tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1551795536433335392024-03-12T20:46:05.503-04:00Seizing the unseizableOn empathy, connection, linguistics, music, disability, art, spirituality, speculative fiction and other literature, among other interests.ChasingPatternshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16792497135543281378noreply@blogger.comBlogger36125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-155179553643333539.post-47955602879890919772013-02-21T21:57:00.001-05:002013-02-21T21:59:57.668-05:00Setting our own conditions<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZuFz1EDfxoqleMfVUE9Kw46TVpZPsfAPR1cPYz4m9o1J79JZZAtPeKMMczVmXfe6yOuHrDdKGqnkmg6GB0tSYbgFFVFAfoeveNNSI9ZgQD1rJ-GJwHScpVKfJ67D-Ra83ifbBwAJHC832/s1600/224a.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZuFz1EDfxoqleMfVUE9Kw46TVpZPsfAPR1cPYz4m9o1J79JZZAtPeKMMczVmXfe6yOuHrDdKGqnkmg6GB0tSYbgFFVFAfoeveNNSI9ZgQD1rJ-GJwHScpVKfJ67D-Ra83ifbBwAJHC832/s1600/224a.gif" height="153" width="200" /></a>Humans like categories. Structuralist thought, in which the world is divided into clear rules and sections, is to many a comforting idea. Newtonian physics, with its clear rules for the nature of physical reality, is equally appealing.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu3iBVQVG5tfVcKoYaOeFo_QYYnrLyZuqdWr0_YVko6iqnjxJFtMon948vfzV6me6vOijy6knz7kT0AXLDRy7u0CWkHFFvqU3RFMZwP5dVRwGn_PbbApdg_1bSvGtAy8PuKZVGg9ufTdV0/s1600/Monet_Waterloo_Bridge_London.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; display: inline !important; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu3iBVQVG5tfVcKoYaOeFo_QYYnrLyZuqdWr0_YVko6iqnjxJFtMon948vfzV6me6vOijy6knz7kT0AXLDRy7u0CWkHFFvqU3RFMZwP5dVRwGn_PbbApdg_1bSvGtAy8PuKZVGg9ufTdV0/s1600/Monet_Waterloo_Bridge_London.jpg" height="143" width="200" /></a><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbaz9r3BdXrosvTIFD_DFFqZA5Eg-tAGGfH2GwcNDEM6cjM05mDm2ILOzuwS6RvOf8WjVdAUJeQ6Aw7pYD0hffadIeD68viWi53MtJm1x6L6EAnwnx31Fvw4qEeJ_cQX2rM3YGxTdnLNSD/s1600/Waterloo-Bridge-Sunlight-Effec.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; display: inline !important; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbaz9r3BdXrosvTIFD_DFFqZA5Eg-tAGGfH2GwcNDEM6cjM05mDm2ILOzuwS6RvOf8WjVdAUJeQ6Aw7pYD0hffadIeD68viWi53MtJm1x6L6EAnwnx31Fvw4qEeJ_cQX2rM3YGxTdnLNSD/s1600/Waterloo-Bridge-Sunlight-Effec.jpg" height="157" width="200" /></a>But what happens when Einstein comes along, and tells us that we can never see reality (which is out there) because <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_relativity" target="_blank">it depends on our perspective</a>? What happens when <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Proust" target="_blank">Proust</a> shows us that time bends and stretches memory such that a taste of a <a href="http://www.haverford.edu/psych/ddavis/p109g/proust.html" target="_blank">madeleine opens up an entire lifetime</a>, or when <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Monet" target="_blank">Monet</a> shows us that our eyes take in the available light and make something fantastical?<br />
<br />
<br />
What's more, what happens when <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr" target="_blank">Bohr</a> and <span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Schr%C3%B6dinger" target="_blank">Schr<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.1875px;">ö</span>dinger</a></span> then come along and say that no such reality exists, that all is in flux, that the world is not just unknown but unknowable? The quantum world, our best understanding of "reality," is an open door. It is probabilistic, stochastic, our very own to perceive. We must make a choice, we must measure our world through our own experiences of it.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzciWkP1AT3-z617DadYILxKZ1lxzkyO4SVgRr-HoaRMfBSD-lKEwRt1bugTEYaEVef85do42M53ESx5KutLOfz_ld6UVKncFBLUog74SqnQ2jHJRDhMhqIqL1tVoTfHrtOCh5SizeSRgq/s1600/202508_portrait-schrodinger-600w.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzciWkP1AT3-z617DadYILxKZ1lxzkyO4SVgRr-HoaRMfBSD-lKEwRt1bugTEYaEVef85do42M53ESx5KutLOfz_ld6UVKncFBLUog74SqnQ2jHJRDhMhqIqL1tVoTfHrtOCh5SizeSRgq/s1600/202508_portrait-schrodinger-600w.jpg" height="457" width="640" /></a><br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ayvbKafw2g0?rel=0" width="640"></iframe><br />
<br />
In <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Quirks-Quantum-Postmodernism-Contemporary-American/dp/0813932858" target="_blank">Quirks of the Quantum</a></i>, Coale describes the nature of the quantum realm and its implications for "reality":<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxppKUGLVvhsyR9iE8lerh8zsmy7zqaycziLhaJLWOtyC8sOJVwPXbvcPJC4gOGHBilO2bhG9dJfek-kptmlH2MrHFoloR4yLv4UgB9qfosmPhrF6aRlXzNk8hFG6vtWnXXfGX_mWVyFvr/s1600/quirks-of-the-quantum-postmodernism-and-contemporary-american-fiction.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxppKUGLVvhsyR9iE8lerh8zsmy7zqaycziLhaJLWOtyC8sOJVwPXbvcPJC4gOGHBilO2bhG9dJfek-kptmlH2MrHFoloR4yLv4UgB9qfosmPhrF6aRlXzNk8hFG6vtWnXXfGX_mWVyFvr/s1600/quirks-of-the-quantum-postmodernism-and-contemporary-american-fiction.jpg" height="200" width="133" /></a>"The quantum realm shivers and quivers in a state one might call an indeterminate pulsating flux or, as Amir D. Aczel describes it, 'the quantum fuzz' (251). For Brian Greene it's a 'fuzzy, amorphous, probabilistic mixture of all possibilities' (112). Within that realm, anything can happen, and we cannot predict how, when, why, and where things will occur. Particles/waves/fields/forces, all of which are essentially descriptions of the same quantum phenomena, since all modern elementary particle theories are relativistic quantum field theories, appear and disappear, each with its own description, each susceptible to imminent dissolution and transformation, created within what John Gribbin calls the 'holistic electromagnetic web' <span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Schr</i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.1875px;"><i>ö</i></span></span><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">dinger's</span> Kittens</i> 226), in Kenneth Ford's continuous 'creation-annihilation dance' of 'perpetual motion' (242, 222) [...].</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"In trying to describe this process, we come up against both the unknowable 'essence' of the quantum realm in all its quivering and erupting randomness as well as the metaphorical nature of language itself. When we choose to describe something as a particle, a wave, a field, a force, or a web, we necessarily exclude other possibilities and images. Similar to Bohr's notion of complementarity, if we describe something as a particle, we have chosen not to describe it as a wave. In language and logic, these appear to be mutually exclusive. In quantum theory, each is valid, depending on the nature of how we measure these glimpses and snapshots. Contradiction appears to be a product of choice and grammar, rather than of the actual quantum event, since in the quantum realm the images of particle and wave 'apply to mutually exclusive conditions; hence there is no contradiction between them' (Malin 161)."</blockquote>
It sounds like we can choose or own story, providing--at least to some extent--our own conditions. Atheism or faith, it seems to be argued in <i><a href="http://www.lifeofpimovie.com/" target="_blank">The Life of Pi</a></i>, is a simple matter of making such a choice.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/mZEZ35Fhvuc?rel=0" width="640"></iframe><br />
<br />
In another tale of learning how to set one's own conditions for survival while being tossed by the wind, Katherine Paterson writes in <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Same-Stuff-as-Stars/dp/0060557125" target="_blank">The Same Stuff As Stars</a>:</i><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPb3YB_u8OemyC_MMGoR9GaxBp0aDzornuCf63CmNAkMJsaJPgoeKyIZ8lpZ0C0njeYIkgJI53KV-3AZHstfiaRpfdt-VssyvG3nzCSbkVNzCzC0MqxUagDdei6klAvJuWPAtXEnC7j2ip/s1600/512W5C7IwtL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPb3YB_u8OemyC_MMGoR9GaxBp0aDzornuCf63CmNAkMJsaJPgoeKyIZ8lpZ0C0njeYIkgJI53KV-3AZHstfiaRpfdt-VssyvG3nzCSbkVNzCzC0MqxUagDdei6klAvJuWPAtXEnC7j2ip/s1600/512W5C7IwtL.jpg" height="200" width="126" /></a>"What is man—and of course the writer means all of us puny little insignificant creatures—what is a mere human being that God who made the immense universe should ever notice?' She chuckled. 'The sky does take you down to size.'<br />
'Not even big as bugs. Not even a speck of dust to the nearest star,' Angel agreed.<br />
'But the psalmist answers his own question. "Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor..."'<br />
'What?' Angel asked, not sure she had heard right.<br />
'A little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor.'<br />
'The real angels? Do you believe that?'<br />
'Yes, Angel, I do. When people look down on me, and these days'—she laughed shortly—'these days everyone over the age of five does. When people look down on me, I remember that God looks at this pitiful, twisted old thing that I have become and crowns me with glory.'"</blockquote>
The sky both takes us down to size, if you will, and pulls us together. Who would know this better than the astronauts? This video shows how seeing the earth for the first time changed several astronauts' view of our nature.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="273" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/55073825?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&badge=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="640"></iframe> <br />
<a href="http://vimeo.com/55073825">OVERVIEW</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/planetarycollective">Planetary Collective</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
<br />
If we are free enough to see how small we are and how grand, why choose to forget this? Every day, I hope we can remember to find the right conditions, so that our measurement of our lives will leave us content, and thirsty for more.ChasingPatternshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16792497135543281378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-155179553643333539.post-61920693815563390752013-02-09T13:49:00.001-05:002013-02-09T13:49:32.723-05:00Tanglewood<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>“When a man in a forest thinks he is going forward in a straight line, in reality he is going in a circle, I did my best to go in a circle, hoping to go in a straight line.” </i></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
- Samuel Beckett, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Molloy-Samuel-Beckett/dp/0802151361/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1360377367&sr=8-1&keywords=molloy" target="_blank">Molloy</a></i></blockquote>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.ideafixa.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/6849511_orig.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://www.ideafixa.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/6849511_orig.jpg" width="456" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.avramidis.info/index.html" target="_blank">Vasilis Avramidis</a>, "Caretakers," 2012<br />
140x100cm, oil on canvas</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<a href="http://pinterest.com/pin/108719778476373705/" style="clear: right; display: inline !important; float: right; line-height: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://media-cache-ec6.pinterest.com/550/a9/1c/30/a91c301fef7fb6d71098fb60bc77a8c4.jpg" width="131" /></a>When you were a kid, did you ever dream of running away to live in the forest? To get lost? To go wild? To grow up? Would you be one of the beasts, bold and ferocious? Or another kind of creature, small and nestled spindly-legged in a bed of petals and thorns? Would you nest among hidden branches, migratory and ready to fly, collecting treasures only to leave them behind? Or would you plant yourself firmly in the dead leaves, sprout roots, nurture fungi in your shadows, and drink from what was hidden, always going deeper?<br />
<br />
According to J. Crews in "<a href="ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/005/y9882e/y9882e07.pdf" target="_blank">Forest and tree symbolism in folklore</a>," many cultures believe that trees function as "receptacles for spirits or souls." No wonder the forest can bring such company, offering fodder for so many childhood imaginings.<br />
<br />
Yet the nature of the forest--and of the tree--is double-edged. The forest can be blinding, dense and frightening, endless and beguiling. The tree, though rooted, stands alone, often condemned to never touch another of its kind. Do we really wish to grow these kinds of roots? How do we know exactly where to cast our lot? At what point does the magic engulf us?<br />
<br />
<div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/y7FhBiF5_ls?rel=0" width="640"></iframe>
<br />
<br />
A lovely and painful song about what it means to decide to grow (roots) through love is "Tanglewood tree," by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Carter" target="_blank">Dave Carter</a>.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>Tanglewood tree</b></div>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/gg14/jessicacollette/TREE-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/gg14/jessicacollette/TREE-2.jpg" width="244" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://wildedibleandmedicinalplants.blogspot.com/2010_10_01_archive.html" target="_blank">Source</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Love is a tanglewood tree in a bower of green<br />
In a forest at dawn<br />
Fair while the mockingbird sings, but she soon lifts her wings<br />
And the music is gone<br />
Young lovers in the tall grass with their hearts open wide<br />
When the red summer poppies bloom<br />
But love is a trackless domain and the rumor of rain<br />
In the late afternoon<br />
<br />
Love is an old root that creeps through the meadows of sleep<br />
When the long shadows cast<br />
Thin as a vagrant young vine, it encircles and twines<br />
And it holds the heart fast<br />
Catches dreamers in the wildwood with the stars in their eyes<br />
And the moon in their tousled hair<br />
But love is a light in the sky, and an unspoken lie<br />
And a half-whispered prayer<br />
<br />
I'm walkin' down a bone-dry river but the cool mirage runs true<br />
I'm bankin' on the fables of the far, far better things we do<br />
I'm livin' for the day of reck'nin countin' down the hours<br />
I yearn away, I burn away, I turn away the fairest flower of love, 'cause darlin'<br />
<br />
Love is a garden of thorns<br />
<i> Love's garden of thorns, how it grows</i><br />
And a crow in the corn<br />
<i> Black crow in the corn hummin' low</i><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRGOXgqdIdV7Po-UEGG878jYhzySbilAWnClZ7ftQXyQyXCXylYV4PDFIJ34HIBkuYnEDNYrl0v1asMiEEHHuQinengvCsGm0_wUvfB3qa21N-3cSjriZy1yc1oebpSao7vKNtbSbl5GMr/s1600/Favim.com-21630.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRGOXgqdIdV7Po-UEGG878jYhzySbilAWnClZ7ftQXyQyXCXylYV4PDFIJ34HIBkuYnEDNYrl0v1asMiEEHHuQinengvCsGm0_wUvfB3qa21N-3cSjriZy1yc1oebpSao7vKNtbSbl5GMr/s200/Favim.com-21630.jpg" width="200" /></a>And the brake growing wild<br />
<i> Brake nettle so pretty and wild</i><br />
<i> And thistles surround the edge of the</i><br />
Cold when the summer is spent<br />
<i> Dim dark hour as the sun moves away</i><br />
In the jade heart's lament<br />
<i> Lamenting a lost summer day</i><br />
For the faith of a child<br />
<i>Who nurtures the faith of a child</i><br />
<i> When nothing remains to cover her eyes?</i><br />
My body has a number and my face has a name<br />
<i>My body has a number, maybe my face has a name</i><br />
And each day looks the same to me<br />
<i> Each hour like each hour before</i><br />
But love is a voice on the wind<br />
<i> This longing is a voice on the wind</i><br />
And the wages of sin<br />
<i>She cultivates the wages of sin</i><br />
And a tanglewood tree<br />
<i> In a tanglewood tree</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Niia1u4vp0I?rel=0" width="640"></iframe>
<br />
<br />
Yet the tree is not only of this earth. It is also of the sky: "The medieval Cabbalists represented creation as a tree with its roots in the reality of spirit (the sky) and its branches upon the earth (material reality)" (Crews, 43). So we are not condemned to suffocation. There must be other ways to grow.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0aPC7b1cTtHDK-b6mviVV3FmsNMvBYt_EYj6OMSWibWNZpvdTFidgJp5zle_xoBz0k4nDRuFg32-0sJz3jxv2FQ6nJ9-MbmxGFEDjHAw_rc36O36YfIzAkK3XLeJpmXecg3MnEsV5_yqj/s1600/blue-snow-christmas-tree.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0aPC7b1cTtHDK-b6mviVV3FmsNMvBYt_EYj6OMSWibWNZpvdTFidgJp5zle_xoBz0k4nDRuFg32-0sJz3jxv2FQ6nJ9-MbmxGFEDjHAw_rc36O36YfIzAkK3XLeJpmXecg3MnEsV5_yqj/s200/blue-snow-christmas-tree.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://garciamedialife.com/tag/christmas/" target="_blank">Blue Christmas tree</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The twisting of roots is only one kind of entanglement. Perhaps as humans, we must follow not the roots under the earth, but the entanglement of all that surrounds us, the entanglement of the stars:<br />
<br />
"<i>Quantum entanglement is one of the central principles of quantum physics, though it is also highly misunderstood. In short, quantum entanglement means that multiple particles are linked together in a way such that the measurement of one particle's quantum state determines the possible quantum states of the other particles</i>" (read more <a href="http://physics.about.com/od/quantumphysics/f/QuantumEntanglement.htm" target="_blank">here</a>).<br />
<br />
Apparently, this works across <a href="http://io9.com/5744143/particles-can-be-quantum-entangled-through-time-as-well-as-space" target="_blank">time as well as space</a>. We are deeply entwined, yet this is not an overgrowth, or a distortion of something that was once comforting and beautiful. It is our very nature, and it is how we survive.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF3I50JuEg54LMkXjbTRgM2z9ArGovhNdq6Yj8C4VTI1LIPgUJ9m09BmzfMTr82K0_FudF0YEdG4Ze8t7YhBNCJMncnSKas4WcySLm_onQs3C1Yy6ftmjqaya777hcttgFBOSDDMCmT6VU/s1600/xlarge_entanglement.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF3I50JuEg54LMkXjbTRgM2z9ArGovhNdq6Yj8C4VTI1LIPgUJ9m09BmzfMTr82K0_FudF0YEdG4Ze8t7YhBNCJMncnSKas4WcySLm_onQs3C1Yy6ftmjqaya777hcttgFBOSDDMCmT6VU/s640/xlarge_entanglement.jpg" width="640" /></a>So if we look skyward instead, and grow our roots toward the heavens, will we find ourselves less tangled? Will the space that is not nothingness, because it is different from black holes, fill us with the room to breathe? Will the divinity of the stars anchor us as we stretch to understand how we connect? I cannot imagine we would be so different from the rest of the universe that we could not trust this. Whether we call it faith, spirituality, love, or just following our nature, it is in this expansive tangle that we root in each other, the earth, and the stars, all enmeshed in that which we cannot see.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2keFapKitrdq1it_XdWC1MR6arZhMte_drWFtDIHoc0T3rQ_uB-KUwjGF-OtNd5C5uEf02dvRF6yVwmLehwp2dM6pbkN7liqSqnwY-42kr584TaEZ0dzkccASE2M_9q3vsiLhJKgdrvlo/s1600/377028-1680x1050.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2keFapKitrdq1it_XdWC1MR6arZhMte_drWFtDIHoc0T3rQ_uB-KUwjGF-OtNd5C5uEf02dvRF6yVwmLehwp2dM6pbkN7liqSqnwY-42kr584TaEZ0dzkccASE2M_9q3vsiLhJKgdrvlo/s640/377028-1680x1050.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"For there is hope for a tree,</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>if it be cut down, that it will sprout again,</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>and that its shoots will not cease." </i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
