another entry from the distant past…
I am that I am
(click title to view)
Category: Journallings
Just posted thoughts and reflections
Spillage.1 : Action Writing
In searching through the files on my computer for particular photos, I have been running across many files of which the names are unrecognizable to me, many dating from months and moons ago. Β Some of them startle me, some are encouraging, all provide record of where I’ve been, how I’m thinking, what’s at work in me at various given moments. Β I thought I’d share a few that seem worthy of being shared, they will arrive under the tag “Spillage” – detritus left to the side when my focus is on projects. Β Here’s a sample, found labelled: Action:Writing. (simply click on title link to view)
Action Writing
Art of the Occurrence of Meaning
Art of the Occurrence of Meaning
Β Β Β I consider that I work strenuously to come to terms with (understand, be aware or conscious of, perceive and interpret) what it is I value, care about, intend, hope or purpose.Β
Β Β Β Β Β Β I am prodoundly interested in what is often referred to as βtheory of mindβ (TOM) β βthat which hovers somewhere on the boundary between the explicit and the implicit, the conscious and the subconscious, the objective and subjectiveβ β Maurice Bloch.Β And semiosis β what I understand to be the process and activity of utilizing available resources, situations, internal and external sensations to construct moments of meaning (βworldingβ you could call it β co-here-ing in an embedded context).Β The seamless combination of culture/person-ality, internal/external, embodied/extended, conscious/subconscious β or selective/regulative β processes that occur in real-life human experiences.Β
Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Perhaps this is βAnthropologyβ as Maurice Bloch would have it:Β
βAnthropology, at least as I conceive it, presents the immense merit of uniting knowledge about human beings β that is constructed from the top down, by general theory, which in the case of cognitive psychology is supported by rigorous and controlled experiments β with knowledge of particular men and women that is constructed from the bottom up, based on the observation of people as they live their livesβΒ
some commensurate multi-disciplinary examination of human life.Β I hear myself saying to myselfβ¦Β
[ASIDE: from high school through college when I envisioned being a great poet, I always wanted to be what I termed the βMaster of Greyβ β one able to plumb and express the indeterminate and indistinct β those liminal mixed and ambiguous realities of experience β exemplified by rain or fog or shadow β the betweens, the margins, the shadesβ¦]Β
Β Β Β Β Β Β Anyway, I hear myself saying to myself when I listen to myself speaking to myself (so very many variations of selves), that as much as I am fascinated and intrigued by the processes of the world (geological, biological, neurological, sociological and so forth) and the apparatuses and hows of human meaning-making (electro-neuro-biological, socio-cultural, etcβ¦), I am yet more interested in the occurrences of humanΒ meaning experiences.Β
Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β The βoccurrence of meaningβ seems to me the experience of all those elements and processes indiscretely conjoined and con-fused β wholes of which parts canβt be specified β signifieds/signifiers/significants indiscriminate: our PRESENT.Β
Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β This is where art arises for me.Β Art and action, for art is action.Β Art seems to me β or processes of human making β an attempt at conjoining/confusing/commingling and co-relating of the many modes and motions, nodes and notions, processes and practices, influences confluencing the convergences we term experience.Β
Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Artistic acts are those where subject/object, conscious/subconscious, selective/regulative, internal/external, intentional/accidental distinctions in human processes do not apply β and these convergences, these realities of human living are sometimes actualized or embodied/externalized.Β Perhaps, in my way of thinking.Β
Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Modalities and genres, fields and spheres, behaviors, cognition and domains β social and personal intertwingled, the perceived and imperceptible carrying on simultaneously β CONverged β and that verge β that edge, rim, margin of activity β that liminal, boundary-zone open border-space is the essential βΒ
Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β a human way of mediately presenting occurrences of meaning, in their variety and multiplicity.Β Perhaps.Β
Or so I am thinking.Β
Answerability in the body of the world.Β
The meaning event seen in its total matrix.
2014
To all we hope will come…
and all we do not know…
“Language is always focaled…
…it must be so since a word is a gigantic system of situation-changes
and other words”
-Eugene Gendlin-
A Division of Subjects
I am looking at my wife’s face for significance. Β Scrutinizing her as if MY meaning might come from there. Β The eyes and motion of my children, our puppies, the touching between them. Β I gaze, ravenously, melancholy, nostalgically, as if some sort of synching provided reason.
Observing, begging input for desired effect.
Words on a page in front of me. Β The sounds of the heat switching on and swishing (or swooshing) through an anatomy of ducts. Β Rememory. Β Fashioning bodied memories forward toward anticipated satisfaction of imagined desires.
