WordPress peers and inspiring friends – new love, new work, busy summer offspring and the above explain my lack of involvement here. Autumn approaches, new semesters, school year beginning, and so on. I SO hope to be active in your company again. I appreciate your comments and patience. What a large thing life is.
As I catch up on your works – I am SO thankful for the talents, visions, expressions, idiosyncratic thought and emotion that each of you have found a particular and meaningful (and SIGNIFICANT in whatever medium) way to realize in this forum. I appreciate it greatly and am truly humbled and grateful for these odd and generative connections.
image from the reading replete with lifeguard (son), hostess handing out favors (buttons, nipples), stewardess serving odd mixtures of airline snacks, a priest blessing and moving people around, a waitress and a dapper emcee, a basket of fortunes created by my daughter, and myself wandering the space reading pieces and climbing on things.
HERE. Abandoned places fall apart. Decay to exposure. We, bereft. We, grieving. In the absence of care… Upkeep. Keeping up. Often when significant change occurs, we do not bother “keeping up.” Rather things, people, places, seem to hold on as long as possible to what is familial / familiar / to what seems known, as long as they can. Perhaps this marks some difference between survival and thriving. Maintenance versus development. Preservation versus advance. Enclosing versus opening.
But time. Molecules move and shake around; synapses shift, come undone, frackle, rewire…adjust. Adapt. There are new conditions. The movement of beings, of the world, continuously alters our context, alters ourselves. When they left, or something seemed lost, other inhabitants, presences, qualities, realities fill the perceptive interoperable surround…some constraints are increased, some loosened, restraints, license, “competition”: wind, rodents, weather, routine… The primary structuring relationships morph. Continually.
Now wife. Now wife and children. Now certain finances. Now no finances. Now surety, stability, now uncertainty, hazard, CHANGE. CHANGE(never not occurring) ALWAYS EQUALS OPPORTUNITY(for living things), ALWAYS EQUALS DIFFERENCE.
Now no wife. Now children. Now no job. Now scrapping for sustenance. Now certain friendships. Now the absence of certain friends.
Now different care.
What will the winds do? The rain, the sun, the heat, the ice? Critters? What new sounds will my structure make – interactions – given the changes in conditions, in surround? WHAT ARE WE NOW? The same. Structurally – a form made for interaction, a part of the world, interlocked and interwoven, a bundle of functions and processes, intentions and conditions – exposed by happening in a world.
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“Things fall apart, the center cannot hold”
(Great! How else…life?)
And how beautiful the potencies of change. How messy. How easy to attribute – “good” “bad” “difficult” “help” “harm” “ease”…
But is what’s happening to the homestead, the barn now – in lieu of human use and care – less easy? Less beautiful? Does not every context surrounding and composing a structure of forms – both help and harm of a sort?
Would it be false to say this erosion, this abandonment to other interests and types of care, this shifting of primary interactions, reciprocating attachments, looks like loss? With all that light pouring through? All the redolent air and wheezing whistling and rattle? Has the new (ever-altering) context of comings-and-goings helped or harmed this structure…or, perhaps mostly…BOTH? Just like the previous and every future one?
We. I. You. Crafted ever-so-intricately in contexts we are unable to adequately identify (comprehensively) or evaluate – for they ARE the context that is co-creating (in-forming) our identifications and evaluations. We interpret – according to the context we are enmeshed in/with.
CHANGE CONTEXT – CHANGE PERCEPTION, INTERPRETATION, IDENTIFICATIONS, EVALUATIONS…change even what we look for…
A breaking, a leaving, an abandonment, some loss…(simply, really,change) – do they not equal a kind of damage, a kind of harm, so full of openings, exposure, new perspectives granted the initializing structures that we truly DO NOT KNOW what living is for? But this? – TO LIVE?!
The rent places let the outside in in novel ways, creating coevally novel openings for the inside to emerge. The wear co-creates other structural stresses and reliefs, new releases and new enclosures, novel shapes and textures, colors perhaps we never knew were possible to begin with. Never a potential until the context came that facilitates and allows, enacts and enables.
Always interacting, we change. Always changing (along with our entire surround) defines INTER-ACTION. Barn: Enter, Action. Always.