- <i>Job </i>14:7, ESV</div>
<br />
</div>
ChasingPatternshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16792497135543281378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-155179553643333539.post-56622466561135297852013-01-28T18:03:00.000-05:002013-01-29T08:36:27.365-05:00Homing<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC0D-f-KUbXwHuvikU5u6X1mpSlMIjnnrkxrYdsZxx0kgA6iWWSV9kRJkfGGsuxHRb4AP6UUlw5DkkNghPhjovdDUX-yuHzSiFpb8ZzofhQER-jAwBKXA8HcDzuCfNKq5cGK8ZccTEDxqL/s1600/phelan_hestia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC0D-f-KUbXwHuvikU5u6X1mpSlMIjnnrkxrYdsZxx0kgA6iWWSV9kRJkfGGsuxHRb4AP6UUlw5DkkNghPhjovdDUX-yuHzSiFpb8ZzofhQER-jAwBKXA8HcDzuCfNKq5cGK8ZccTEDxqL/s320/phelan_hestia.jpg" width="228" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://susancorso.com/seedsforsanctuary/2011/02/hymns-to-hestia/" target="_blank">Hestia</a>, Greek goddess of home and hearth</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<i><a href="http://susancorso.com/seedsforsanctuary/2011/02/hymns-to-hestia/" target="_blank">To Hestia</a></i><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesiod" target="_blank">Hesiod</a></span><br />
<br />
Hestia, you who tend the holy house of the lord Apollo,<br />
the Far-shooter at goodly Pytho,<br />
with soft oil dripping ever from your locks, come now into this house,<br />
come, having one mind with Zeus the all-wise<br />
draw near, and withal bestow grace upon my song.<br />
<br />
<br />
This weekend I watched <i><a href="http://www.hancinema.net/korean_movie_The_House.php" target="_blank">The House</a></i> (spoilers ahead), a Korean animated film in which old, traditional homes are guarded by and are one with spirits who must face their imminent deaths as new, modern condos replace old, dilapidated buildings that are full of mold and cracks. (See photographs documenting this process <a href="http://www.koreabang.com/2012/pictures/stunning-photographs-document-koreas-rapid-modernization.html" target="_blank">here</a>, along with some unfortunate sexist comments.) These building spirits harbor a certain affection and intimacy with home owners, so much so that a carefully kept home will respond kindly to the rhythms of its family. This is a sad story, so skip the next three paragraphs if you don't want to know.<br />
<br />
The film makes a clear argument for valuing the soul over the bank account, and it offers a strong, if heavy-handed critique of classism in contemporary (Korean) society, the role of the government in exacerbating poverty and dependence, and the overvaluation of all that is modern. It is understood that the new buildings will have no spirits to guard them.<br />
<br />
In "<a href="http://www2.kokugakuin.ac.jp/ijcc/wp/cimac/ito.html" target="_blank">Modernization and contemporary culture in traditional Korea</a>," Ito Abito explains:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimvHmgx-OVT17RHHxickwfIUHS4TV2YviK19MmEfslIH1VZbA69q0eSgVbY9HW9mDl1m05j6BbM44ZV2Koo6EY9K2M2K4MaYl8ApLs9NGF0mhdHwQNZ78MxRCcaHE1hHlOZ6BO1g0mq4MH/s1600/house.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimvHmgx-OVT17RHHxickwfIUHS4TV2YviK19MmEfslIH1VZbA69q0eSgVbY9HW9mDl1m05j6BbM44ZV2Koo6EY9K2M2K4MaYl8ApLs9NGF0mhdHwQNZ78MxRCcaHE1hHlOZ6BO1g0mq4MH/s320/house.jpg" width="227" /></a><i>Traditional Korean society manifested, as Takashi Akiba long ago pointed out, a rather sharp cleavage between the life-orientation of the upper-class yangban and that of ordinary commoners. The yangban, absolutizing Confucianism, looked down on or ignored folk religion, but the coexistence of the two strata was made possible by their division into two social ranks. The new life-orientation developed in the cities in connection with the rapid social change of recent years, however, has exercised a profound influence even on agricultural village society through the Semaeull movement and other media. Members of the rural elite, quick to respond to the modernization and industrialization policy of the central government, played a leading role in abolishing or discontinuing traditional belief and practice, some in token of symbolic support for modernization, others in token of loyalty to the Semaeull movement. This resulted, on the one hand, in the diffusion of the Semaeull movement throughout the country as a new spiritual movement and, on the other, in the rapid destruction of the basis for cultural identity that existed in the traditional culture.</i></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: left;">
In the film, as the houses are torn down, the spirits go with them, leaving only keepsakes: small trinkets in which their favorite memories are stored, visible only to those who hold the marble that connects the human and spirit worlds. In the end, this delicate glass ball is smashed by a government boot in the mud, and the spirits, in their dying moments, become invisible to our heartbroken protagonist, who had happened upon the marble in a brawl with a stray cat (who is, of course, the God of Land). She who once longed to live in a shiny new condo, is dragged silently away from the falling walls.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.upwallpapers.net/tree-home-anime/" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOWXE0AZJOAcJEwLmV10v2rWm-hSeb9UVy6XhPVsaYQ3CU3Bj2DUMb8Yb51hKqkssvVg2OovvhmZBnrSK9PZnN8MiPfUzydrtws3CpH4vyXiNr7v49TOA6IOZ785wfPJnddxYIRnHmg38W/s640/Tree-home-Anime-600x375.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
What struck me about this surprisingly—though accurately—pessimistic tale was its lovely portrayal of what it means to have a home. At one point, the girl and her house's spirit happen upon a homeless man in a box. The girl screams, taken aback by the man. The spirit looks and also screams, taken aback not by the man, but by the idea that a person should sleep somewhere where there was no house, no spirit to protect him.<br />
<br />
Of course it went beyond the walls and ceiling: every little bit of the house, the old wallpaper, the worn floors, was infused with a sense of belonging, of safety. That, in my view, is why home matters so much. There are places that feel like that, and they are sacred. Buck claimed that<i> </i>"<i>'home' in the full range and feeling of [Modern English] </i>home <i>is a conception that belongs distinctively to the word </i>home <i>and some of its Gmc. cognates and is not covered by any single word in most of the IE [Indo-European] languages</i>" (<i><a href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php" target="_blank">Online Etymology Dictionary</a></i>). In Spanish, the corresponding <i>hogar</i> has its roots in the Latin term for fire (compare modern Spanish <i>fuego</i>); indeed, the hearth was the old gathering place, the center of warmth and social life (<a href="http://etimologias.dechile.net/?hogar" target="_blank"><i>Diccionario Etimológico</i></a>).<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/aCgGZA54ahk?rel=0" width="640"></iframe><br />
<br />
We feel that way around certain people, too—at home, safe. In her article, "T<a href="http://sojo.net/blogs/2012/10/02/orphans-among-us" target="_blank">he orphans among us</a>," Sarah Johnston contemplates what it meant to her to finally find a family, as an adult, when her own parents had never provided a safe place, a refuge:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.upwallpapers.net/little-girl-kittens-looks-into-the-distance/" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiheEHgbEjigVmkIXb3C0INVX71lduG7E_aiq_6yhvdwUWlDNeSmWQYeR1DD6l_cF1zVg4T0PqXAdJe0mb6vLltD_cqgtscY7d1DuT-f_m_Wy0LHPxRJjHgI7pX1RNDXez5gDXRQcto5wDT/s320/Little-Girl-Kittens-Looks-Into-The-Distance-600x375.jpg" width="320" /></a><i>It took a year and a half before I would see their daily call and not think, “Why are they calling?” I had no idea there were people who’d call you every day.</i><i><br /></i><i> Eventually I did. Eventually it became the most natural thing in the world. The Bible says that orphans are placed in families; and for a long time I believed in that and mistook having a family as the end, — the prize in and of itself.</i><i><br /></i><i> But what I have found — and what I pray the orphans among and inside us discover —is that being a part of a family, in time, stops erasing the pain of abandonment and starts being about the power of the future. </i><i>It begins with an orphan and a family, but it ends with one trajectory being propelled into another.</i></blockquote>
The desire to be where we feel we belong is strong, and we are not alone among the species. Holly the cat <a href="http://www.travelerstoday.com/articles/4264/20130121/holly-cat-travels-190-miles-back-home-after-getting-lost-on-family-vacation-video-richter-florida-daytona-beach-west-palm-beach-animals-pets.htm" target="_blank">recently became famous</a> for her 190-mile journey on foot back to where she belonged.<br />
<br />
<iframe height="360" id="kaltura_player_1359394531" src="http://cdnapi.kaltura.com/index.php/kwidget/wid/1_usr3jbuo/uiconf_id/3775332/st_cache/77846?referer=http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/cat-lost-vacation-travels-200-miles-back-home-18201783&autoPlay=false&addThis.playerSize=392x221&freeWheel.siteSectionId=nws_offsite&closedCaptionActive=true&addThis.playerSize=640x360&closedCaptionsOverPlayer.fontsize=18" style="border: 0px solid #ffffff;" width="640">Unfortunately your browser does not support IFrames.</iframe>
<br />
<div style="font-size: x-small; margin-top: 0; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/video">Watch More News Videos at ABC</a>
|
<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/">2012 Presidential Election</a>
|
<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/entertainment">Entertainment & Celebrity News</a>
</div>
<br />ChasingPatternshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16792497135543281378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-155179553643333539.post-20543745540574266512013-01-20T14:51:00.002-05:002013-01-20T17:41:40.834-05:00Silence and hope<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>It would seem as [...] though we are surrounded by myriads of emaciated words. They limp about, wounded </i><i>by their lack of silence, and wounding others as far as they go. Words that only come from other words are </i><i>lonely, but also hard and aggressive. Words not coming from silence are automatic, obstinate, and </i><i>desperate – and could be called orphans. “The tongue we speak today is no longer a mother-tongue but </i><i>rather an orphaned tongue.” (Picard 1948: 41) Indeed, we are surrounded by sounds severed from silence, </i><i>as opposed to sounds saturated with silence. </i>(<a href="http://academic.sun.ac.za/tsv/Profiles/Profile_documents/SILENCE_%20IS_GOLDE1.pdf" target="_blank">Cilliers</a>, 2008)</blockquote>
<br />
Recently I made the decision to leave social networking sites. I found that I was offering my energy to a void, where the limits to true human connection were simply too much. Sherry Turkle, in her <i>NYT </i>article "<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/opinion/sunday/the-flight-from-conversation.html">Flight from Conversation</a>," made a strong argument for face-to-face connection, for being present in the silences--silences that cannot be transmitted or lived on media such as Facebook: "Most of all, we need to remember — in between texts and e-mails and Facebook posts — to listen to one another, even to the boring bits, because it is often in unedited moments, moments in which we hesitate and stutter and go silent, that we reveal ourselves to one another."<br />
<br />
I have decided, as my <a href="http://www.tricycle.com/insights/no-satisfaction">Tricycle newsletter</a> this morning advised, to attempt to abandon futile endeavors. It seems to me that part of the attraction of social networks is that they can offer some sort of tangible evidence that others find us worthy (at least enough to "friend" us and maybe click on something we posted). <br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/BxqMXdJtiks?rel=0" width="640"></iframe>
<br />
As somebody with a body that is perceived as so vastly different from others', I have spent much of my lifetime trying to prove my worth, trying to convince others who could not relate to me that I really was just like them, trying to help them see me, accept me, find a way to surmount the insurmountable beliefs about value and body, find true friendship in my company. <br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlaIjV807xCTSoUuLNkvXbYgt3NRpKZpQ9h6Ry9LlMqv6xkeFdd1bTCG-gKzUZbbF_570pXtmo3_LiXqiWohosp-MjrvnmWQAILQZVm2nKB_27SzSOfkVS5ArOHGWb114mqz2_DZYYAKVd/s1600/Harlequin-woman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlaIjV807xCTSoUuLNkvXbYgt3NRpKZpQ9h6Ry9LlMqv6xkeFdd1bTCG-gKzUZbbF_570pXtmo3_LiXqiWohosp-MjrvnmWQAILQZVm2nKB_27SzSOfkVS5ArOHGWb114mqz2_DZYYAKVd/s200/Harlequin-woman.jpg" width="144" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://katarinapahlson.com/2012/06/e-shop-launching/#" target="_blank">Harlequin woman</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I am certainly not alone in this. Disabled blogger Carly Findlay <a href="http://theabilityindisability.blogspot.com/2010/07/i-did-forward-roll-to-prove-i-could-do.html">writes</a>, "Maybe I'm doing a metaphorical forward roll every day. To prove that I can do. To prove that I'm more than how I look. And to break down the assumptions people make about me and others with chronic illnesses and disabilities."<br />
<br />
How much energy am I willing to spend to make myself human enough in another's eyes? Could this ever really lead to a mutually fulfilling relationship? It is a futile endeavor. I am not advising giving up hope. But what is of little value is not worth our time.<br />
<div>
<br />
I seek the rare treasure, the silent understanding. I will do no song and dance. Connection is scarce, but that is okay. It is worth the effort, worth the wait.<br />
<br />
What is scarce is not lost. Sometimes even the smallest spark of hope may be enough for the spirit. The whooping cranes are a lesson in placing one's heart in what matters. They are slowly recovering from the edge of extinction, with a population that has risen from a mere 15 birds to 600 with the help of <a href="http://www.operationmigration.org/">Operation Migration</a> and other groups. (If you are interested and able, you can <a href="http://www.operationmigration.org/contribute.htm">contribute</a> to the cause.)<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe frameborder="0" height="392" scrolling="no" src="http://www.ustream.tv/embed/recorded/26223797?v=3&wmode=direct" style="border: 0px none transparent;" width="480"></iframe></div>
<a href="http://www.ustream.tv/" style="background: #ffffff; color: black; display: block; font-size: 10px; font-weight: normal; padding: 2px 0px 4px; text-align: center; text-decoration: underline; width: 400px;" target="_blank">Video streaming by Ustream</a><br />
<br />
In human interaction, for me, the quiet spaces are my whooping crane. In these moments, there is a deep knowing and a presence. There is no question of worthiness, no painted mask, no juggling of truths and lies. I tend to this silence.<br />
<br />
Professor of Theology at Stellenbosch University <a href="http://academic.sun.ac.za/tsv/Profiles/cilliers_profile.htm" target="_blank">J. H. Cillers</a> has written of the spiritual value of silence in our lives in his article, "<a href="http://academic.sun.ac.za/tsv/Profiles/Profile_documents/SILENCE_%20IS_GOLDE1.pdf" target="_blank">Silence is Golden: Liturgy beyond the Edge of Language</a>." I quote him here at some length:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3oBAVXw_kaFIlkFBtsWjhbXiLD4SDzJTPG0BsgoXxsRwI39zBFr7uheb3F9fsX8bEWF_HwmfF7Syes9UpjnRsf9prmYF8CynoXXJ9jzXd5Y2_JaWiHm1-i50fUwIVZP7Su8mpj6MBBpx7/s1600/vassilis-tangoulis1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3oBAVXw_kaFIlkFBtsWjhbXiLD4SDzJTPG0BsgoXxsRwI39zBFr7uheb3F9fsX8bEWF_HwmfF7Syes9UpjnRsf9prmYF8CynoXXJ9jzXd5Y2_JaWiHm1-i50fUwIVZP7Su8mpj6MBBpx7/s320/vassilis-tangoulis1.jpg" width="320" /></a><i>Silence could of course be understood in many ways [...]. It may mean different things to different people. We know that there are different kinds of silence. The silence of sitting on the porch and watching as the setting sun winks her last light at you. The indescribable silence when moving from the house in which you stayed for thirty years, and you walk through the empty rooms for a last time, and the walls whisper the sum total of experiences that you had in this space and you know, deeper than words can express: there is a time to come, and a time to go. Or the strange silence that you experience in a graveyard, when the cooing of the doves in the trees deepens the silence and you know: our years pass by like a fleeting thought...<br />
</i><i><br /></i><i>Willard differentiates between solitude - “being out of human contact, being alone, and being so for lengthy periods of time”- and silence (1998: 357). He concludes: “Silence means to escape from sounds, noises, other than the gentle ones of nature. But it also means not talking, and the effects of not talking on our soul
are different from those of simple quietness.” (1998: 357)<br /> </i><i><br /></i><i>Although silence is part and parcel of our genetical make-up (cf. further on), it is apparently also something that needs to be learned, a lost art that must be retrieved. The fact of the matter is that we normally react on an “epidermal” (skin-deep) level, automatically, following the usual stimuli of life. But in and through silence we escape the patterns of epidermal responses, with their consequences. This is however something that we find particularly hard to do. For us, the very idea of doing nothing could be absolutely terrifying – especially in our achievement-driven society. Indeed, it seems as if one of the greatest of spiritual attainments of humanity could be the capacity to do nothing. Because we do so much, we have so little of real value.