Re-membering an already unknown future. Β As if to place it onto a pleasure/pain balance and put myself at risk for emotion. Β As if I amΒ wanting to feel. Β Pleasure OR pain, satiation OR loss, grief or elation. Β Simply. Β To feel. Β And to be able to tell. Β To evaluate, process and produce. Β Perceive, procure and proceed.
Attend, assemble and assess. Β All componented in threes, a perspectival point of either/ors.
In other words – seeking options of experience through this-or-that, barely realizing the gargantuan disturbance of the field in which bi-polars conjoin – the third, the invested participant – “observer.”
I search her eyes – peering her into double bind by my own delimitations. Β Reflecting the kids play and laughter – deflecting – by framing-problems that lens my limited views of want and need.
Ravenous, melancholy, natural look of desire for pleasure and dread of pain – dualizing a multi-more intricate kaleidoscope of possible probables.
The implicit intricacies + the avoidance and/or discounting of “one’s own role” (the responsibility, culpability, of our ever-presentness we ever effort to escape) – being participatory. Β Being.
And what of the lens? Β If I expand the prism, rotate the glass – distort, blur, focus. Β How expansive, elastic, extensive are my tools? Β How effectual the how I look, the what I look for, the why?
I continue examining her face, and his and his, and his and hers. Β Listen for their sounds, their movements, borrowing moods from the connections I make, perceive, feel…asking now to fill out my arrival…more aware of many roles that depend on distant stories…now arising…participant…into now
as it happens, it occurs…
BE. Β HOME. Β NOW.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS
2013-2014
Our 80/20 Vision and Rememory
“Nothing’s like anything else in the long run.
Nothing you write down is ever as true as you think it was.”
-Charles Wright, “Lost Souls”-
Rememory is just a thing we do when we “need” it – or, for reasons that aren’t really rational at all – we seem to feel we do. Β In other words, our experience (what our organism, our little assemblage of cells, lives through) works in us like nutrients that our neuronally connected organs (even smaller collectives of cellular functional troupes) select predictively – as probable perhapses – to aid our survival in each moment.
That it’s always subject to change, often flatly incoherent, or dreadfully inappropriate to any given situation proffers no guilt or dishonor – could we really expect accurate predictions of unforeseen and total novelty with infinite contingencies each next moment is?
We do the best with what we have. Β After all, we’re not even able to use our tools intentionally – they work on automatic algorithms we are not aware of unless there is a problem. Β Scientists might use machines and fabricated contraptions or instruments to measure and calculate “experiences/experiments” – something semi-controlled, devised and arranged in a lab. Β We, on the other hand (scientists included), do not have access to our controls (of which there really aren’t any – just meticulously interconnected and recursively interactive meshworks) – our controls (or rather, effects) result in their humming along.
Ah, rememory, refraction – there whenever we need it (or think/feel we do, or hadn’t even sensed it) – and never to the point but that we make it so – experiencing piecemeal fragments the system spits out in relation to itself and its environment, and puzzling them together as if encountered in the world – using them like stencils or frames through which to assess our surrounds.
What a tricky treat! Β Phantasms of deconstructed digestions floating a stream, plucked willy-nilly by impulsory triggers and collaged onto a canvas called Perception. Β Howdy-do! Β When 80% of the show is our relation to ourselves, it’s no wonder we feel criticized! Β (for a sensory example – here’s a breakdown of what influences what we see….):
– from Maturana and Varela,Β The Tree of Knowledge
Each of us with our 80/20 view on the realms between – the worlds we share – it’s no wonder we’re ill at ease arguing agreements. Β I’d have to ask my sons to calculate the potentials, but even from my 80+20 it’s infinitesimal – our shot at “sharing a moment” as we say.
-from Rick Hanson,Β Buddha’s Brain–
Perhaps to some Turing machine, or deep-distance galaxy view we’d look like a calibrated system, but the contingencies and unknown variables all changing with each changing change surpass even the weather…
So go on rememoring and adapting your stories, just keep in mind the bric-a-brac you’re rummaging in and it’s exponentially altering situation and experiencing states (by the millisecond), and consider offering those with and around you something in the neighborhood of 80% benefit of your doubt (your self-generated POV)!?
“I give you mine [dreams] for the same reason,
To summon the spirits up and set the body to music.”
-Charles Wright, Lost Souls-
On Perturbations (Transformations)
I learned today that I am an “operationally closed system.”
