similar to four-limbed animals (including humans).
Symmetry is at the heart of the mystery of brittle star movement.
Symmetry influences how an animal moves about. Animals with bilateral symmetry, like humans, have bodies specialized to move in one direction — forward. Many animals with radial symmetry don't move or do so slowly. When they do travel, most of these animals do so in a direction determined by their body's central axis, defined by the location of their mouths. Think of a jellyfish moving up and down in the water column.
This is why brittle stars are strange. Despite their five-way symmetry, the stars don't move according to their central axis. Instead, they move perpendicular to it using their five multijointed limbs to propel them along the seafloor.
Henry Astley, at Brown University, filmed 13 blunt-spined brittle stars crawling in an inflatable pool and digitized their movements to better analyze them.
He found that, about 75 percent of the time, brittle stars oriented their movement around a central limb, which pointed the way for the rest of the body. The left and right forelimbs made large, coordinated movements. To turn, the brittle star simply picked a new lead limb.
When not "rowing" forward, the brittle stars reversed, with a central limb trailing and the other four making large movements.
While these patterns of movement resemble that of a bilaterally symmetrical animal, the brittle stars do not alternate limbs as many four-limbed animals do. (When walking, for example, you alternate between your left and right foot; the brittle stars moved both of their forelimbs at the same time.)
The study is detailed in the Journal of Experimental Biology."
Live Science
Social me
Damasio has found that social emotions such as admiration or compassion, which result from a focus on the behaviour of others, tend to activate the posteromedial cortices, another set of brain regions also thought to be important in constructing our sense of self.
The upshot is the social me.
I had never thought of admiration as an emotion, but, of course, it belongs with the hierarchy, pecking order stuff. So, on the one hand, as I admire you, I'm lifting you up and setting myself down in comparison. That's why comparisons are odious.
On the other hand, as I admire you I'm recognising at least a potential in myself to be admirable. And my experience is that, as I feel love and kindness and compassion and respect for others, I get softer and wider and wetter and more available to receive the thwock of the other.
And so, this seems to relate to that thing about friendship: the more I do for you or give you, the more I will like you because (in my simple world) it's clear that I wouldn't do a lot for you unless you were a lovely person. And, as I've just proved to myself that you're a lovely person, then I should do more for you.
And so the wide spiral of generosity or charity or love begins.
Infantilism
I think it is only through years of 'training' their unique brains through fantasy play in childhood that modern humans were able to create fantastical symbolical artworks like the Chauvet bison-woman. The shorter Neanderthal childhood, combined with their lack of complex fantasy play influenced the adults they became and the artefacts they left behind."
Something here combines with the stuff about infantilisation caused by us being born earlier and earlier to let our fat brains get out without slaying our mothers at birth, but resulting in our never emotionally maturing 'fully'. That leads to love-making, for example, having its quality of fingers and thumbs baby exploration rather than mallard rape (if we're lucky). But baby love is at odds with strong sexual desire. Whereas, maybe, fantasy play is more in line with the emergence of fetishes and mallard stuff.
Damasio has found that social emotions such as admiration or compassion, which result from a focus on the behaviour of others, tend to activate the posteromedial cortices, another set of brain regions also thought to be important in constructing our sense of self.
The upshot is the social me.
I had never thought of admiration as an emotion, but, of course, it belongs with the hierarchy, pecking order stuff. So, on the one hand, as I admire you, I'm lifting you up and setting myself down in comparison. That's why comparisons are odious.
On the other hand, as I admire you I'm recognising at least a potential in myself to be admirable. And my experience is that, as I feel love and kindness and compassion and respect for others, I get softer and wider and wetter and more available to receive the thwock of the other.
And so, this seems to relate to that thing about friendship: the more I do for you or give you, the more I will like you because (in my simple world) it's clear that I wouldn't do a lot for you unless you were a lovely person. And, as I've just proved to myself that you're a lovely person, then I should do more for you.
And so the wide spiral of generosity or charity or love begins.