</i></blockquote>
Togetherness in silence, a gaze, a touch, a shared view of the warm light hitting the trees--these alone tell me that we, imperfect and strange beings that we are, are more than enough.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK9z77OAIoHS88d3pfydMtWs158tKauS-OSDZq3lkz-lsOCIokVNcb6rRaDV7NcfuGfxuNKZS4IUfhinKfVcnMMCF8GynXrrPRG2_v_4hrtCwa0-1pKLbtuLmZhjEly-9geCK7Cz2BYmXm/s1600/s_w33_RTR3BVTN.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK9z77OAIoHS88d3pfydMtWs158tKauS-OSDZq3lkz-lsOCIokVNcb6rRaDV7NcfuGfxuNKZS4IUfhinKfVcnMMCF8GynXrrPRG2_v_4hrtCwa0-1pKLbtuLmZhjEly-9geCK7Cz2BYmXm/s640/s_w33_RTR3BVTN.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A couple embrace in a park with snowy trees seen around, with the air temperature at about minus 8 degrees Celsius (17.6 degrees Fahrenheit), in Russia's southern city of Stavropol, on December 24, 2012. (<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/01/wintry-weather/100435/" target="_blank">Reuters/Eduard Korniyenko</a>).</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="color: #666666; font-size: x-small;">Cilliers, J. H. 20</span><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">08. </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://academic.sun.ac.za/tsv/Profiles/Profile_documents/SILENCE_%20IS_GOLDE1.pdf">Silence is Golden: Liturgy beyond the Edge of Language</a>. </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Paper de</span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-size: x-small;">livered at the annual meeting of the Society for Practical Theology in South Africa, 14-16 January 2008, UNISA, Pretoria.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-size: x-small;">Picard, M. 1948. <i>The world of silence</i>. London: The Harvill Press. </span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-size: x-small;">Willard, D 1998. <i>The divine conspiracy. Rediscovering our hidden life in God</i>. Harper: San Francisco.</span></div>
ChasingPatternshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16792497135543281378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-155179553643333539.post-75275120405823363562013-01-04T21:13:00.003-05:002013-01-04T21:17:28.775-05:00Underwater breathing (when the trolls come)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz6WMBRoRaOeINsWq1h2hIMLKYkduh2mCPAecFi0eaFzLdoo_iWN6bnA8Xj5-ektp0p5S_lbpw5xU9SYR3czCSzI7qUJ5SGw1JazdrcHROm3hNYOBJAFV_nW2Y7J-OOIzeidxlUyEl_R6v/s1600/TN-Trolls.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="564" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz6WMBRoRaOeINsWq1h2hIMLKYkduh2mCPAecFi0eaFzLdoo_iWN6bnA8Xj5-ektp0p5S_lbpw5xU9SYR3czCSzI7qUJ5SGw1JazdrcHROm3hNYOBJAFV_nW2Y7J-OOIzeidxlUyEl_R6v/s640/TN-Trolls.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.forstinea.nl/lotr/" target="_blank">Trolls</a> in <i>The Hobbit</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Sometimes those who seem to love (or understand) only what is big and loud trample what they have never even noticed was there. Sometimes what they trample upon is the sensitive person's treasure, the tiny miracle the quiet visionary has been holding in her palm.<br />
<div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1ssnHWM737GfbWyFtnkG906o8lUoOW9ZskcX_DeU1WjGWc80zw4jKRrJ8eR1iTK8b_CcmaRf7Svq9Ku7684HNN4FAGvPMv9vtC7vcBCdGj5U0Njy8PEBmRomkQpurfRMw00pUjgL2U4ay/s1600/beth-magnuson-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1ssnHWM737GfbWyFtnkG906o8lUoOW9ZskcX_DeU1WjGWc80zw4jKRrJ8eR1iTK8b_CcmaRf7Svq9Ku7684HNN4FAGvPMv9vtC7vcBCdGj5U0Njy8PEBmRomkQpurfRMw00pUjgL2U4ay/s320/beth-magnuson-3.jpg" title="Carved Eggshells by Beth Ann Magnuson" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.faithistorment.com/2012/12/carved-eggshells-by-beth-ann-magnuson.htm" target="_blank">Carved Eggshells</a> by Beth Ann Magnuson</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
She says in a whisper, too trusting, wanting so much to share the joy, "Look. Look at this little piece of me. It is the most beautiful thing I know to be mine." </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
An excited troll lumbers over and smash--it is gone. He did not even know something could be that small, that intricate, or that holy. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Her devastation is chalked up to childishness. "Bah!" says the troll. "I see nothing here! Why do you waste time?" </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
When violence is caused by insensitivity, by a lack of perception of what one sees so clearly, who is to blame? How to cry foul?</div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="281" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/33854896?portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" width="500"></iframe> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://vimeo.com/33854896">Music Box</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/subblue">subBlue</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.</div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In a gifted mind, where worlds are intricate and sensitive, this destruction can become the daily bread, simply a way of life:</div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: white;"><i>One of the most common experiences of gifted children is a unique way of perceiving. They make more abstract connections, they synthesize diverse experiences, and they make sophisticated conclusions at an early age. Not that the gifted child's unique perceptions are always "true" to the rest of us, but they are powerful. The result is a child growing up with a reality somewhat different than the reality of her peers -- and often different from her parents, teachers, and allies.</i></span></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: white;"><i></i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><i></i></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://content.messynessychic.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/20121113-134255.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="270" src="http://content.messynessychic.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/20121113-134255.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.messynessychic.com/2012/11/13/the-town-that-spent-25-years-underwater/" style="font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Liberation Serif', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;" target="_blank">Villa Epecuen</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Liberation Serif', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">, Argentina</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<span style="background-color: white;"><i>Because they are different in other ways, gifted children are often isolated anyway. Somehow these multiple tendencies toward isolation reinforce one another to the point where the majority of gifted children feel lonely, left-out, or different.</i></span></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: white;"><i></i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><i></i></span></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: white;"><i>This combination of unique perception and its concurrent isolation yield an emotional vacuum. After all, for most of us, our emotional selves develop by "bouncing off" of all those around us.</i> (</span><i><a href="http://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content4/joy.loss.eq.gifted.html" target="_blank">Joy and Loss: The Emotional Lives of Gifted Children</a></i>, Joshua Freedman and Anabel Jensen, PhD)</div>
<div>
<br />
As adults, we learn to live with it. Kind of. Despite the wreckage it will cause in our jobs and relationships, we go underground sometimes. It is sometimes at the bottom of the ocean, where sounds are muted and all is touch and flow, that we breathe best, and we remain unshattered.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img.hsmagazine.net/2012/11/Naut1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://img.hsmagazine.net/2012/11/Naut1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.hsmagazine.net/2012/11/nautilus-adventure-pack/" target="_blank">Source</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In <i>The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression</i>, Andrew Solomon writes, "Mild depression is a gradual and sometimes permanent thing that undermines people the way rust weakens iron. [...] Like physical pain that becomes chronic, it is miserable not so much because it is intolerable in the moment as because it is intolerable to have known it in the moments gone and to look forward only to knowing it in the moments to come. The present tense of mild depression envisages no alleviation because it feels like knowledge" (p. 16).<br />
<br />
It seems to me that this is more than a <i>feeling </i>of knowledge. Instead, it is often linked directly to knowledge. In a world of trolls, knowledge is a liability. How to extol the virtues of complexity to a boss who demands that you create something "fun"? How to present the ecstasy of subtlety to an audience seeking more "pizzazz"? To them, their way is <i>obviously</i> better.<br />
<br />
So we hold our tongues, and sometimes our breath. And sometimes we dive down for air.<br />
<div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="300" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/53207270?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&badge=0&color=00ff66" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" width="400"></iframe>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<div class="tab-content active" id="poem-top" style="background-color: white;">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Don’t Tell Anyone</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">by Tony Hoagland</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">We had been married for six or seven years</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">when my wife, standing in the kitchen one afternoon, told me</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">that she screams underwater when she swims—</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">that, in fact, she has been screaming for years</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">into the blue chlorinated water of the community pool</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">where she does laps every other day.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Buttering her toast, not as if she had been</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">concealing anything,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">not as if I should consider myself</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">personally the cause of her screaming,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">nor as if we should perform an act of therapy</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">right that minute on the kitchen table,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">—casually, she told me,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">and I could see her turn her square face up</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">to take a gulp of oxygen,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">then down again into the cold wet mask of the unconscious.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">For all I know, maybe <em>everyone</em> is screaming</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">as they go through life, silently,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">politely keeping the big secret</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">that it is not all fun</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">to be ripped by the crooked beak</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">of something called <em>psychology</em>,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">to be dipped down</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">again and again into time;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">that the truest, most intimate</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">pleasure you can sometimes find</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">is the wet kiss</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">of your own pain.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">There goes Kath, at one <span class="uc" style="text-transform: uppercase;">PM</span>, to swim her twenty-two laps</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">back and forth in the community pool;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">—what discipline she has!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Twenty-two laps like twenty-two pages,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">that will never be read by anyone.</span></div>
<div class="tab-content active" id="poem" style="background-color: white;">
<div class="credit" style="color: #7f7f7f; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 30px; padding-top: 24px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Source: <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/244198" target="_blank"><em>Poetry</em> (July/August 2012).</a></span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
ChasingPatternshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16792497135543281378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-155179553643333539.post-1054851948890983162012-09-06T20:56:00.002-04:002012-09-06T20:57:17.307-04:00Sheltering the Wild<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>"To love is to approach each other center to center." ~ Pierre de Teilhard de Chardin</i></div>
<br />
It has taken me a long time to write this post, perhaps because it touches on the "heart" of things. I want to write about unconditional love, about revelations that allow the connection between two beings to ignite with wild lightning. This is about holding on in the storm, not because we are kind enough to pretend it is not that bad or we don't really feel the lash of the wind in someone else's pain.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB9Xcew5KWjiaTWb29kPIbm075c7kJ9-EkOdpWPhfIOMyI1q6f4LPJqfQD8rfa-bbV-lp_PJFEAdi32hcTW3QHcrWRgXOn3vvOoSc6pV6mKwiMxl7Sc07Qaa0PLVYwxYklldrjOY3k6i3w/s1600/Francoise-Gilot3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB9Xcew5KWjiaTWb29kPIbm075c7kJ9-EkOdpWPhfIOMyI1q6f4LPJqfQD8rfa-bbV-lp_PJFEAdi32hcTW3QHcrWRgXOn3vvOoSc6pV6mKwiMxl7Sc07Qaa0PLVYwxYklldrjOY3k6i3w/s320/Francoise-Gilot3.jpg" width="294" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: black; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.antiquehelper.com/item/337708" style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; line-height: 22px; text-decoration: none;">Francoise Gilot</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; line-height: 22px;"> (French, b.1921), <i>Little Girl with Owl </i>1960</span>
</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It is about joining in the roll of thunder, pairing each other's scars like kindling for a warmth we seek, because the wild heart in each of us deserves to be gazed upon with full acceptance. In my most honest love, there is a place for the safe unveiling of brutality.<br />
<br />
<i>“To love another another human in all of her splendor and imperfect perfection, it is a magnificent task...tremendous and foolish and human.” </i><i>~ Louise Erdrich, </i><span style="font-style: italic;">The Last Report On The Miracles At Little No Horse</span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Our centers are full of divinity and light, yes. But there is also pain and fear, rage and hunger. To deny this in ourselves is to feel ashamed of our very natures. To deny this in others, or to judge it as diminishing the other, is to offer a cowardly love. We cannot fully love without the revelation of imperfections. So when we hide our ugliness, we are, in effect, refusing the chance to be known and loved.<br />
<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/az3llyeTlrM?rel=0" width="640"></iframe><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
Such a shrinking away from wholeness, and its concomitant lack of trust, has dire consequences in all aspects of life, not just in our most intimate relationships (as if this alone were not bad enough). <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/users/john-warner" target="_blank">John Warner</a> recently wrote a self-proclaimed "preachy" piece on truth in <i>Inside Higher Ed</i>, entitled "<a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/education-oronte-churm/column-not-be-dictated-fact-checkers#ixzz25hdx4JGh" target="_blank">A Column Not to Be Dictated to by Fact Checkers</a>," in which he discussed this phenomenon in today's classrooms (and politics). I found the following excerpt particularly relevant:</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtPEZn4P3-nm42XJUkRhHa_z1UzLBJYaQv-_NQl6W0hgkyUbv3AGVqO-j8xcLKEj4tlBp7mayt4OL9H4Y5w1Zm1jZKoooDIMrqYx153ckS-s76I7WHGdPEBWIU8rY8Yfr43TcpxEES7_l7/s1600/people-n-owl5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtPEZn4P3-nm42XJUkRhHa_z1UzLBJYaQv-_NQl6W0hgkyUbv3AGVqO-j8xcLKEj4tlBp7mayt4OL9H4Y5w1Zm1jZKoooDIMrqYx153ckS-s76I7WHGdPEBWIU8rY8Yfr43TcpxEES7_l7/s320/people-n-owl5.jpg" width="230" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Found <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAL8FXxe6elCJ9h3UDUzMl9UHfe15JlOzckIxx3uhHo3MP4joBtHOK1vGmo4EVnfMLhkcbFxqod0BAfVk0tcD2CbBRAmzxzAsxR70ZDoISwOuZe6oR9uMfzLiAuZOUGEE76k_JkNbJrO01/s1600/people-n-owl5.jpg" target="_blank">here</a>. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>"I sometimes read about how the current generation has been ruined by the self-esteem movement, but they can hardly be blamed with their role models, champions who cheat, politicians who lie, journalists who don't believe there is such a thing as truth.</i></div>
<div>
<i></i><br />
<i></i>
<i>Or a teacher who is worried about looking like a square when he says he believes in truth. All of us are signaling that there’s nothing much worthy of belief aside from our own “success,” our image, and how we’re perceived on some imaginary scoreboard.</i><br />
<i></i><br />
<i></i>
<i>These are all forms of cowardice, a lack of trust in ourselves and others, that we will not be judged of value unless we are perfect, if we are anything short of outstanding."</i><br />