NOW…this…
Experiences confoundingly rendered with these sound contexts:
By definition a habit, meditative or otherwise, becomes somewhat “automatic” and therefore something other than “awareness” or novel or differentiated… and yet…
Taking in the good… being lived…
“Implicitly, and more fundamentally, this practice means a relaxed opening into the love – in a very very broad sense – that is the actual nature of everything. Moment by moment, the world and the mind reliably carry you along. This isn’t airy-fairy, it’s real. Our physical selves are woven in the tapestry of materiality, whose particles and energies never fail. The supplies – the light and air, the furniture and flowers – that are present this instant are here, available, whatever the future may hold. So too is the caring and goodwill that others have for you, and the momentum of your own accomplishments, and the healthy workings of your body. Meanwhile, your mind goes on being, while dependably weaving this thought, this sound, this moment of consciousness.
It’s hard to sustain a felt knowing of this nature of everything. The brain evolved to keep our ancestors afraid to keep them alive. But if you look, and look again, you can see directly that right now, and in every now you’re alive, you’re cradled by the world and the mind like a child carried to bed by her mother. This cradling is a kind of love, and when you trust it enough to soften and fall back into it, there’s an untangling of the knots of fear and separation. Then comes both an undoing of the craving that drives suffering and harm, and a freeing and fueling love living through you and as you out into the world.
Imagine a single day in which you were often – not continuously, not perfectly – lived by love. When I try this myself, the events of the day don’t change much -but my experience of them, and their effects, improve dramatically. Consider this as a practice for a day, a week – or the year altogether.
More widely, imagine a world in which many people, enough people – known and unknown, the low and the mighty – were lived by love. As our world teeters on the edge of a sword – and could tip either into realistic prosperity, justice, and peace, or into growing resource wars, despotism, or fundamentalism – it seems to me that it’s not just possible for a critical mass of human hearts to be lived by love. It’s necessary.
How?
The essence of this practice is a yielding into all that lives you. This is a paradigm shift from the typical top-down, subtly contracted, moving-out-from-a-unified-center-of-view-and-action way of operating . . . to a relaxed receptive abiding, feeling supported by the ocean of causes creating each momentary wave of awareness. Then on this basis, there is an encouraging of love in all its forms to flow through you. The suggestions that follow are different ways to do this, and you can also find your own.
Soften and open in the heart. Notice that you are alright right now: listen to your body telling your brain that you are basically OK. Feel the fullness that is already here, all the perceptions and thoughts and feelings pop-pop-popping in this moment of consciousness. Feel the buoying currents of nature and life, waves of gifts from over 3 billion years of evolution on our blue and green pebble. Look around and see objects, including your own hands and body, and consider the unfailing generosity of the material realm, blossoming for over 12 billion years from a seed of light.
Be aware of the warmth and good will from others toward you. Sense your connecting to others, how you are supported by a net of relationships. They don’t have to be perfect. Some people do care about you. You are almost certainly loved.
Feel carried by consciousness, the effortless knowing of perception and thought. When stress, worry, pressure, or pain appear in the mind, see that the fabric of this suffering – the underlying operating of the mind – is itself fine, is always already fine.
Again and again making this little but profound shift, this giving over to the carrying cradling of mind and matter, you can afford to let your own love flow freely. Bring this down to earth: if you lived from love in your first encounter with another person today, how would you be, what would you do, how would you speak? What would a week, a year, be like in which you lived by love? How about trying this? Who knows, if enough people share in this practice, the world could become a much better place.”
I have felt overwhelmed by meanings. Flooded with good. Surprised by kindness. Taken off guard (guards unnecessary) by humans. How much good there is — children discovering, struggling; coyotes chasing cars; peacocks squawking; handshakes and smiles; innovations and ideas; hopes and dreams; sounds and shapes; disappointments and losses; grief and gratitude; desire and refusal; romance and death…
BEING LIVED
a body materially exchanging, interacting, interoperating with all the materials that surround it
a consciousness, awareness alert to emotion, interpretation, possibilities and limitations
Scattered experience. Over the past 90 days my life has been characterized by necessities. Scrambling to find sustainable work, scrambling to keep up with coursework. Scrambling to assist as best I can in the psychological health and stability of my family, children. Scrambling to keep my head above water in grief, loss, confusion, self-care and healing.