Infantilism
I think it is only through years of 'training' their unique brains through fantasy play in childhood that modern humans were able to create fantastical symbolical artworks like the Chauvet bison-woman. The shorter Neanderthal childhood, combined with their lack of complex fantasy play influenced the adults they became and the artefacts they left behind."
Something here combines with the stuff about infantilisation caused by us being born earlier and earlier to let our fat brains get out without slaying our mothers at birth, but resulting in our never emotionally maturing 'fully'. That leads to love-making, for example, having its quality of fingers and thumbs baby exploration rather than mallard rape (if we're lucky). But baby love is at odds with strong sexual desire. Whereas, maybe, fantasy play is more in line with the emergence of fetishes and mallard stuff.
Trunk
Moving by the beech trees at the top of Stonebarrow I pressed my cheek against the trunk of one of them. I felt again the frisson of connection - not so strong as with another human being, but still palpable. I realised that I wanted to touch the trunk, to feel my face against its flank - for the sensual pleasure of it and also somehow for the tree. But I had no sense of being able to help or serve or look after the tree. So there was some sense of service without and expectation of getting back approval or love. Soup Kristina says that the chrysalis turns to soup before it emerges as a butterfly, rather than just growing wings. Turning to soup seems to encapsulate the maddening process of losing one's identity and being drawn back into the great oneness - crossing the erotic edge or falling off the erotic tightrope. Patterns Waking not so early, I walk to the wood and am struck by patterns: how the fold in the earth down which the stream runs resembles the crease in a lover's, another human's, a mother's, a father's skin. How the beech trunk resembles the leg of an elephant, the trunk of a human. The ivy: my fingertips. From the contact with a human there is an extra frisson. But there is still a frisson here with the tree. And is that to do with qwirl? The frisson is the glint and glisten, the thwock of connection established, of a modern drawer doing its closing thing. The qwirl of a pattern recognised. I have a sense that, behind the veils and bubbles and projections and transferences, there is just connection, recognition, or pattern or love. |
What is Snake?
The snake is life, desire, what makes us human, intention, love, a knot, that which is interested, curiosity. Unknown, evil, troublemaker, silent, deadly, powerful Creature of transformation and healing Subversive, hidden evil, undoing Feminine, creative, undomesticated Tempting, sensual, insistent, cunning, manipulating, free, relational, arriving, desire, driving us to self-consciousness Need and provision. |
Marks and Traceys (for Keith)I have fallen for this poxy floor.
From where I'm standing it looks Gloriously well-gigged. The gloss of polish does no more To hide its history Than a lick of make-up on Mick Jagger's tv face. Some Marks and Trace(y)s I think I can remember. There, catching the light under the window, I'm Certain that's the beer that flooded Remorselessly across the floor At Maddy's wedding half way through the dancing. And by the stage, where I kissed Rose on New Year's Eve in 1991, I'm pretty sure how those heel marks got there. If half the others had half the pleasure In their engendering, Then the tramplings that drummed out these myriad pocks Were far more entertaining than the endless meetings Of this and that commitee That I had just supposed. More entertaining than the drunken fossil monger, Determined to leave his fucking mark, Who I've just acted out. Well that's my thinking In the atmosphere Up here at five foot ten. But down beneath that memory And those imaginings, Where you've invited me to touch and feel and taste The texture of the floor, I find another world is waiting. Down here, the pox means nothing. No smooth complexioned carpentry aesthetic Holds sway here. And the memories are nothing fancy, Just the groan and scorch and swell of timber. But I can run my fingers over each, Press my face against it Explore the minute changes, Intricacies, Inch by knotted inch. Here, just as my body is the fabric of my experience, So, the floor is no longer some footprint, Some palimpsest, some ass-rubbing, Some historiographical record. Now the floor becomes a simple fabric, A tautish skin grown baggy over time. And now there is no commentary For acting out, No joy or sadness to embody. There's just planks and dents and grooves and scratches And in return I find there's only joints and muscles, Bones and skin and pushing on and pulling back And always pressing, As if pressing might melt the threshold And allow me to commingle Like the tiger who whirled himself to ghee. |