<br />
This is not to say that we should parade our scars in some sort of victim dance. But to cover ourselves in "goodness" is a kind of death: “To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality” (John Ruskin, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Stones-Venice-John-Ruskin/dp/0306802449" target="_blank">The Stones of Venice</a></i>).<br />
<br />
In some way, I approach this topic as a sociolinguist. I know that in language, like in all human systems, attainment of a "perfect" state cannot be achieved except through death (and yes, here, I am mindful of the spiritual implications of this). And even then, what is considered the "perfect" moment is debatable, not to mention a mere abstraction. In language, it is the variation, its very state of imperfection, of dynamic motion and persistent change in a world that never experiences the same moment twice, that allows it to flourish. Languages do not survive <i>despite</i> their imperfections, but rather <i>because of</i> their imperfections. I think this sheds a new light on our lives.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFoMSPisrkES2yh6aRvA0TnlUMAyJbuaa2kbf7qnxyfZPaIK5k8aU-8W3-pH6qYx_uwqPwjFTqLU2LW23FPMnXUc9w3GBUzPtcCDHQaB8Oz5oTH4dQABP56W0I-0kOtIOx1v9ltmA6FlAV/s1600/CSabMar8cm2i1gpaNlTRd8j6o1_500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFoMSPisrkES2yh6aRvA0TnlUMAyJbuaa2kbf7qnxyfZPaIK5k8aU-8W3-pH6qYx_uwqPwjFTqLU2LW23FPMnXUc9w3GBUzPtcCDHQaB8Oz5oTH4dQABP56W0I-0kOtIOx1v9ltmA6FlAV/s320/CSabMar8cm2i1gpaNlTRd8j6o1_500.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;">by minimaforms, 2008. “Minimaforms was invited by <br />
Archigram’s David Greene to rethink and evolve his <br />
seminal projects the Living Pod and High-Rise Tower <br />
as part of a show called Imperfect works.” Exhibited at <br />
<a href="http://www.megastructure-reloaded.org/" target="_blank">Mega-Structures Reloaded</a>, Berlin (2008) / Imperfect Works, <br />
London (2008).</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>"The key to a rational conception of language change – indeed, of language itself – is the possibility of describing orderly differentiation in a language serving a community … It is </i>absence <i>of structural heterogeneity that would be dysfunctional." (Weinreich et al. 1968: 100–101)</i><br />
<br />
A language that does not shift, bending rules and opening itself to "strange" new patterns, is soon a dead language.<br />
<br />
On the spiritual question, <a href="http://laceymosley.com/" target="_blank">Lacey Mosley</a> discovered that she could see God's grace best through the lens of imperfection: <i>“I've learned recently to love imperfection a lot because it shines such a big light on God's grace. And if someone has grace for you that's when you feel their love the most and they see you for who you are and they love you anyway.”</i><br />
<br />
When I compare our "imperfection" to the "imperfection" of human systems like language and culture, it dawns on me that there is nothing to be forgiven. It is not that we must love "anyway," but that through this, we love. Through this wildheartedness that is our life force, we understand:<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: left; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg3ZaVIXnjfjiYJSC2VDkmd8QFp1x_zBs0_kfbJglB4gZmyhTxC0Hc3p78OOcBlZpDyu8HMMkxKg5WLWexCIOJIrG5qc_n9atRF_fWzVLzHUXReQEzZl1JZo6ymeyKAzKQTD8Q5x7DDZWF/s1600/tumblr_m94fyf0qCN1qe31lco1_400.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="292" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg3ZaVIXnjfjiYJSC2VDkmd8QFp1x_zBs0_kfbJglB4gZmyhTxC0Hc3p78OOcBlZpDyu8HMMkxKg5WLWexCIOJIrG5qc_n9atRF_fWzVLzHUXReQEzZl1JZo6ymeyKAzKQTD8Q5x7DDZWF/s320/tumblr_m94fyf0qCN1qe31lco1_400.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://louisebutlerart.com/wp/" target="_blank">Louise Butler</a>, <i>Journey to Nimbus</i> (2010), oil on canvas</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>“But those who seek only reassurance from life will never be more than tourists—seeing everything and trying to possess what can only be felt. Beauty is the shadow of imperfection.” ~ Simon Van Booy, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Beautiful-Began-After-Novel/dp/0061661481" target="_blank">Everything Beautiful Began After</a>. </i><br />
<br />
So yes, we must shelter our wild (heart/tongue), but not because it is shameful. If we shelter it, it should be to save it for those who will know how to feed it. <a href="http://www.planetmotivation.com/albert-einstein.html" target="_blank">What a mess Einstein once was!</a> But he did not shrivel away. And, I would argue, it was this very messiness that brought him to question everything, and to change our understanding of the world. I assure you, he is not the only example.<br />
<br />
<i>“You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking.” ~ Marianne Williamson</i><br />
<br />
In disability, our mess is also our greatness. This is not because we are meant as inspirations to others, as some sort of epiphany-producing humanoid object. This is because the mess of disability itself is a question, which is a curiosity, which is a quest, which is a revelation. Love the imperfections, crawl into them and gaze from the inside out, and a rich new world will unfold.<br />
<div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Weinreich, U., Labov, W., & Herzog, M. 1968. "Empirical foundations for a theory of language change." In: W. Lehmann & Y. Malkiel, eds., <i>Directions for historical linguistics</i>. Austin: University of Texas Press. 95-198.</span><br />
<br /></div>
</div>
ChasingPatternshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16792497135543281378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-155179553643333539.post-85583355525473502452012-08-06T20:02:00.002-04:002012-08-07T08:44:34.540-04:00Touchdown<div style="text-align: left;">
Today we witnessed the touchdown of NASA's rover Curiosity on Mars. It has <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0806/NASA-scientists-get-first-rover-s-eye-view-of-Gale-Crater-on-Mars-video" target="_blank">already sent back its first pictures</a>.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe frameborder="0" height="320" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://widget.newsinc.com/single.html?WID=2&VID=23765106&freewheel=69016&sitesection=csmonitor" width="425"></iframe>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />
How exciting to glimpse other lands, other stones! I often thought as a deeply star-gazing child upon whom gravity worked harder than most, such that I dragged myself and later rolled and tumbled across the floor, that I would be the first to sign up to leave this planet, a first colonist.<br />
<br />
Yet, as I age, I realize that am deeply attached to the earth, as echoed in <a href="http://www.caetanoveloso.com.br/" target="_blank">Caetano Veloso</a>'s love song to Earth, "<a href="http://letras.mus.br/caetano-veloso/44780/">Terra</a>."<br />
<br />
Eu sou um leão de fogo [I am a lion of fire<br />
Sem ti me consumiria without you I would consume myself<br />
A mim mesmo eternamente myself eternally<br />
E de nada valeria and it would matter nothing<br />
Acontecer de eu ser gente that I happen to be a person,<br />
E gente é outra alegria and a person is another joy<br />
Diferente das estrelas... different from the stars...]<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/qhZVaxWHx3Q?rel=0" width="640"></iframe><br />
<br />
This attachment goes beyond humanity. Anthropologist and primatologist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_Prince-Hughes" target="_blank">Dawn Prince-Hughes</a>, in her memoir <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Songs-Gorilla-Nation-Journey-Through/dp/1400050588" target="_blank">Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey through Autism</a> </i>(which I recommend; see a good "non-review" <a href="http://www.freewilliamsburg.com/june_2004/gorilla.html" target="_blank">here</a>), writes of her experience of walking and standing, of pulling her body upright, as a painful separation:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Songs-Gorilla-Nation-Journey-Through/dp/1400050588" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="Songs of a Gorilla Nation" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ0jhyVOzpQW7JIhUfCrmlZKTM5Bb_3uvCgTBBfEMKOaw9Abh3MTBfj716sJtt795jIF8SucTKmpQQSnim9PUUCBbgoL8D2Dz989r9LCE9gBChIxHd6a_dBc6U4RB3g3ArY4vN8voGHwmC/s1600/song.jpg" title="" /></a></div>
<i>Physically, I thought about how standing up on two feet leaves you exposed. One's naked belly and chest and genitals are all uncovered and laid bare, as if standing has lifted a great warm cover made of the sacred space between body and ground. Like a plant uprooted, with the last of its anchor and succor falling in abandoning clods, we stretch up to the sky and let the close and nourishing earth fall away. This standing had often been too much for me to bear, and when it was, I would go and curl up somewhere, nursing the raw wound that my upright front had sustained in the million-year tearing away that my ancestors had undertaken. </i>(p. 121).<br />
<br />
In explaining her affinity with the gorillas she studied and worked with and loved, she explained:<br />
<br />
<i>What I found I had always had with the gorillas was such vulnerability and ferocity and love. Our similarities were beyond perseveration, a need for space and a space for hiding; we were always drawing inward and exploding outward, sharing laughter out of fear and sharing a ferocious sense of justice, beyond mere caring. Our similarities also went beyond a difficulty dealing with the human race, sensitivities to the world around us and to the stereotyping in the face of the soullessness all around. Our affinity met in being filled with archaic darkness and persisting memories of a time when all things were one. </i>(p. 122)<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisnqlj_RbjGFHDZqIoJ3aOxv-rUoDarMag_yHiwmgbwK0knzALUlTkq_kYuBRXNSBXVvED1ffLGFQeXFW2ZkOMJIOMbE3AmMWtUEBt7TCUtuL2rC_8ZYdFRJu0sKsZFShSPqbwMN4fRimV/s1600/sacred-rock-woman-praying-machu-picchu-10090.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisnqlj_RbjGFHDZqIoJ3aOxv-rUoDarMag_yHiwmgbwK0knzALUlTkq_kYuBRXNSBXVvED1ffLGFQeXFW2ZkOMJIOMbE3AmMWtUEBt7TCUtuL2rC_8ZYdFRJu0sKsZFShSPqbwMN4fRimV/s320/sacred-rock-woman-praying-machu-picchu-10090.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://bayimages.net/view-photos/sacred-rock-woman-praying-machu-picchu-10090.html" target="_blank">Sacred Rock. Machu Picchu, Peru.</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
We are earth beings. Now, perhaps always, as <i>New York Times</i> contributor Adam Frank somewhat sadly pointed out in his piece, "<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/25/opinion/alone-in-the-void.html" target="_blank">Alone in the Void</a>."<br />
<br />
Since time immemorial, the earth stones have been watching our growth. Do we not caress them and spill our tears and blood into this great rock? And our waste, too, and our bombs of rage? What better than the earth to serve as witness to all promises, all covenants made between living beings? Who better to know when we have forgotten ourselves?<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCCdGlSkFYwGOwdy-ClH328T_WbCR3vgKgdRKLKauKEvBAKvwB_7ChStdKH4W9SSwMA5OirNpLY6q0dQtxPWjTHpGVhqe0eoKIA3XHhUmOlGqPn5P0Sd2W-bbNPH0Mjgt8E1d1gcW70rDM/s1600/qtzspec.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="185" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCCdGlSkFYwGOwdy-ClH328T_WbCR3vgKgdRKLKauKEvBAKvwB_7ChStdKH4W9SSwMA5OirNpLY6q0dQtxPWjTHpGVhqe0eoKIA3XHhUmOlGqPn5P0Sd2W-bbNPH0Mjgt8E1d1gcW70rDM/s200/qtzspec.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image found <a href="http://www.wired-artist-jewelry.com/DESCRIPTIONS.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>Come now, let us make a covenant, you and I. And let it be a witness between you and me.” So Jacob took a stone and set it up as a pillar. And Jacob said to his kinsmen, “Gather stones.” And they took stones and made a heap, and they ate there by the heap. Laban called it Jegar-sahadutha, but Jacob called it Galeed. Laban said, “This heap is a witness between you and me today.” </i>(<i>Genesis 31</i>, 44-48)<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
For all it has seen, the stone, the earth, like a stillness we can create in our own spirited flesh, offers the relief of an energetic, living silence:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/Stirring_the_Mud.html?id=4KIfAQAAIAAJ" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBPM-4pfzf2h1FXQFJ16rHuatH5KbptllByK5ocS7nY8KUw-PxYjwxgMq58OLyZsXqdry7YgYEmehVWcfTugY74ODsMtqGcRUUr97szfPE59cLBaUNs2stONtZVZX1y2nz986ZNU4THT2N/s1600/Stirring.jpg" /></a><i>Thomas Aquinas said that beauty arrests motion. He meant, I think, that in the presence of something gorgeous or sublime, we stop our nervous natterings, our foot twitchings and restless tongues. Whatever that fretful hunger is, it seems momentarily filled in the presence of beauty. To Aquinas’s wisdom I’d add that silence arrests flight, that in its refuge, the need to flee the chaos of noise diminishes. We let the world creep closer, we drop to our knees, as if to let the heart, like a small animal, get its legs on the ground.</i> (from <i><a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/Stirring_the_Mud.html?id=4KIfAQAAIAAJ" target="_blank">Stirring the Mud</a></i> by Barbara Hurd, © 2001 by Barbara Hurd, from <i><a href="http://www.tricycle.com/afterword/silence" target="_blank">Tricycle</a></i>)<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I do not think that have ever felt the earth so keenly, so close, as when I lived in Mexico. There, in Cholula, at the foot of the great volcano Popcatepetl, artifacts of tiny clay faces, rain gods and jaguar-men, surfaced around the edges of ancient dusty roads. When the volcano erupted, the ground would rock slowly, like being rocked in the arms of someone who has forgotten just how little you really are.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjcIBxLTmK1yVdN3lSDCAxfHOSfTYLyNs5v3jEclMEuOnxZJukQJs1d4fenHi-SAuz-E9piuu8NnOkjJWB0x1rzj7jI-6XYV4rOhRL8-lW0c82UD_woRUL-ODq4h352I9xNrpqQM_ka8Hk/s1600/popoCholula.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="432" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjcIBxLTmK1yVdN3lSDCAxfHOSfTYLyNs5v3jEclMEuOnxZJukQJs1d4fenHi-SAuz-E9piuu8NnOkjJWB0x1rzj7jI-6XYV4rOhRL8-lW0c82UD_woRUL-ODq4h352I9xNrpqQM_ka8Hk/s640/popoCholula.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cholula with an erupting Popocatepetl. From <a href="http://privatouring.blogspot.com/2012/04/popocatepetl-rumbling-and-huffing-and.html" target="_blank">A Gringo in Rural Mexico</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
Here is a poem of mine about the land of Cholula. The title, <i>Huellas</i>, has several meanings, including footprints, fingerprints, traces, and tracks. (The story of <a href="http://llerrah.com/footprints.htm/" target="_blank">Footprints</a> was one of my favorites as a child, and I carry a hint of this into the poem as well.) (Trigger warning)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Huellas</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Five hundred years ago, a burned
white man broke <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">ground for Catholic rites, the
pyramid cradling <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">gold-spun idols. Today, a child
crawls underneath mud <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">stone upon stone in small doorways,
ancient <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">stories painted on the walls where
her ancestors knew <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">one day she would laugh, remembering
how<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">everyone always leaves a trace of
what was, even<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">if it was not worth it. Even if we
are lost in the end.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">II<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">She is a cherub, round and brown <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">like the angel cheeks: they cried
wax tears<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">where her mother knelt in a copal
cathedral.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">That whole month her knees were
bloody<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">and she kept those flowers she
picked<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">dried and thirsty among the saints<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">the day the youngest of her dozen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">came home, defiled and married, but
home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">III<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">At the market on Wednesdays, downy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">chestnut-skinned fruit is split open
to seduce<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">buyers who will suck out the burnt
orange<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">dripping mamey, only to say it is
not <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">yet ripe, let me try another,
because<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">the uncut ones always taste best<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">and cherubs who do not run home fast<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">will most certainly get eaten alive.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">IV <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The golden hour thickens in vapor,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">lightening pouring red through woven
cloth<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">windows. Just about any two bodies
here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">know each other to be sacred and
hold<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">like a cross against the salted
earth,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">against the stumbling gait of those
damned<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">by ancient pictures and buried ash.