Essentially – a living multicellular organism with no “inside” or “outside” (as far as that system or the environment is concerned) – a set of dynamically and reciprocally interconnected cells with remarkably complex, diverse, andΒ plastic (transformable, adaptable) abilities interacting continually to fluctuations, pressures (or lack thereof), movements (perturbations) of a molecular milieu. Β That what you interpret (are “perturbed” by) as my “behavior” (you observers, you) is “a view of the dance of my internal relations” – part of “the dynamics of interactions of this organism in its environment” (and vice-versa).
Each of us, adapting, CONSTANTLY, “modified by every experience” in our efforts to maintain “effective correlation, compatibility” between our “selves” (organismic structural possibilities) and our environment (that which we are structurally coupled to…momentarily). Β Always effecting, always effected by. Β A thoroughfare of thorough-going perturbations/ transformations…i.e., ALIVE.
I’m sorry if “I” offend and/or disturb (as I amΒ bound to) in my attempts and efforts to maintain compatibility (to SURVIVE!) with/IN my environment – I realize that every action, vibration, movement I express or perform = a perturbance for you, which will (sometimes)Β resonate, but unfailingly structurally couple us, if we are to live-on… yes, I’m talking to you – squirrel, leaf, fly, spouse, air particle, plant, piano, atmosphere… Β Down to our electrons and quarks we effect. Β And that effect is on entire systems, without observable (or measurable) end.
In other words – respons-ability.
This began to dawn on me as I was considering (perhaps unwarranted) my hopes, desires, expectations. Β As realities (perceived/ interpreted) perturbed these (my situational, contextual constraints and affordances)…I “thought/felt” (who knows which – synapses) that many of my most (felt/thought) agitating (interpreted) perturbances (transformations) are ANTICIPATED more than encountered/lived-through. Β In other words – I’m experiencing my anticipations – my internal dynamics – as perturbations – NOT my organisms’ “environment.”
In other words – my “operationally closed system” anticipatesΒ change asΒ potential threat or danger – when actually I would (most likely) – am operationally equipped to – maintain my structural inter-relations compatiblyΒ with the ongoing interactivities / relations of my environment.
Our kind of being is fantastically diverse and adaptable (with unimaginable flexibility and complexity) to vast fluctuations / perturbations / transformations – we areΒ plastic to our cells. Β It takes a LOT to “disintegrate” us, in our “ongoing structural drift” (that which transforms and develops and differentiates us moment-to-moment as the organism we are).
Our cellular behavior: Β a sensory surface, a motor surface and a system of coordination dynamically related in never-ending change (until disintegration). Β And ALL in co-relation. Β No movement, sensation, quiver, thought, emotion, pulse or charge that is not CO-RELATION with activities and molecules making up our “milieu” (the middle, the surround – BOTH/AND).
The swirling circle is me with my organismic operational closure always moving and changing in relation to its components – equally effecting and effected by – you / air / “matter” / “energy” (the wavy line) as reciprocal “perturbations.”
it’s complicated…
sensational…
ecstatic…
Reality (for the likes of moi): “I” might be much Β more “naturally” compatible with an enormous diversity of environments and situations (others) than I internally coordinate myself to be (at least biologically, operationally, cognitively speaking). Β Ahem. Β Alas. Β My organismic systemic co-relations often get the best of me.
apologies nearest and dearest…
diagrams and conceptual perturbations compliments of:
Semester’s end…High hopes
What the break of coursework implies to me – possible “extra-curricular” reading! Β Hoping to weave my way through a LOT of the following…
Winter Reading List – 2013-14
Thinking with “more than”…
some more possible insight into the processes of “forming…” Through somewhere somehow recently I was alerted to the works of Eugene Gendlin – probably through the work of Mark Johnson, Andy Clark, or Don Tucker…but could be elsewise. Β Embedded experience, embodied minds, enminded bodies – the whole mess of entanglement our simplyΒ being consists of.
and how that might apply to “writer’s block” or that reaching we experience when creating –
that feeling that we canΒ feel it – knowΒ more than we’re able to articulate or organize or perform…
This article helps elucidate some of that, perhaps. Β It has certainly stimulated my imagination and attention in attempting to writeΒ more than I seem to know how to….
Eugene Gendlin – Primacy of Body not Perception
“All thinking involves the bodily … to some degree. Β Take for example any ordinary sentence. Β In the middle of it you have an unfinished sense of how … You don’t know the end, and yet, all through it, as the sentence wends its way … “
Eugene T. Gendlin
PLEASE READ MORE TO FIND OUT!
All my Words are Silent 