Bottle Seed
My seed bottle is gone. Mine. I've looked everywhere and deduce that it was lost in a very minor landslide. Perhaps it's not even lost. I realise that there are probably thousands more in the wood and that grieving for seeds is a fruitless task. As is claiming ownership of them. But I'm an animal optimised for attachment and empathy. Trying to let go of my optimisation Like a seed letting go of its inclination to grow up and put roots Down. Tree hugging
I have become a tree hugger and realise the tenderness that emerges from the tiniest fluttering of my fingers against the mossy trunk. The fluttering is a reminder and a generator of tenderness. This is the delicacy of interweaving - in smiling, I remember having been happy and engender happiness. In fluttering, I remember tenderness and engender it. This seems to connect to Van der Wal, quoted by Stephen Talbott: Moreover, “when blood vessels first start to form, the heart does not yet exist . . . . early blood flow stimulates the development of the heart” (ibid., pp. 82–83). As we see everywhere in the world, fixed form not only shapes movement, but is first of all the result of movement. The human body is a formed stream. Thus, the spiraling fibers of the heart muscle that help to direct the blood in its flow are themselves a congealed image and consequence of the swirling vortex of blood within. Oh, all that and sitting quietly with Nancy for almost an hour, watching the fire and looking out of the window at sheep, a farmer and a putative giraffe are as stilling and as softening as working with any client - and there is no catching - nothing whatsoever is required of me so long as she seems to be content. |
Tautening and wideningDesire for me has been arrow-shaped; well arrow-headed. It's been about getting and having, or perhaps about harpooning. About capturing and having.
This applies to almost any object of my desire - a person, a job, an amount of money, a house, the holiday, a way of life, a type of garden, a quality of relationship, some knowledge, or wisdom, happiness, or simply the continuation of whatever it may be that I already have.
And yet, the quality of my desire has never really been quite like that. I have thought it was about harpooning and having but there has always also been a sense of desire-to-merge rather than desire-to-have. When I pay attention to that or when I have met someone for whom that has been already clear my desire seems at the same time to amplify and to dissolve.
The evolution of desire, or of my understanding of desire, is that it becomes wider and louder somehow and I realise that it includes elements like “I want to offer you”; “I want to show you”; “I want to know you”; “I want to satisfy you”; “I want to settle you”; “I want to reflect you”; and so on. I hesitate to write “I want to heal you”.
In the amplification, the desire both magnifies and starts to lose its explicit content. That may be its sexual content or its acquisitive content or its longing to have a particular something. It over-ripens and here the dissolution starts. And it's noticeable to me but the initial tautening and narrowing of desire in its acquisitive sense feels very like the tautening and tightening and narrowing of attention, focus is a sexual sense that I learnt was expected of a man. And in its loosening and dissolving sense, in its widening, in its offering, in its willingness to exchange, to receive, it resembles the slow-pooling desire that I was taught to suppose was more feminine.
Words Are No Longer Necessary
When I remember it, I think of it as dancing. Dancing with eyes half closed because to open them would break the spell. Dancing as if language had surrendered to movement — as if this ritual, this wordless ceremony, was now the way to speak, to whisper private and sacred things, to be in touch with some otherness. Dancing as if the very heart of life and all its hopes might be found in those assuaging notes and those hushed rhythms and in those silent and hypnotic movements. Dancing as if language no longer existed because words were no longer necessary…”
The wellspring of tendersadnessstrata recording - Andrew Carey
This applies to almost any object of my desire - a person, a job, an amount of money, a house, the holiday, a way of life, a type of garden, a quality of relationship, some knowledge, or wisdom, happiness, or simply the continuation of whatever it may be that I already have.
And yet, the quality of my desire has never really been quite like that. I have thought it was about harpooning and having but there has always also been a sense of desire-to-merge rather than desire-to-have. When I pay attention to that or when I have met someone for whom that has been already clear my desire seems at the same time to amplify and to dissolve.