Volcanoes <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">boom and the ground, it breaks, it
trembles. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">© 2010 J. Aaron</span></div>
</div>ChasingPatternshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16792497135543281378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-155179553643333539.post-60072792366353459392012-07-31T17:44:00.001-04:002012-07-31T21:55:54.303-04:00Mutable caress: On water, impermanence, and trust<br />
I grew up with my toes in the Willamette River.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzreno5PnVROc72nrnIu3c2qbMxaXe4wr2H9IdcrG9FYkWcGLZEP8z4739RWLy_WKl7BYQOITUdrR8WYkFXq9vvJbxk2GdSfApHhEw8kTIIiwTGKhfRub8lSryce0ml1Q-LoUZ5_OHNR0U/s1600/img_0240.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Willamette River" border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzreno5PnVROc72nrnIu3c2qbMxaXe4wr2H9IdcrG9FYkWcGLZEP8z4739RWLy_WKl7BYQOITUdrR8WYkFXq9vvJbxk2GdSfApHhEw8kTIIiwTGKhfRub8lSryce0ml1Q-LoUZ5_OHNR0U/s640/img_0240.jpg" title="" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;">Crossing the Willamette River<br />
Eugene, Oregon, February 21st, 2011<br />
(from <a href="http://idratherberiding.com/pcture-of-the-day/2011-2/" target="_blank"><i>I'd rather be riding...</i> </a>)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I loved to stare at it, immerse myself in it, float down it in a passive stance that once sent my mother flying into the current screaming. I had shouted a contented "Bye!" as I floated past and away. At the ocean, I would stare out as far as possible, convinced I could see the curve of our planet, and then the sky as a dome above, and me so tiny there, seized by deep passion.<br />
<br />
Why such love, such fascination?<br />
<br />
In its nature, water teaches us impermanence, in the <a href="http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma8/imperm.html" target="_blank">Buddhist sense of the term</a>:<br />
<br />
<i>According to the teachings of the Buddha, life is comparable to a river. It is a progressive moment, a successive series of different moments, joining together to give the impression of one continuous flow. It moves from cause to cause, effect to effect, one point to another, one state of existence to another, giving an outward impression that it is one continuous and unified movement, where as in reality it is not. The river of yesterday is not the same as the river of today. The river of this moment is not going to be the same as the river of the next moment. So does life. It changes continuously, becomes something or the other from moment to moment. </i>(from <a href="http://www.urbandharma.org/" target="_blank">Urban Dharma</a>)<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLADChWzDVU1aaIzAsu1jlOP16jdgJSOdZdl0AudS-A6RxQEyHDzJem4N2xeJIQ7v6Dlr1ku4UIWEAJBdK9VcxMlbAGV81Ydllfuicg6kgj0lLlhrppjGkLb9EFc3qTJr5Edbn2ZM9YrFP/s1600/Hogtown-Creek-Loblolly-by-Bryan-Fleuch-Apr-16-04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLADChWzDVU1aaIzAsu1jlOP16jdgJSOdZdl0AudS-A6RxQEyHDzJem4N2xeJIQ7v6Dlr1ku4UIWEAJBdK9VcxMlbAGV81Ydllfuicg6kgj0lLlhrppjGkLb9EFc3qTJr5Edbn2ZM9YrFP/s320/Hogtown-Creek-Loblolly-by-Bryan-Fleuch-Apr-16-04.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Loblolly Creek, Gainesville, Florida<br />
© 2011 by <a href="http://www.friendsofnatureparks.org/parks/#" target="_blank">Friends of Nature Parks</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Impermanence goes beyond philosophy. It is a basic state of nature in physics as well. For a more technical discussion of this notion in both Buddhism and modern physics, see Victor Mansfield's 1998 article, "<a href="http://www.buddhanet.net/timeimpe.htm" target="_blank">Time and Impermanence in Middle Way Buddhism and Modern Physics</a>," originally a talk given at the Physics and Tibetan Buddhism Conference at the University of California, Santa Barbara.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The other day, on a rainy walk to the local creek with my dear friend and her dog, I witnessed such a lesson in very simple terms. The dog was thrilled with a tennis ball that we had discovered, and he was chasing it and carrying it around as he bounded up and down the creek. Spotting an interesting stick, he placed the ball in the shallow water. A few minutes later, tiring of the stick, he returned for the ball, only to find that it had disappeared downstream. He looked up to us, confused. <i>Why is my ball gone? Who took it?</i> In our grief and our loss, we often look skyward, confused. <i>Why?</i> But this is just the nature of the world, as gentle and as reasonable as the flowing creek. And we do not mourn each ripple as it flattens and disappears. We call such perpetual motion beautiful.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/qf73T_-C5gA?rel=0" width="420"></iframe>
<br />
<br />
Yet this is not really about loss, but about change. In its nature, water also teaches us a kind of permanence. It is liquid, gas, or solid. It is internalized and externalized. It remains a continuous, dynamic entity, paradoxical in its changing faces. And it is in the continuity and connectivity that we find something akin to hope.<br />
<br />
<i><b>Ecclesiastes 1:7</b> All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.</i></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid_1GEYaJAVapl4eTupyraVPGLVjyiXGCbBP2NRpc_ALGln4CFejaSik7UB1Y0cRGp3SjBcL7SrRFecFonpiL9bx8ehXjIKdzebkvTZOcYTBPOcp8PxAeyLGxSN8MkYPQP9SGToVQPwTjV/s1600/om7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid_1GEYaJAVapl4eTupyraVPGLVjyiXGCbBP2NRpc_ALGln4CFejaSik7UB1Y0cRGp3SjBcL7SrRFecFonpiL9bx8ehXjIKdzebkvTZOcYTBPOcp8PxAeyLGxSN8MkYPQP9SGToVQPwTjV/s320/om7.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.faithistorment.com/2012/07/conceptual-photos-by-olaf-mueller.html" target="_blank">Conceptual Photos</a> by Olaf Mueller</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Systematic, apparently chaotic, and deeply faithful in its journeys, in its ebbs and flows, water offers us a territory of trust.<br />
<br />
There is also another water we all know: the primal water of the womb. When else are we embraced so entirely and so safely? When else are we touched by another so completely? The healing, often magical power of touch is a taste of what we once knew: nearly total connection, before the first shock of becoming separated and, perhaps, feeling lost.<br />
<br />
Camelia Elias, in her blog <a href="http://taroflexions.wordpress.com/2012/05/13/tarological-touch/" target="_blank">Taro(t)flexions</a>, writes of the honesty evoked through touch and visualization:<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1SLU7s0sYwSGYOZFK53KwIFybB6p2SWpXdQorXKRUEAfebYthaBR5lE3r37mm0qC8uD__qjDcyS-nvyhNn11PPNzPIMTMMj-RVl32PWtm3IP41TfvaX2YEaxvWyUqGUtC_u_eo3KnwcXf/s1600/6_03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1SLU7s0sYwSGYOZFK53KwIFybB6p2SWpXdQorXKRUEAfebYthaBR5lE3r37mm0qC8uD__qjDcyS-nvyhNn11PPNzPIMTMMj-RVl32PWtm3IP41TfvaX2YEaxvWyUqGUtC_u_eo3KnwcXf/s320/6_03.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.faithistorment.com/2012/07/underwater-photos-by-erin-mulvehill.html" target="_blank">Underwater</a>: Photos by Erin Mulvehill</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>Whether imagined or not, touching is a participatory rather than an individual move. When we say, ‘I’m touched,’ about something, we first get the visuals in place and then the abstractness of the situation. Touching is therefore quite magical. For instance, there is a powerful relation between asking people to imagine things and physically touching them. Touch relating to visualization is the most complicit of acts. When people allow you to touch them in that way, they strip naked for you. Yet their nakedness only serves to give way to a translucent light right into their souls.</i><br />
<br />
When water encircles our bodies, we are also vulnerable and touched. This offers another reminder of our erstwhile selfless selves, a vague yet urgent thirst for the unity we knew in a time beyond memory.<br />
<br />
Yet the water out here is not insular. It carries us or it passes us by. It cannot bear to stay still. Still waters stink and fester. Stagnant, they invite diseases and no longer draw our loving gaze.<br />
<br />
My Willamette is not a pretty opal shine, steady and posing for a grateful human eye. This is my Willamette:<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/4bcISkQyjEs?rel=0" width="560"></iframe>
<br />
<br />
<i>"Nothing was, nothing will be, everything has reality and presence"</i> (<i>Siddhartha</i>, Herman Hesse, trans. Hilda Rosner, 1951, p. 87).<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
And perhaps herein lies its true lesson: even in the constant flux of relationship, the objects carried away to unimagined lands, the memories that ripple as the wind and time transform their edges, and our own selves as we erode, nothing is really lost, and we are still safe. And we are greater than we think. Through all of this, the water embraces the life it carries, the rivers still find each other, the ocean still looks to the moon. And yet nothing is ever the same.<br />
<br />
<i>Siddhartha listened. He was now all ears, completely absorbed in his listening, completely empty, completely receptive; he felt that he had now learned all that there was to learn about listening. He had often heard this all before, these many voices in the river, but today it sounded new. By this time he could no longer distinguish the many voices, could not tell the gleeful ones from the weeping ones, the children’s voices from the grown men’s; they all belonged together, the lament of longing and the knowing man’s laughter, the cry of anger and the moans of the dying; it was all one, it was all interwoven and knotted together, interconnected in a thousand ways. And all of this together, all the voices, all the goals, all the longing, all the suffering, all the pleasure, all the good and evil, all of this together was the world. All of this together was the river of events, the music of life. And whenever Siddhartha listened attentively to that river, that song of thousand voices, when he listened neither to the sorrow nor the laughter, when he tied his soul not to any individual voice, entering into it with his self, but instead heard them all, perceiving the totality, the oneness, then the great song of a thousand voices consisted of a single word, which was </i>om<i>, the absolute.</i> (<i>Siddhartha</i>, Herman Hesse, found <a href="http://light-essence.tumblr.com/post/2418497295/excerpt-from-siddhartha" target="_blank">here</a>)<br />
<br />
In what is left, do we find the soul of us, the divine spirit, the one sentience? Is that what we water-leaning, toe-dipping creatures truly seek?<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/mHzwaPtWyUM?rel=0" width="560"></iframe>
</div>
</div>ChasingPatternshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16792497135543281378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-155179553643333539.post-48285085158151012952012-07-19T17:50:00.000-04:002012-07-23T10:59:09.267-04:00Slow time<span style="background-color: white;">We must begin to think differently, perhaps: <i>We </i></span><i style="background-color: white;">have all the time in the world</i><span style="background-color: white;">. </span><span style="background-color: white;">Of course, this is a lie, and we know it. But pushing the egg out of the nest accomplishes little good.</span><br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.carolbuckley.com/elevisions/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/P3050048.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://www.carolbuckley.com/elevisions/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/P3050048.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lottie and Minnie, from <a href="http://www.carolbuckley.com/elevisions/" target="_blank">elevisions</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
A lesson delivered in tumbled syllables is not learned. Hurried intimacy is not intimate. Forced conversation does not build the relationship so desired. In the rush for bliss, bliss is lost. This is about restraint and purpose. In our work, it may be about making intellectual connections and diving into the depths of the springs with measured breaths. In our bodies, it may mean long walks and all-natural ingredients. (See, for example, the <a href="http://www.slowfood.com/" target="_blank">Slow Food</a> movement.) In our relationships, it may be about listening and tenderness.<br />
<br />
John Huckins, a blogger at <a href="http://sojo.net/blogs/gods-politics" target="_blank"><i>God's Politics</i></a>, contemplates <a href="http://sojo.net/blogs/2012/07/12/jesus%E2%80%99-invitation-discipline-%E2%80%9Cwasting-time%E2%80%9D" target="_blank">the role of "wasting" time in Jesus's life</a>:<br />
<br /><i>As I walked the modern-day ruins of this site, I couldn't help picturing a 20-year-old Jesus working next to his dad while listening and living a radically submerged life within this context. While shaping rock that would act as foundations for buildings whose use he may or may not have agreed with, Jesus was present.<br /><br />Jesus was not just present for a year or two; he was present for 30 years before entering his formal ministry.There is an element of lingering inherent with submerging. It is a willingness to be present to the point of feeling like we are wasting time, when in reality we are leaving ourselves open to be used by the Spirit in ways we be might otherwise have never been aware of. Lingering is not simply walking aimlessly in circles; it is knowing what we are looking for and being intentional with our time and presence. </i><div class="p2" style="border: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;">
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="225" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/9553745" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="500"></iframe> <br />
<a href="http://vimeo.com/9553745">Sigur Rós - Glósóli</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/arniandkinski">Arni & Kinski</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
<br />
In <i><a href="http://www.creativitypost.com/" target="_blank">The Creativity Post</a></i>, Michael Michalko notes that famed surrealist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Dal%C3%AD" target="_blank">Salvador Dal<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">í</span></span></a><span style="background-color: white;">, in his search for the artistic visions that populated his works, had a certain technique. He wasted time, drifting in and out of sleep:</span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.edali.org/images/salvador-dali.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.edali.org/images/salvador-dali.jpg" width="248" /></a><i>His favorite technique is that he would put a tin plate on the floor and then sit by a chair beside it, holding a spoon over the plate. He would then totally relax his body; sometimes he would begin to fall asleep. The moment that he began to doze the spoon would slip from his fingers and clang on the plate, immediately waking him to capture the surreal images. </i>(more <a href="http://www.creativitypost.com/create/salvador_dalis_creative_thinking_technique">here</a>)<br />
<br />
How many spoons? How many hours? And yet, do we fault him for this? Should he have been out working harder, painting more, without spoons or tin plates? What kind of artist would he have been? Would our vision of the world have been the same without it?<br />
<br />
<a href="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178940654l/857860.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178940654l/857860.jpg" width="128" /></a><br />
Two of my favorite children's books talk about the value of giving your heart to the squandered moment: the wandered road or the accidental friendship. In <i><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/857860.Grasshopper_on_the_Road" target="_blank">Grasshopper on the Road</a> </i>(1978), an open-minded grasshopper on a walk encounters all sorts of characters: beetles who have political tunnel vision and only love mornings, a worm who is fastidious about his belongings, butterflies who cling to routine, a fly who cannot stop sweeping.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://locospatronus.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/jt-cathouse12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://locospatronus.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/jt-cathouse12.jpg" width="154" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cat's makeshift home</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
All of them live in the trance of daily life, without contemplation, filling their days in ways that will never be enough, never make them full. Ah, but the grasshopper, he alone seems happy.<br />
<br />
The second book, <i><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/270705.J_T_">J.T.</a></i> by Jane Wagner, is about a young man who is struggling with bullies and with his own sense of morality discovers a half-dead cat. He builds it a makeshift house, feeds it, and visits it every day.Through patience and love for something that has been left to struggle on its own, obviously seen as a "waste of time" to all who had passed by the wretched (beautiful) creature, J.T.'s spirit is transformed. The photographs are by Gordon Parks, Jr. (more <a href="http://locospatronus.wordpress.com/tag/jane-wagner/" target="_blank">here</a> on this and its relevance to black history and film, with spoilers). The book is from a movie, the first part of which I've posted here. I warn you, it is a very, very sad story. But it teaches us something about slow love.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/sS2flty4wA4?rel=0" width="420"></iframe>
<br />
<br />
I must admit here that my advocacy of slow living does include some self-interest. It is only with such a mindset that those of us with disabilities become truly equal. It is in the loss of preoccupation with routine and norms that we find space for the diverse physiology and neurology of the human species. Too often, those of us who have disabilities are discarded: our gaze is not met, our words are not heard, our love is not reciprocated. This is not a consequence of the disability itself, but of the <i>social</i> forces that tell us to avoid "wasting" time, that push us to reach our goals as quickly as possible. Indeed, if you spend time with me, things will go more slowly. I might "waste" your time. And the same might be said for the soft-spoken, the tangential thinkers, and those from distant lands. Do we really not have time to lift somebody's weak body out of a car, to wait for well-thought-out words to emerge from hesitant lips, to follow a roundabout path of cognitive connections, or to bear some of the communicative burden of a tongue that carries what we perceive as an accent? What exactly are we here to do?<br />
<br />
A focus on the process draws our attention to a space of loving presence.<br />
<br />
I admire gleaners, those who pick up odd things from the road because they are interesting, these things others have discarded, forgotten, or simply walked by, unnoticing. I value this because it means they can see as others cannot. It means that, in their eyes, I, too, might be good enough to keep.<br />
<br />
French filmmaker <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agn%C3%A8s_Varda">Agnès Varda</a> is a visionary, I believe. In the spirit of gleaning, I leave you with her full-length documentary on the idea, both in the history of French art and as a practice of survival in France today.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="371" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/37089032?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="500"></iframe> <br />
<a href="http://vimeo.com/37089032">Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/wdrotv">WDROTV</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
<br /></div>ChasingPatternshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16792497135543281378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-155179553643333539.post-39083404774712909462012-07-15T20:39:00.001-04:002012-07-15T20:39:46.391-04:00Light keeper<div style="margin: 0 0 10px 0; padding: 0; font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.6em;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/paperaeroplanes/7383285348/" title="light keeper"><img src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5451/7383285348_e532b7058b.jpg" alt="light keeper by Julia Trotti" /></a><br/><span style="margin: 0;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/paperaeroplanes/7383285348/">light keeper</a>, a photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/paperaeroplanes/">Julia Trotti</a> on Flickr.</span></div><p>All that we hold...</p>ChasingPatternshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16792497135543281378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-155179553643333539.post-73471726620743270402012-07-14T19:21:00.001-04:002012-07-14T21:33:56.061-04:00Otherskies<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://bluenred.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/orange_sky_by_flowgraphic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://bluenred.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/orange_sky_by_flowgraphic.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An orange and pearl sky, from the blog <a href="http://bluenred.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">red</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="background-color: white;">Nicola Griffith's world of Jeep in </span><i style="background-color: white;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ammonite-Nicola-Griffith/dp/0345452380" target="_blank">Ammonite </a></i><span style="background-color: white;">is a world that swims in a sky of pearl and tangerine, whose air is tinged with an alien nutmeg warmth. And perhaps just as strange are our own worlds, our eyes that may or </span><a href="http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/2612-color-red-blue-scientists.html" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">may not perceive the same wavelengths in the same way</a><span style="background-color: white;">. Indeed, you could be wandering right now under my tangerine sky.</span><br />