In these currents – their exhaustion, their novelty, their large and compounded emotions of helplessness, anger, frustration, anguish and fear, their realms of bewilderment – my last ditch scramble has been to note, feel, soak and pay attention to as much as I can, filling notebooks full of journalings, lists, to-dos, scenarios, something like prayers or wishes, something like tomes of notes intended for bottles and no one / anyone. My best last chance seemed to be to try to MAP things – maintain access to whole regions of variant experience, conflicts, desperations and strengths, plans and disappointments, resumes and rejections, therapy appointments and dependents-events, multiple employment schedules and deadlines, and so on…SCRAMBLING…but at least with some scattered semblance of shapes and places and events…
Recently reading through Joshua Cohen’s Four New Messages, I encountered a story in which the story is being drafted simultaneous to the story being the story of the difficulty of its drafting, messages to mother or father about how stuck and stunted the process of managing multiple lives (or roles), composing fiction, processing life, and maintaining the presence of mind to embody created worlds and encountered worlds...living.
It hasn’t worked out that way. As I’ve delved into depths of my history, experience, perceptions as cracked open by the recent grief, loss and confusion; as I’ve purposed more presentness with my children and family and friends; as I’ve filled my days with job searches – statements of my identity, skills, education and worth; as I’ve learned new labor and institutions and expectations; as I’ve rewritten survivable budgets, forged opportunities to keep some semblance of self-care about what I want to be about (art, literature, learning, meaning); as I’ve sought to stay fit, attend to my body; as I’ve filled pockets of moments with music and writings that nurture or comfort me… things have NOT found any design… but are scrambled, scattered, disparate, paradoxical, bewildering. For the notebooks of language I have emitted during these months… there is hardly a snippet that makes literary sense, is bloggable, expresses. Thus the erratic entries, the confusing sentiments, the uncertainty and unknowing…
For now… here are the texts I’m hanging on…
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Hopefully something will form… for now, scattered blurbs and reports, survival and bewilderment… SCRAMBLING…
In my efforts to ground and attend to my experience and express it with honesty (see Opening the Hand) I have developed a map of locations – realms of the process that have risen as prominent regions within the difficulty, effort, grief, growth and procession of engaging dramatic change… You can view it here: Locations on the Map of Meaning.
To view the text for each mode, simply hover over the nodes title, click or press the + button or the down arrows beneath each location title to see full content. Some nodes lead to further nodes or you can use the buttons along the bottom of the screen. Repeating my former disclaimer…
“All of this is to say that I plan a series of posts that will be intensely personal, self-revelant, my own way of reaching toward my experience, my being, and selecting language with which to mark it down – for re-memory, re-cognition, observation, reception, attention, account. These are journal entries, frankly. They are what I have to write. I am calling them “Mapping the Meaning.” Since I know very few of you personally, in your whole presence, I expect confession, inquiry, and its self-circular expression to genuinely interest or benefit very few of you. For me, it is writing with an open hand.”
I am become a Rural Carrier Associate for the U.S. Postal Service.
I pursued employment with the USPS thinking it might provide some security of longevity, tradition (over 200 years of continuous service, public benefit, innovation and survival), government benefits and programs…a service and income that might meet the needs my children and I have developed for something like stability and sustenance.
I was wrong about most of those things.
I’m almost guaranteed one day of work a week (or whenever the regular carrier is unable to work) – no benefits, guaranteed abuse and damage to our one essential family vehicle, grave limitations on supplemental work (not supposed to seek employment with anyone that is a client of USPS – in other words, anyone that purchases postage – greatly delimiting the options / NOR taking any work between the hours of 6 AM and 6 PM when I might be needed to fill in) – and, a grand service NOT supported or secured by the US Government since 1970 (no tax dollars toward USPS!).
On the other hand. It clearly satisfies core ethics and values I have carried through my entire life and its pursuits – Meaning. Relationships. Communication. Tangible Information. The Betweens:
Music. Poetry. Religion. Philosophy. Psychology. Bookselling (bibliotherapy). Marriages. Research and reference. Parenting. Writing. Anthropology. Semiotics. Neuroscience. Embodiment. Systems Theory. Language. Ekphrasis. Communications. Information Science…
what (it seems) has fueled them all has been a passion, fascination, curiosity and intense desire to search into, understand, sense
HOW HUMAN BEINGS MAKE AND SHARE MEANING
NOW: I’m a tangible link in the chain. A node or circuit in the web of transmission.