The evolution of desire, or of my understanding of desire, is that it becomes wider and louder somehow and I realise that it includes elements like “I want to offer you”; “I want to show you”; “I want to know you”; “I want to satisfy you”; “I want to settle you”; “I want to reflect you”; and so on. I hesitate to write “I want to heal you”.
In the amplification, the desire both magnifies and starts to lose its explicit content. That may be its sexual content or its acquisitive content or its longing to have a particular something. It over-ripens and here the dissolution starts. And it's noticeable to me but the initial tautening and narrowing of desire in its acquisitive sense feels very like the tautening and tightening and narrowing of attention, focus is a sexual sense that I learnt was expected of a man. And in its loosening and dissolving sense, in its widening, in its offering, in its willingness to exchange, to receive, it resembles the slow-pooling desire that I was taught to suppose was more feminine.
Words Are No Longer Necessary
When I remember it, I think of it as dancing. Dancing with eyes half closed because to open them would break the spell. Dancing as if language had surrendered to movement — as if this ritual, this wordless ceremony, was now the way to speak, to whisper private and sacred things, to be in touch with some otherness. Dancing as if the very heart of life and all its hopes might be found in those assuaging notes and those hushed rhythms and in those silent and hypnotic movements. Dancing as if language no longer existed because words were no longer necessary…”
The wellspring of tendersadnessstrata recording - Andrew Carey
Satisfaction
I half stood/half lay against/on one of the mossy trees and there arose such a strong and clear sense of satisfaction.
The feeling arose but I was unclear where it began, where it came from. It was a response to the shape and texture and solidity and pressure offered by the tree, or offered by my pressing myself against the tree. But I couldn't say that the feeling was entirely mine.
It was somehow caused in part by the tree and seemed to come into me, to arise between me and the tree as a sensation which I then experienced - as if it had a life of its own. And I couldn't exactly say that I received the feeling any more than I could say that I produced the feeling - it was partly active and partly passive.
Then, thinking about satisfaction (which comes from the Latin 'to make [or do] enough', I was interested in the making or doing. What about receiving enough as well as doing enough? That would be satisception. Or being enough? That would be satisessence.
More satisfaction
I got up well before dawn today and went to the shortest stream to move before starting vigorous doing with the strimmer at about 6. A completely unimaginable beginning of the day for someone who never got up before 10 if he could possibly help it.
I wondered where the satisfaction of being with, holding, pressing against, lying on a tree comes from. Does it arise from within me? It doesn't seem to.
I moved all the time with the word and idea of satisfaction. Lots of thoughts:
the 'faction' is making, the 'satis' is enough.
making enough not making full.complete
making enough not made enough
making enough not given enough
making enough not getting enough
who is doing the making? surely I am?
I half stood/half lay against/on one of the mossy trees and there arose such a strong and clear sense of satisfaction.
The feeling arose but I was unclear where it began, where it came from. It was a response to the shape and texture and solidity and pressure offered by the tree, or offered by my pressing myself against the tree. But I couldn't say that the feeling was entirely mine.
It was somehow caused in part by the tree and seemed to come into me, to arise between me and the tree as a sensation which I then experienced - as if it had a life of its own. And I couldn't exactly say that I received the feeling any more than I could say that I produced the feeling - it was partly active and partly passive.
Then, thinking about satisfaction (which comes from the Latin 'to make [or do] enough', I was interested in the making or doing. What about receiving enough as well as doing enough? That would be satisception. Or being enough? That would be satisessence.
More satisfaction
I got up well before dawn today and went to the shortest stream to move before starting vigorous doing with the strimmer at about 6. A completely unimaginable beginning of the day for someone who never got up before 10 if he could possibly help it.
I wondered where the satisfaction of being with, holding, pressing against, lying on a tree comes from. Does it arise from within me? It doesn't seem to.
I moved all the time with the word and idea of satisfaction. Lots of thoughts:
the 'faction' is making, the 'satis' is enough.
making enough not making full.complete
making enough not made enough
making enough not given enough
making enough not getting enough
who is doing the making? surely I am?