<a href="http://ebooks-imgs.connect.com/ebooks/product/400/000/000/000/000/030/419/400000000000000030419_s4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://ebooks-imgs.connect.com/ebooks/product/400/000/000/000/000/030/419/400000000000000030419_s4.jpg" width="133" /></a><br />
This is just the beginning. We are alien worlds.<br />
<br />
Do we not approach each other with that same trepidation that beats in the heart of the anthropologist on a planet with three moons and electromagnetic disturbances? So we say: <i>I do not know how to tread on your land. I do not know what to accept with grace and what may be an unfamiliar poison. My language may babble in an inscrutable stream. I may starve or suffocate without special protection.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><br />
And in loving, are we not also this same anthropologist? <i>I want to touch this alien leaf, though strange creatures may bite me. I will adjust my gait to your gravity. I breathe in your nutmeg air, trusting my lungs to the pleasure. I count the stars in this tangerine sky, though the patterns are unfamiliar. Please trust and carry my weight on your earth. </i><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://cdn.babyrazzi.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/baby-and-belly-button.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://cdn.babyrazzi.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/baby-and-belly-button.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
In all of this, a recognition of shared sentience, of the oneness of us. But the love is also in the unique and strange, in the inhalation of new airs, in the caressing of our cosmic bodies, cubbyholes of history,<span style="background-color: white;"> held in the minute <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/jason-tetro/bellybutton-germs_b_1637739.html" target="_blank">microcosms of our navels</a>. </span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.robrdunn.com/" target="_blank">Dr. Rob Dunn</a>, in a study on the bacteria in our navels, has found entire life stories hidden within:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="border: none; font-family: Georgia, Century, Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 14px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">
<i>The data has since led Dunn to identify the associated factors leading to such a diverse bellybutton microbiome. He tried numerous factors, such as age and gender but nothing was even remotely close. Then came another possibility that seems to Dunn as though it may be the key. He decided to get more information from the participants, including their place of birth and where they had lived as children and beyond. That's when the data almost miraculously came together revealing something that was beyond incredible.</i></div>
<div style="border: none; font-family: Georgia, Century, Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 14px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">
<i>The navel bacteria were related to where the person has lived over the course of their lifetime. The tiny anatomical vestibule was actually a museum of lifetime experiences.</i></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/sky071112/s_s10_9113919P.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="286" src="http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/sky071112/s_s10_9113919P.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana; line-height: 19px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">© <a href="http://www.camilleseaman.com/" target="_blank">Camille Seaman</a>, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/07/lovely-sky-monsters/100336/" target="_blank">The Atlantic</a></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="border: none; font-family: Georgia, Century, Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 14px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">
<i>Dunn wants to see more data before he is totally convinced, but the preliminary data are exciting. "Our bodies are recognizing the universe in so many amazing ways," Dunn tells me. "While the brain fumbles to understand ourselves in our own world, the body is learning to adapt and co-exist with the environment around it. What we experience stays with us like a never ending microbial diary." </i>(more <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/jason-tetro/bellybutton-germs_b_1637739.html" target="_blank">here</a>)<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpN7DRehpaiQ5uGrISs_OQ9gQvAs-DmLsxcGT2D-vGW8EGew5BjD9hs87TVn-q6m80aAYeNSZKgDipW2EOghVMmdsAhY7fwld5ocjSLDccBv9SzOUM4OVqrb3L8wyQGO7b8CCz2sG8ZIw/s1600/cr4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpN7DRehpaiQ5uGrISs_OQ9gQvAs-DmLsxcGT2D-vGW8EGew5BjD9hs87TVn-q6m80aAYeNSZKgDipW2EOghVMmdsAhY7fwld5ocjSLDccBv9SzOUM4OVqrb3L8wyQGO7b8CCz2sG8ZIw/s640/cr4.jpg" width="424" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #3b3b3b; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px; text-align: left;"><a href="http://www.behance.net/gallery/We-Are-Nature-Multiple-Exposure-Portraits-Vol-II/4454689" target="_blank">We Are Nature - Multiple Exposure Portraits Vol. II</a>, © <a href="http://www.christofferrelander.com/" target="_blank">Christoffer Relander</a> 2012</span>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn0g3X3AljSLWJl_1HMHLOEnueh6PIZRNdRJ5n508gfHDn7cRgOvN_enVbeHGm0r2mF4mOsoz6m13WuNPv2AQbjDRTul5gV8MD_mwKKNs4LmKpJRSM4_bqKCxMk-ce7qBrv2sMbDyxKMwk/s1600/Howard-Terpning-The-Storyteller.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="274" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn0g3X3AljSLWJl_1HMHLOEnueh6PIZRNdRJ5n508gfHDn7cRgOvN_enVbeHGm0r2mF4mOsoz6m13WuNPv2AQbjDRTul5gV8MD_mwKKNs4LmKpJRSM4_bqKCxMk-ce7qBrv2sMbDyxKMwk/s320/Howard-Terpning-The-Storyteller.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Howard Terpning, <i>The Storyteller</i>. From <a href="http://www.firstpeople.us/" target="_blank">First People</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="border: none; font-family: Georgia, Century, Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 14px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">
Even our tiniest places hold so much of us. Imagine, then, what else is to be found in these creatures around us, human and otherwise. What <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/07/lovely-sky-monsters/100336/" target="_blank">sky monsters</a> lie emergent in your gaze? Does your thunder rumble, swirl, or crack? </div>
<div style="border: none; font-family: Georgia, Century, Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 14px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: white;">Even in silence, and even on other worlds, we carry our histories, in our eyes and in our flesh. In the way we look to and see the heavens, and in the shape of our storm clouds. So what better way to love than to seek out the stories, or perhaps simply to gaze at someone else's navel for a little while?</span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>ChasingPatternshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16792497135543281378noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-155179553643333539.post-60155222040225873432012-06-09T17:06:00.000-04:002012-06-09T17:06:05.020-04:00At home with the cats<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.berndnaut.nl/images/cumulusklein.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://www.berndnaut.nl/images/cumulusklein.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Numbus II, 2012. Cloud in room. More <a href="http://boingboing.net/2012/06/08/artist-makes-clouds-in-gallery.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+%28Boing+Boing%29&utm_content=Google+Reader" target="_blank">here</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The rain is falling heavily today, with thunder and a dark heat that reminds me of other homes: Oregon in the fall, Puebla in late summer afternoons. It is exhilarating when the sky cracks open.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I00000wvAC0iHyOs/s/880/880/8380-3347.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I00000wvAC0iHyOs/s/880/880/8380-3347.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rainbow against warm-gray sky; Eugene, Oregon.<br />
© Greg Vaughn</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
At least, stuck in my house like this, I will not make my cats angry over abandonment. <br />
<br />
This poem captures it so well, the sorrow of the feline (warning: this is sad; also, enlarge it if you can, to see the words):<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/42569681" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="400"></iframe>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
And now to cheer you, a cat poem, found <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174146" target="_blank">here</a>:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<strong>The cat's song</strong><br /><em>By Marge Piercy</em> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br />Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness. <br />My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says <br />the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing <br />milk from his mother's forgotten breasts.<br /><br />Let us walk in the woods, says the cat. <br />I'll teach you to read the tabloid of scents,<br />to fade into shadow, wait like a trap, to hunt. <br />Now I lay this plump warm mouse on your mat. <br /><br />You feed me, I try to feed you, we are friends, <br />says the cat, although I am more equal than you. <br />Can you leap twenty times the height of your body? <br />Can you run up and down trees? Jump between roofs? <br /><br />Let us rub our bodies together and talk of touch. <br />My emotions are pure as salt crystals and as hard. <br />My lusts glow like my eyes. I sing to you in the mornings <br />walking round and round your bed and into your face. <br /><br />Come I will teach you to dance as naturally <br />as falling asleep and waking and stretching long, long. <br />I speak greed with my paws and fear with my whiskers. <br />Envy lashes my tail. Love speaks me entire, a word <br /><br />of fur. I will teach you to be still as an egg <br />and to slip like the ghost of wind through the grass.<br /><br /> <span style="color: #999999;">Marge Piercy, “The cat's song” from <em>Mars & Her Children</em> (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992). First appeared in <em>Matrix</em> 28 (Spring 1989). Copyright © 1989, 1992 by Marge Piercy and Middlemarsh, Inc. Used by permission of the Wallace Literary Agency, Inc.<br /><br /> Source: <em>Mars & Her Children </em>(Alfred A. Knopf, 1992)</span></div>
<br />
<br />ChasingPatternshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16792497135543281378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-155179553643333539.post-78747405459694505802012-06-08T12:27:00.001-04:002012-06-08T12:27:18.488-04:00Venus and Ray<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/.a/6a00df351e888f883401630630e47c970d-400wi" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/.a/6a00df351e888f883401630630e47c970d-400wi" width="382" /></a></div>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZuKIsEnM3de0vFJ5-eVXWf-PHBeZhHuFc10CZcZIiZ5MSJyfJSqho8ZY2lRkT8oj_E4oozjLkkqcyH8DG_bhhWOIGpY8gF6ym05RYB8BoF3Fm2ZLCwAI-ambMX-ZII8KnjU-KcNIHQG0/s1600/3+notes+clemente.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZuKIsEnM3de0vFJ5-eVXWf-PHBeZhHuFc10CZcZIiZ5MSJyfJSqho8ZY2lRkT8oj_E4oozjLkkqcyH8DG_bhhWOIGpY8gF6ym05RYB8BoF3Fm2ZLCwAI-ambMX-ZII8KnjU-KcNIHQG0/s200/3+notes+clemente.jpg" width="160" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://thepagansphinx.blogspot.com/2012/05/artist-of-week-francesco-clemente.html" target="_blank">Francesco Clemente</a>, <i>Son</i> (1983), oil on linen</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I am a day or so late on all of this, but I wanted to pay homage to the great Ray Bradbury, who passed away the day of the transit of Venus, June 5, 2012. Bradbury was the first writer who took me to other possibilities. I remember in particular the yellow, wet, miserable world of Venus he imagined for us in "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Rain" target="_blank">The Long Rain</a>," interesting to read as a child in the interminable downpour of Oregon.<br />
<br />
Goodbye to this wonderful imaginer of worlds whose reach into our lives, our children's lives, our grandchildren's lives, is exponential. His <a href="http://www.raybradbury.com/" target="_blank">website</a> recounts a story of his decision to reach for a kind of immortality:<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinQxukhq8r5Sc4p4DcdvtAWVzKWQBFp5TdVeGMkmdh3MfLL-Gxz0eeuYwMv4FMceQpxiGwoC-7xaq6R20ZM-S35rXj3hqrXbaIInOHP_vKfORA0h4U0aGApt9DC9yPR55q6xWNAu6FCzk/s400/coraline14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinQxukhq8r5Sc4p4DcdvtAWVzKWQBFp5TdVeGMkmdh3MfLL-Gxz0eeuYwMv4FMceQpxiGwoC-7xaq6R20ZM-S35rXj3hqrXbaIInOHP_vKfORA0h4U0aGApt9DC9yPR55q6xWNAu6FCzk/s320/coraline14.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Coraline and her cat</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>"Throughout his life, Bradbury liked to recount the story of meeting a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, in 1932. At the end of his performance Electrico reached out to the twelve-year-old Bradbury, touched the boy with his sword, and commanded, Live forever! Bradbury later said, I decided that was the greatest idea I had ever heard. I started writing every day. I never stopped."</i><br />
<br />
<br />
He inspired, for example, <a href="http://journal.neilgaiman.com/" target="_blank">Neil Gaiman</a>, who brought us <i><a href="http://www.mousecircus.com/coralinefilm.aspx" target="_blank">Coraline</a></i>, among others. Here is a short story he wrote, called "The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury."<br />
<br />
<iframe frameborder="0" height="166" scrolling="no" src="http://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F48950219&show_artwork=true" width="100%"></iframe>
<br />
<br />
On this day unlike any other in our lifetimes, as Venus shows herself to the world, Bradbury's worlds endure.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/4Z9rM8ChTjY" width="560"></iframe></div>
<br />ChasingPatternshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16792497135543281378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-155179553643333539.post-71358738403444335932012-06-07T17:59:00.002-04:002012-06-08T13:26:04.793-04:00Relating, refraction, and relationship<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Haeckel_Polycyttaria.jpg/1024px-Haeckel_Polycyttaria.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Haeckel_Polycyttaria.jpg/1024px-Haeckel_Polycyttaria.jpg" width="143" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ernst Haeckel. 1904. <i>Kunstformen </i><br />
<i>der Natur,</i> plate 51: Polycyttaria. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Though my much-younger self would never had admitted to really loving anything having to do with math (though recently I have been accused of being "obsessed with numbers"), I have always loved fractals. I love them because they're pretty, sure. But I love them, honestly, for something else: they are heterogeneous and deeply connected. This is the kind of world I believe in.<br />
<br />
In animal form, we see it clearly enough. A while back, the lovely blog <a href="http://www.subblue.com/" target="_blank">subblue</a> demonstrated the easy connection between biological forms, like this one from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Haeckel" target="_blank">Heackel</a>'s early 20th-century depiction of art forms in nature, and mathematically enhanced images of biology, below.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.subblue.com/assets/0000/3497/Haeckel-Astrophyton-darwini_full.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://www.subblue.com/assets/0000/3497/Haeckel-Astrophyton-darwini_full.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://www.subblue.com/blog/2009/7/18/artforms_of_nature" target="_blank">Artforms of nature</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Not such a far cry from the mathematical:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.oneness4all.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/fractal17.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="291" src="http://www.oneness4all.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/fractal17.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
So, what's so interesting? To me, refraction. The unity of what is not the same but is connected. It is like taking a step back from the universe, as if we could look from the outside. </div>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/joplin052312/j01_07116230.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="276" src="http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/joplin052312/j01_07116230.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A tall steel cross is refracted in raindrops on a window in Joplin, Missouri, on May 7, 2012. The cross is all that was left standing of St. Mary's Catholic Church, which was destroyed by an EF-5 tornado that tore through a large swath of the city and killed 161 people nearly a year ago. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel) (<i><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/05/one-year-since-the-joplin-tornado/100303/" target="_blank">In Focus</a></i>)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
To simplify the idea, water drops offer another example. Does each cross, each flower know that it is not alone? Looking in, we certainly know. <br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/haraldna19/7108696229/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="macroreflection by haraldna, on Flickr"><img alt="macroreflection" height="320" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7196/7108696229_41cc8a9dbb.jpg" width="212" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/haraldna19/7108696229/" target="_blank">Macroreflection</a> by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/haraldna19/" target="_blank">Harald Naper</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
How can we, in our separate notions of identity, see the refractions that surround us?<br />
<br />
What do we see when we look into a friend's eyes? An other, a separate being? Yes, of course. And yet, we know this is not the whole story. This relation, this refraction of something else is there, and we <i>relate</i>. And if we allow ourselves to feel the density of connection, in space, in time, in the mere fact of living and the miracle of loving, in looking beyond our own small drop of water, there is healing in that.<br />
<br />
Healers are those who can connect with others. Those who see themselves clearly enough to forgive themselves, and in this, judgment falls away. This is outlandishly idealistic, such clarity, such connection. But we have dreamt of it. And I would like to think that anything we can dream of in such a way must be at least to some extent represented by the truth of human experience. I turn to Zhaan of <i>Farscape</i>: anecdotal evidence that conscious connection can heal.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/2SBmIykQpYU" width="480"></iframe></div>
<br />
The possibility--indeed, necessity--of connectedness and relationship make sense from a scientific viewpoint as well. In his blog <i>Frontal Cortex</i>, Jonah Lehrer <a href="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/the-self-illusion-an-interview-with-bruce-hood/" target="_blank">interviews the author</a> of the book <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Self-Illusion-Creates-Identity/dp/019989759X" target="_blank">The Self Illusion</a></i>, Bruce Hood. On the notion of self, Hood explains:<br />
<br />
<i>"...for most of us, we consider our self as some essential core of who we are. Most of us feel our self is at the center of our existence responding to everything around us – that notion of an integrated entity is what I am challenging, not the experience of self. Must of us, including myself have that experience but that does not make it real. For example, most us think that we see the world continuously throughout the waking day when in fact we only see a fraction of the world in front of us, and because the brain blanks out our visual experience every time we move our eyes in a process called saccadic suppression, we are effectively blind for at least 2 hrs of the day. This is why you cannot see your own eyes moving when you look in a mirror! So conscious experience is not a guarantee of what's really true."</i><br />
<br />
Indeed, we form this experience of life in and through relationship:<br />
<br />
<i>"In the book, I argue that because we have evolved as social animals, those around us construct a large part of our mental life that we experience as our self. We can see the influence of others but often fail to recognize how we too are shaped. I am not denying the role of genes and temperaments that we inherit from our biology. After all, children raised in the same environment can end up very different but even these intrinsic properties of who we are play out in a social world which defines us. If you think about it, many of the ways we describe each other, such as helpful, kind, generous, mean, rude or selfish can only make sense in the context of others. So those around us largely define who we are. I hope this book will remind us of this obvious point that we so easily forget."</i><br />
<br />
So today, I am thankful for our connections. <br />
<br />ChasingPatternshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16792497135543281378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-155179553643333539.post-58145269793727633422012-05-22T13:08:00.002-04:002012-05-22T13:28:27.744-04:00"Soft, yes. Weak, no."<div style="text-align: center;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br /></div>
In her well-known article on the traits of gifted adults, "<a href="http://www.sengifted.org/archives/articles/can-you-hear-the-flowers-sing-issues-for-gifted-adults">Can you hear the flowers sing?</a>", Lovecky writes of the trait of sensitivity:<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAPd-fRb2zCDoXt-3IT0cqaWmmKFiuqnw9-MXYoKOU755dA97_PILu4WXY_I2XiptuEIafxdqGT_ylPuAbJH4Dm_Hf08gxwJwJco4wq-KgN50l64MbQe-vKnhY8I3YqxRIU5lUORtiWJ0y/s1600/picture-9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Zhaan from Farscape" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAPd-fRb2zCDoXt-3IT0cqaWmmKFiuqnw9-MXYoKOU755dA97_PILu4WXY_I2XiptuEIafxdqGT_ylPuAbJH4Dm_Hf08gxwJwJco4wq-KgN50l64MbQe-vKnhY8I3YqxRIU5lUORtiWJ0y/s320/picture-9.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Zhaan from <i>Farscape</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>"A depth of feeling that results in a sense of identification with others characterizes the trait of sensitivity. Gifted people form deep attachments and react to the feeling tone of situations; they think with their feelings. People who are highly sensitive make commitments to other people and to social causes. They can be enthusiastic and intensely single-minded about their dedication. Poets, Investigative reporters, Peace Corps workers, and political and religious leaders are often gifted in sensitivity. Examples of such people include St. Francis of Assisi, Elizabeth Blackwell, Emily Dickinson, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, and Virginia Woolf.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><br />
<i>"People gifted with the trait of sensitivity find positive social and emotional benefit in their deep concern for the needs and rights of others, their empathy for the feelings of others, and their desire to help even at significant cost to themselves. These gifted adults may be unusually aware of the feeling tone of situations and of the more sensual aspects of the environment, such as color and shading. They are often aware of their own shortcomings. Some gifted adults feel a sense of unity with the cosmos, an experience of a universal sharing of self. Adults gifted with sensitivity tend to be highly moral people concerned with giving and with doing what is right for others."</i><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEwL0vWk80yVj26_f3lR4oT_6gDViC-oONDBl8U9e76sxvGmKSxY_aDuweNCm9qj0xo2cug76YfZ7OxtQ0pHXSF5I4gfllrUN1e8S1cfK5uiItLIzpT54grSSNCBz7gL_nwYLUme28Krp9/s1600/QLD-dunk-island-rainforest.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="rainforest" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEwL0vWk80yVj26_f3lR4oT_6gDViC-oONDBl8U9e76sxvGmKSxY_aDuweNCm9qj0xo2cug76YfZ7OxtQ0pHXSF5I4gfllrUN1e8S1cfK5uiItLIzpT54grSSNCBz7gL_nwYLUme28Krp9/s320/QLD-dunk-island-rainforest.jpg" title="" width="316" /></a>Unfortunately, any sensitivity has the tendency to be viewed as somehow passive, fragile, or weak. Yet let us think in other terms for a moment. Psychologist (and my former teacher) <a href="http://www.psychevolution.com/">Paula Prober</a> refers to such minds as "rainforest minds": rich, vibrant, and, yes, sensitive. In the density of its riches, apparently small damages can create disproportionate harm. The <a href="http://library.thinkquest.org/03oct/02166/Kaitlin/Kaitlin.html">plants heal</a>, the <span id="goog_1314561281"></span><a href="http://www.rainforestanimals.net/">animals</a> <span id="goog_1314561282"></span>are beyond compare.<br />
<br />
So sensitive folks are simply densely rich. Does this come with a certain vulnerability? Yes. Does it mean weakness? No.<br />
<br />
To turn to another world now, we may remember Toph from <i>Avatar: The Last Airbender</i>. She is small, female, and blind. Her hyper-sensitive feet "see" for her; they remain exposed to the world, easy to damage, far from impervious to the lash of any flame. Yet it is this that makes her powerful.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/LIWXfZrK5tA?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br />
We must learn to move in new ways.ChasingPatternshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16792497135543281378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-155179553643333539.post-82860671121445422242010-09-26T18:59:00.000-04:002010-09-26T18:59:27.679-04:00Painting and flowAs an alternative to bouncing around the globe, especially when I am needed on the home front, I have taken up painting. Next month, two of my pieces will be shown in the <a href="http://www.artcenterofestes.com/LinesIntoShapes.html">Lines into Shapes</a> show in Estes Park, Colorado. They chose "Reflection" and "I Shall Wear Purple," shown below.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju4RTOImSku3E6DpAjz0OtQWGNeODC8aKDZEU_g_QzgdhGdVE9a1BZ8G_mfBdfpPqWp0AliVw3oh_qRCsFqPsFDxSbgjCed-xNnYzEPIB_x3cYMCFppbebF17jSu94Xq-qxA-t9vBBr6Kw/s400/artwork+2010+003.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Reflection</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju4RTOImSku3E6DpAjz0OtQWGNeODC8aKDZEU_g_QzgdhGdVE9a1BZ8G_mfBdfpPqWp0AliVw3oh_qRCsFqPsFDxSbgjCed-xNnYzEPIB_x3cYMCFppbebF17jSu94Xq-qxA-t9vBBr6Kw/s1600/artwork+2010+003.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTkicKy0iyssuiWoJjE1IH-eKBWleUxuSZPRC3uL147T2gZHOlUBgeimMIJ2340HqPbQ90X9cp2TB5HNDXSTWT6_95_gA0FKwteyLYGgtyE0fNiec5LoQS3oPbczA2Ouv9w0tSFq0ZLyGu/s400/Ishallwearpurple.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>I Shall Wear Purple</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTkicKy0iyssuiWoJjE1IH-eKBWleUxuSZPRC3uL147T2gZHOlUBgeimMIJ2340HqPbQ90X9cp2TB5HNDXSTWT6_95_gA0FKwteyLYGgtyE0fNiec5LoQS3oPbczA2Ouv9w0tSFq0ZLyGu/s1600/Ishallwearpurple.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><br />
<br />
The second image's title is taken from a collection of poetry<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=seizingtheuns-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0285634119&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> by Jenny Joseph that I remember from when I was a child. This poem taught me the beauty and freedom of aging, of coming into one's own. The title poem goes like this:<br />
<br />
<b>Warning</b><br />
<br />
<div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #333333;">When I am an old woman I shall wear purple<br />
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.<br />
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves<br />
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.<br />
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired<br />
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells<br />
And run my stick along the public railings<br />
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.<br />
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain<br />
And pick flowers in other people's gardens<br />
And learn to spit.<br />
<br />
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat<br />
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go<br />
Or only bread and pickle for a week<br />
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.<br />
<br />
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry<br />
And pay our rent and not swear in the street<br />
And set a good example for the children.<br />
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.<br />
<br />
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?<br />
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised<br />
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple. </span></span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><br />
Speaking of art, if you happen to be passing through Paris (which I, unfortunately, am not), here's a chance to see works by the great Monet:<br />
<a href="http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/monet/first/impression/impression.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><br />
<style media="all" type="text/css">
@import url(http://medias.lemonde.fr/mmpub/css/blog.css);
</style><br />
<div class="bl-lien"><a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/culture/portfolio/2010/09/22/claude-monet-illumine-le-grand-palais-a-paris_1414759_3246.html" target="_blank">Claude Monet illumine le Grand Palais, à Paris</a><br />
LEMONDE.FR | 22.09.10<br />
<br />
<div align="right">© <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/" target="_blank"><img align="absmiddle" alt="Le Monde.fr" border="0" height="13" src="http://medias.lemonde.fr/mmpub/img/lgo/lemondefr_trpet.gif" title="Le Monde.fr" width="67" /></a></div></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/monet/first/impression/impression.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Impression: Soleil levant</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>ChasingPatternshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16792497135543281378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-155179553643333539.post-76314073968931208892010-09-26T15:10:00.000-04:002010-09-26T15:10:32.437-04:00Subject and object confusion<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>The film <i>The Plague Dogs</i> is a heartbreaking tale of life as an escaped lab animal, replete with friendship, violence, and a rare lack of pity for the viewers. It is based on the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Plague-Dogs-Novel-Richard-Adams/dp/0345494024?ie=UTF8&tag=seizingtheuns-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">novel</a> by Richard Adams, who also wrote <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Watership-Down-Novel-Richard-Adams/dp/0743277708?ie=UTF8&tag=seizingtheuns-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Watership Down</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=seizingtheuns-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0743277708" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;" width="1" />. One of the lab dogs has undergone an experiment in which the subjective and the objective have been confused in his mind: flies in his head are helicopters in the air. He cannot tell which parts of the world he actually exists in, nor can he make sense of how his actions change his situation or hope for love and survival. <br />
<br />
<object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/wUDzklWlvho?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/wUDzklWlvho?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.accessandmobility.com/sitebuilder/images/R4000_PowerChair_1_-257x257.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://www.accessandmobility.com/sitebuilder/images/R4000_PowerChair_1_-257x257.jpg" width="200" /></a>Sometimes the institution-trapped mindset of the disability services industry throws human subjects into similar throes of nobodiness. I was dealing with a broken wheelchair, my beautiful customized Quantum R-4000, earlier this week. I called to get it repaired, and requested a standard chair like those in the commercials on TV, just so I could, you know, sit at the dinner table, shower, and go to work and stuff.<br />
<br />
I was rotundly denied, informed that I was simply too disabled to sit in a regular power chair, even though my insurance would cover it. I should plan instead to live out a few weeks wrapped up in blankets in bed or on the floor. No dinner table, no bath, no job.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.pridemobility.com/jazzy/images/select/callout.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://www.pridemobility.com/jazzy/images/select/callout.jpg" width="165" /></a>This was even after a phone call from my doctor. Trapped by my computer for two days, I persisted with Skype calls. Finally, they requested a letter from my doctor. Got it. Not enough. They wanted a letter from my "caregiver". No mind that my caregiver is hired, trained and fired by me and has no relation or real relationship with me. No mind that I am, in fact, my only legal guardian. They insisted that there must be <i>somebody </i>in charge of me. No, I explained, only me, and you are about to ruin my life and risk my death. Here's a signed letter saying just how you are destroying me... Signed, the Professor. OK, finally, I was human enough to have my own words effect change. I am no one's object.ChasingPatternshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16792497135543281378noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-155179553643333539.post-2033488738685570542010-02-01T20:32:00.000-05:002010-02-02T11:22:51.128-05:00Parental mental illness and creativity<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Personne-Prix-Femina-2009-French/dp/0320070603?ie=UTF8&tag=seizingtheuns-20&link_code=bil&camp=213689&creative=392969" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="Personne - Prix Femina 2009 (French Edition)" src="http://ws.amazon.com/widgets/q?MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&Format=_SL160_&ASIN=0320070603&tag=seizingtheuns-20" /></a>It is old news to the French literature buffs out there, but today I stumbled upon the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prix_Femina">Prix Femina</a> winner from November 2009: <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x66wl2_gwenaelle-aubry_creation">Gwenaëlle Aubry</a>, for <i>Personne</i>. Aubry is a philosopher and writer born in 1971. The book is based in part on a journal she found after her father's death. Her father, who had bipolar disorder, kept a daily journal detailing his emotions. The clip below (in French) includes a short interview with her and then a reading of an excerpt of the work.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div><object height="365" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x9lwg7&related=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x9lwg7&related=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480" height="365" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always"></embed></object><br />
<b><a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9lwg7_personne-gwenaelle-aubry_creation">Personne, Gwenaëlle Aubry</a></b><br />
<i>Uploaded by <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/mercuredefrance">mercuredefrance</a>. - <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/us/channel/creation">Watch original web videos.</a></i></div><br />
<br />
She reads more of it <a href="http://www.liberation.fr/livres/06011438-personne-lu-par-gwenaelle-aubry">here</a>.<br />
<br />
Despite the many <a href="http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=276">challenges</a> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Adult-Children-Parents-Mental-Illness/lm/VWE6J88O228U">children of individuals with mental illness</a> face in adulthood, it also seems to me that there is a certain gift that comes with growing up with someone whose categories may be different, whose boundaries are more fluid, who questions the world to extremes others find irrational. The observation of "psychosis" provides for unique introspection, when not running from abuse or taking care of the adult. (And this is a caveat to be taken with the utmost gravity.) And later, to say, "I looked deep into the face of madness. I was born of madness. I survived that." What a sense of power, to survive so much of life's intensity so young.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/UnBarrage-Contre-Pacifique-Marguerite-Duras/dp/0828836353?ie=UTF8&tag=seizingtheuns-20&link_code=bil&camp=213689&creative=392969" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="UnBarrage Contre le Pacifique" src="http://ws.amazon.com/widgets/q?MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&Format=_SL160_&ASIN=0828836353&tag=seizingtheuns-20" /></a>Marguerite Duras writes of her mother's mental illness in <i>Un Barrage Contre le Pacifique<img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=seizingtheuns-20&l=bil&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0828836353" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;" width="1" /></i>, or <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sea-Wall-Marguerite-Duras/dp/0060970537?ie=UTF8&tag=seizingtheuns-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">The Sea Wall</a></i><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=seizingtheuns-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0060970537" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;" width="1" /> in English translation. She writes, "I believe that always, or almost always, in all childhood and in all the lives that follow them, the mother represents madness. Our mothers always remain the strangest, craziest people we've ever met." (Source unknown, found <a href="http://thinkexist.com/quotation/i_believe_that_always-or_almost_always-in_all/295014.html">here</a>). And in French, we have the homophones <i>me</i><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"></span></i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>re</i> 'mother' an</span>d <i>mer </i>'sea', with all of the depth and torment and desire. But I am not the one to consult about Duras. The bibliography is impressive and not really my field.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="float: right; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px;"><br />
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/uncommonmuse/391132078/" title="photo sharing"><img alt="" src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/155/391132078_4a63780186_m.jpg" style="border: 2px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" /></a><br />
<span style="font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/uncommonmuse/391132078/">scar</a><br />
Originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/uncommonmuse/">uncommonmuse</a></span></div><br />
Dear reader, I am not wishing to glorify abuse or the pain of mental illness. But every scar on these bodies (and souls) becomes a winding shiny story of unpredictable lines and thick skin. No tattoo more personal, no unveiling more intimate.What we can create with this power can become a rain of crimson rage, and an offering of peace.ChasingPatternshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16792497135543281378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-155179553643333539.post-34448699525083193972010-01-16T18:44:00.001-05:002010-01-16T18:48:15.245-05:00Tree like music<div style="float: right; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/vivianeballez/4276413566/" title="photo sharing"><img alt="" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2682/4276413566_728e7117fc_m.jpg" style="border: 2px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" /></a><br />
<span style="font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/vivianeballez/4276413566/">création sur paysage</a><br />
Originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/vivianeballez/">vivianeballez</a></span><br />
</div>The weeping willow was always my favorite tree, along with the blue spruce. There is something so delicate, fragile, and ephemeral about its silhouette. A paradox: a tree that is ready to be blown away. And it weeps...ChasingPatternshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16792497135543281378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-155179553643333539.post-86403953616570001732010-01-16T13:44:00.000-05:002012-07-24T12:01:56.185-04:00The unexpected and the brainIn an article based on a study entitled "<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.12.019">Unsupervised statistical learning underpins computational, behavioural, and neural manifestations of musical expectation</a>", forthcoming in <i>Neuroimage</i>, <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/"><i>ScienceDaily</i></a> notes:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
Music has a grammar, which, like language, consists of rules that specify which notes can follow which other notes in a piece of music. According to Pearce: "the question is whether the rules are hard-wired into the auditory system or learned through experience of listening to music and recording, unconsciously, which notes tend to follow others."<br />
<br />
The researchers asked 40 people to listen to hymn melodies (without lyrics) and state how expected or unexpected they found particular notes. They simulated a human mind listening to music with two computational models. The first model uses hard-wired rules to predict the next note in a melody. The second model learns through experience of real music which notes tend to follow others, statistically speaking, and uses this knowledge to predict the next note.<br />
<br />
The results showed that the statistical model predicts the listeners' expectations better than the rule-based model. It also turned out that expectations were higher for musicians than for non-musicians and for familiar melodies -- which also suggests that experience has a strong effect on musical predictions.</blockquote>
Read more <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100115204704.htm">here</a>. <br />
<br />
One song that makes my brain feel a little tweaked by unexpectedness is "Conversations in Silence I":<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.rhapsody.com/goto?rcid=Tra.1041537&variant=play&lsrc=RN_htm"><img border="0" height="20" src="http://static.realone.com/rotw/images/buttons/playsm.gif" width="20" /> Conversations In Silence I - Nashville Chamber Orchestra</a><br />
<br />
Another piece that does this by (in my amateurish opinion) using the "end" note as a "beginning" is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Schumann">Schumann</a>'s "5 Stücke im Volkston, Op.102: 2. Langsam" (which starts at 3:20 in the video below). This one is much subtler than the one above in its unexpectedness. But it is enough to move me repeatedly.<br />
<br />
<object height="295" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/W5jrsv4_r_I&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1"></param>
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param>
<param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param>
<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/W5jrsv4_r_I&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"></embed></object><br />
<br />
If the "rules" of music are not "rules" at all, but rather the consolidation of experience, the nature of language, as sister to music ("<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.07.034">Double dissociation between rules and memory in music</a>"), seems clear: it is an accumulation of experience, not an imperfect activation of inherent rules. Linguists Joan Bybee and James McClelland argued for an experience-based model for language in their article, "<a href="http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~jlm/papers/BybeeMcC05.pdf">Alternatives to the combinatorial paradigm of linguistic theory based on domain general principles of human cognition</a>."<br />
<br />
<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=seizingtheuns-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0802151299&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>I wonder, then, if what "moves" us in music is also what "moves" us in language. Proust wrote of the breaking of habit, the intrusion of the unexpected, as the ticket to the richest memories, a cognitive flowering of the senses. Beckett viewed language as "a veil that must be torn apart in order to get at the things (or the Nothingness) behind it," and he wrote of wanting to bore holes in the language, to create something new (or new nothingness) (see <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=2zN8g_SRE2IC&dq=Disjecta&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=rgdSS6DsKIqmNvHMmYgJ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CC4Q6AEwBQ"><i>Disjecta</i></a>). And in Beckett's pitted and hole-filled texts, deep within the nothingness, lies a melancholy hopeless hope. It is like trying to think of what might be outside our universe, beyond where the big bang has expanded space.<br />
<br />
Sometimes we encode concepts like unexpectedness into our grammars. See Leonard Talmy's work on the notion of "<a href="http://cogweb.ucla.edu/CogSci/Talmy.html">force dynamics</a>" in language, and an article in <i>Cognitive Linguistics</i> on the grammatical marking of social unexpectedness in Spanish, "<a href="http://www.reference-global.com/doi/abs/10.1515/cogl.2005.16.4.777">Quantitative measures of subjectification</a>."<br />
<br />
Our (at times perverse?) pleasure in the unexpected, despite our everyday hunger for structural predictability, gives us new eyes, new ears, and yes, over the centuries, new tongues.ChasingPatternshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16792497135543281378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-155179553643333539.post-34578925445870788182010-01-15T18:20:00.000-05:002010-01-15T18:20:07.476-05:00<b><span style="font-size: small;">Earthquake</span><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="c cs"><span> </span></span></span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="c cs"><span>by </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aim%C3%A9_C%C3%A9saire" onclick="s_objectID="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/bios/aim%C3%A9_c%C3%A9saire/search?contributorName=aim%E9%20c%E_1";return this.s_oc?this.s_oc(e):true">Aimé Césaire</a></span></span><br />
<br />
<div id="articletext"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/ile.en.ile/paroles/cesaire.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/ile.en.ile/paroles/cesaire.jpg" width="182" /></a><br />
</div>such great stretches of dreamscape<br />
such lines of all too familiar lines <br />
staved in<br />
caved in so the filthy wake resounds with the notion<br />
of the pair of us? What of the pair of us?<br />
Pretty much the tale of the family surviving disaster:<br />
“In the ancient serpent stink of our blood we got clear<br />
of the valley; the village loosed stone lions roaring at our heels.”<br />
Sleep, troubled sleep, the troubled waking of the heart<br />
yours on top of mine chipped dishes stacked in the pitching sink <br />
of noontides.<br />
What then of words? Grinding them together to summon up the void<br />
as night insects grind their crazed wing cases?<br />
Caught caught caught unequivocally caught<br />
caught caught caught<br />
head over heels into the abyss<br />
for no good reason<br />
except for the sudden faint steadfastness <br />
of our own true names, our own amazing names<br />
that had hitherto been consigned to a realm of forgetfulness<br />
itself quite tumbledown. <br />
<br />
<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=seizingtheuns-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0520053206&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>(<i>Translated, from the French, by Paul Muldoon.</i>)<br />
</div><div id="TixyyLink" style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
Courtesy of <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2010/01/25/100125po_poem_cesaire#ixzz0cj3zw07g">The New Yorker</a>.<br />
</div><div id="TixyyLink" style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div id="TixyyLink" style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><h4 id="articleauthor" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="c cs"> </span></span></h4>ChasingPatternshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16792497135543281378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-155179553643333539.post-56717417919362326032010-01-14T17:05:00.001-05:002010-01-14T17:07:24.435-05:00Bog bean : Menyanthes trifoliata<div style="float: right; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/41066614@N05/4271163375/" title="photo sharing"><img alt="" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2733/4271163375_68f9aee548_m.jpg" style="border: 2px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" /></a><br />
<span style="font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/41066614@N05/4271163375/">Bog bean : Menyanthes trifoliata</a><br />
Originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/41066614@N05/">Edinburgh Nette</a></span><br />
</div>Another flower of whimsy... I hope to see it in real life one day.ChasingPatternshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16792497135543281378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-155179553643333539.post-47642115860578854942010-01-14T13:05:00.001-05:002010-01-14T14:43:27.518-05:00Freedom, movement and pleasure<div style="float: right; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/hajlana/4270774699/" title="photo sharing"><img alt="" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4011/4270774699_01d4f222f4_m.jpg" style="border: 2px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" /></a><br />
<span style="font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/hajlana/4270774699/">Feeling like a tree...</a><br />
Originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/hajlana/">hajlana</a></span><br />
</div><i>Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery.</i> --Wayne Dyer <br />
<br />
In the wake of the Haiti earthquake, it is hard to write about anything else. Upon seeing images of trapped bodies, dead and alive, on a small island, I can't help but think: <i>they have no way out</i>. So I'm thinking about movement as freedom, freedom as life, life as pleasure. Perhaps the last connection should not be made (it is generally naive). But for my purposes today, life as pleasure. (We'll leave Beckett out of this for now.)<br />
<br />
In a recent <a href="http://fs.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/64/1/13?rss=1">article</a> in <a href="http://fs.oxfordjournals.org/"><i>French Studies</i></a>, Ullrich Langer argues that the Renaissance poem offered pleasure because the poem was a landscape without constraints. All we ever want is to be able to sail away.<br />
<br />
<object height="295" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/4lW_xnBMkow&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/4lW_xnBMkow&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"></embed></object><br />
<br />
I am full of wanderlust, always. (I like something about the lady in this video; I find her rendition of this song touching. See <a href="http://en.lyrics-copy.com/laurence-jalbert/je-pars-a-lautre-bout-du-monde.htm">lyrics</a>.) <br />
<br />
<object height="265" width="320"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/_9sOzEfor04&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_9sOzEfor04&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="320" height="265"></embed></object><br />
<br />
The trip is not always perfect, but the loneliness of human nature is less cruel when discoveries are being made.Joni Mitchell's entire album <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hejira-Joni-Mitchell/dp/B000002GYC?ie=UTF8&tag=seizingtheuns-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Hejira</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=seizingtheuns-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B000002GYC" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;" width="1" /> </i>is about journeying.<br />
<br />
<object height="265" width="320"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/5xNNCqpRQpI&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/5xNNCqpRQpI&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="320" height="265"></embed></object><br />
<br />
To donate to help the trapped people of Haiti, here are some suggestions:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.grassrootsonline.org/">Grassroots International</a><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/www.pih.org">Partners in Health</a><br />
<a href="http://haitiaction.net/About/HERF/HERF.html">Haiti Emergency Relief Fund</a><br />
<br />
I leave you with a 1962 video of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Dunham">Katherine Dunham</a>, an American ethnologist and dancer in Haiti, who fell in love with the dances associated with <a href="http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/vodou/about.html">Haitian vodou</a>. After a brief interview (in French), you can see the dancing.<br />
<br />
<script src="http://www.ina.fr/js/global/controle/ogp_player_embed.js" type="text/javascript">
</script><script src="http://www.ina.fr/player/embed/w/320/h/240/id_notice/CAF93014138/id_utilisateur/932971/hash/57fd5da3069e58fcb406ad18b3d1b4ae" type="text/javascript">
</script><br />
<div align="center" style="background-color: black; color: #b4d2fe; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 18px; width: 320px;"> retrouver ce média sur <a href="http://www.ina.fr/art-et-culture/arts-du-spectacle/video/CAF93014138/sous-les-tropiques-katherine-dunham-chez-elle.fr.html" style="color: #b4d2fe; font-weight: bold;" target="_blank">www.ina.fr</a> <br />
</div>ChasingPatternshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16792497135543281378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-155179553643333539.post-38019910218787678002010-01-12T18:46:00.000-05:002010-01-12T22:04:41.216-05:00Little Things | FlowingData<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://flowingdata.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/underload-3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="257" src="http://flowingdata.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/underload-3.png" width="400" /></a><br />
</div>How our age correlates with our reaction to little things... Why do I get the feeling that I'm on both sides of the curve at once?<br />
<br />
<a href="http://flowingdata.com/2010/01/12/data-underload-4-little-things/">Data Underload #4 – Little Things | FlowingData</a>ChasingPatternshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16792497135543281378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-155179553643333539.post-54309157280803321842010-01-12T14:49:00.000-05:002010-01-12T19:44:34.591-05:00Whimsy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><br />
I'm not one to think of myself as a softy, but I'm certainly in a whimsical mood today. What evokes the whimsical in me? That funny sweet feeling of tender other-worldliness? Here are some tastes, sounds, texts, and other elements that pull me that direction:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.prairienursery.com/store/images/GT-PrairieSmoke_0_432x648.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.prairienursery.com/store/images/GT-PrairieSmoke_0_432x648.jpg" width="212" /></a><br />
</div><b>Prairie smoke</b> (<a href="http://www.prairienursery.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=214">Geum triflorum</a>) flowers.I have never seen them in real life, and am sure they cannot grow in Florida since they are hardy through zone 4 only, but I imagine that if fairies were to have a garden, this would surely grow there.<br />
<br />
The <b>smell of old homes</b> warmed by the sun and enclosure, perfumed by the lives of women who have inhabited them for decades: layer upon layer of richness contrasted with the fresh, cool air of early spring. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Proust">Proust</a>, in his <a href="http://www.tempsperdu.com/"><i>À la recherche du temps perdu</i></a> (<i>In Search of Lost Time</i>), writes of such rooms, such smells:<br />
<br />
<i>C'étaient de ces chambres de province qui—de même qu'en certains pays des parties entières de l'air ou de la mer sont illuminées ou parfumées par des myriades de protozoaires que nous ne voyons pas—nous enchantent des mille odeurs qu'y dégagent les vertus, la sagesse, les habitudes, toute une vie secrète, invisible, surabondante et morale que l'atmosphère y tient en suspens; odeurs naturelles encore, certes, et couleur du temps comme celles de la campagne voisine, mais déjà casanières, humaines et renfermées gelée exquise, industrieuse et limpide de tous les fruits de l'année qui ont quitté le verger pour l'armoire; saisonnières, mais mobilières et domestiques, <iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=seizingtheuns-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0812969642&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>corrigeant le piquant de la gelée blanche par la douceur du pain chaud, oisives et ponctuelles comme une horloge de village, flâneuses et rangées, insoucieuses et prévoyantes, lingères, matinales, dévotes, heureuses d'une paix qui n'apporte qu'un surcroît d'anxiété et d'un prosaïsme qui sert de grand réservoir de poésie à celui qui les traverse sans y avoir vécu. L'air y était saturé de la fine fleur d'un silence si nourricier, si succulent, que je ne m'y avançais qu'avec une sorte de gourmandise, surtout par ces premiers matins encore froids de la semaine de Pâques où je le goûtais mieux parce que je venais seulement d'arriver à Combray: avant que j'entrasse souhaiter le bonjour à ma tante, on me faisait attendre un instant dans la première pièce où le soleil, d'hiver encore, était venu se mettre au chaud devant le feu, déjà allumé entre les deux briques et qui badigeonnait toute la chambre d'une odeur de suie, en faisait comme un de ces grands " devants de four " de campagne, ou de ces manteaux de cheminée de châteaux, sous lesquels on souhaite que se déclarent dehors la pluie, la neige même quelque catastrophe diluvienne pour ajouter au confort de la réclusion la poésie de l'hivernage; je faisais quelques pas du prie-Dieu aux fauteuils en velours frappé, toujours revêtus d'un appui-tête au crochet; et le feu cuisant comme une pâte les appétissantes odeurs dont l'air de la chambre était tout grumeleux et qu'avait déjà fait travailler et " lever " la fraîcheur humide et ensoleillée du matin, il les feuilletait, les dorait, les godait, les boursouflait, en faisant un invisible et palpable gâteau provincial, un immense "chausson" où, à peine goûtés les arômes plus croustillants, plus fins, plus réputés, mais plus secs aussi du placard, de la commode, du papier à ramages, je revenais toujours avec une convoitise inavouée m'engluer dans l'odeur médiane, poisseuse, fade, indigeste et fruitée du couvre-lit à fleurs. --</i>Marcel Proust<br />
<br />
He died in 1922. See <a href="http://www.ina.fr/video/CPF86634904/marcel-proust.fr.html">this video</a> from 1962 (in French), which discusses his unique legacy. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.copyright-free-photos.org.uk/flowers/forget-me-not-08.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="196" src="http://www.copyright-free-photos.org.uk/flowers/forget-me-not-08.jpg" width="200" /></a><br />
</div><b>Forget-me-nots</b>, humble little blue flowers of the north. I remember seeing them as a kid in Oregon, growing like weeds on the side of the road. They were a sweet melancholy kind of flower, small, simple, in primary colors. Yet not wanting to be forgotten. Reminding us to pay attention to the everyday fantastical. <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hejira-Joni-Mitchell/dp/B000002GYC?ie=UTF8&tag=seizingtheuns-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Joni Mitchell</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=seizingtheuns-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B000002GYC" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important;" width="1" />'s "<b>Amelia</b>" has a funny chord at the end of each verse. Joni is known for her <a href="http://jonimitchell.com/library/view.cfm?id=504">strange chords</a>, but this one always has moved me. When I hear it, I feel like something inside my chest is being pleasantly twisted.<br />
<br />
<object height="265" width="320"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/9GZ8F4frBcQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/9GZ8F4frBcQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="320" height="265"></embed></object><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.davestravelcorner.com/photos/fruit/Pacai-Open.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://www.davestravelcorner.com/photos/fruit/Pacai-Open.jpg" width="200" /></a><br />
</div><b>Ice cream bean fruit</b>, or Pacai, which became my most sought-after fruit after trying it in Mexico. This funny pod has large black seeds covered in what looks like fuzzy white cotton. As the name indicates, the white fuzz is creamy and sweet. So good and otherworldly! See more of Dave's images <a href="http://www.davestravelcorner.com/photos/fruit/">here</a>. In Puebla they call it something else, but I can't remember the name anymore.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/11085205.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/11085205.jpg" width="200" /></a><br />
</div><b>Spanish moss at sunset</b>, when it glows orange or pink. This was one of the phenomena that most amazed me when I moved to Florida. I remember looking up at the trees and exclaiming, "What in the world is that?" It seemed like something out of a horror flick, but then, like something out of a dreamland.ChasingPatternshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16792497135543281378noreply@blogger.com0