Divorce summons, a lover’s plaint, news of a long-lost classmate or childhood friend, money for a meal, Christmas gifts for grandchildren, links between parents and children, carrier of bills and obligations that alter our lives – invitations to weddings, announcements of deaths, retirements, coupons and births, biological specimens and literary manuscripts, art works, seeds, music, books, clothes and toys…
from here to there, there to here
how often I have rushed to the mailbox,
how often I have posted letters,
how often the holding of a living personal document has made a difference in my life…
These are what I think of as I dig through bins, collocate numbers, sort and file, casing mail, and rattle and drag my way through any weather, mood or condition to securely, confidentially and certainly deliver the mail…
In a great meanwhile…
…after three years working from home like a dream – researching, academics, creative writing and art-making; love with a tremendous spouse, and a generous and flexible availability to my amazing children…
it is now turning into months of spouse-lessness, unemployment, harried by survival efforts, sustenance, hours upon hours of therapy, grief, anger, puzzlement, bewilderment, and wonder…
CHANGE
A sustained period of invaluable interactions and dad-ness will be swallowed up bouncing wash-boarded gravelly roads placing packages and envelopes in sturdy boxes of farms. Fighting for moments with children, opportunities to claim that I am here for them. To study. To write. To read or rest or be…to grocery and launder, housekeep, to play.
Relocating yet again a sense of home.
For our part – four kiddos, their mothers (and their partner/spouses) and I (and mine) – we have survived, adapted, adjusted and altered much in the past two decades. Time/little time, retail/academia/schlepping/poverty/art – proven resilient, pliable, innovative, possible – committed or interdependent on one another and have formed and become, ached and angered, wept and worried, laughed and lost, suffered and rejoiced and survived and thrived…
…continued…(“I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”)
and we’re a pretty wonderful, remarkable, heart-stopping, difficult bunch!
What follows will most likely be of little interest to the bulk of you. For the past few years I have been working to drive and weave the resources for my writing ever more densely into the thickety webs of my authentic experience of the world. Normally I press this through interdisciplinary inquiry into ways we make meaning, or co-construct what we live as relational/relating realities, attempting the time and effort of translating and investigating these passions and fascinations through creative genres and forms. However, life events of the past couple of months have greatly constricted available moments or periods for research and reflection, and magnified the complexity and overwhelming magnitude of our multi-layered, cross-scaled, relativity-dimensioned (see Multi-Sense Realism, et. al.) actual experience of living as human beings.
The most authentic and naked (or base) way I have had of “making sense” of my experience has been, for most of my life, to do it on blank pieces of paper with a writing utensil in hand. This has enabled my body, like a court stenographer or EKG, to jitter out marks and symbols of what happens to it, get strange glances at the process, notate various strata of its responsive-formative interactivity and selection, and extend/diminish/further and edit or retract (evolve) its activity of living survival.
The past 65 days have been characterized for me by grief and bewilderment, gratitude and wonder, tectonic shifts and rejoined connections, breakings and openings, terror and panic and archaic survival strategies, and desperate hope and frenzied imaginings…I suppose you could call it trauma, dramatic change, upheaval…LIFE.
I’ve been fairly caught up in processing it all (with dear good help), parenting my children, continuing academic study and frenetically seeking employment that it all might go on. So I feel my posting of late has been fragmented, disorganized, spotty, haphazard, almost accidental…
I have found employment – fraught with uncertainty still, but employ – and something about that one structural determinant has triggered me to assay an account, as much for myself as for anything else…to make the time to manufacture a kind of map for myself of what has and is occurring in my life in this span.
All of this is to say that I plan a series of posts that will be intensely personal, self-revelant, my own way of reaching toward my experience, my being, and selecting language with which to mark it down – for re-memory, re-cognition, observation, reception, attention, account. These are journal entries, frankly. They are what I have to write. I am calling them “Mapping the Meaning.” Since I know very few of you personally, in your whole presence, I expect confession, inquiry, and its self-circular expression to genuinely interest or benefit very few of you. For me, it is writing with an open hand.
Theories exist that propose a process for primary and profound attachments. That as these attachments proceed, they will inevitably expose (or reach, come up against) individual limitations. As humans intermingle with increased intimacy and time, eventually the darker reaches, safer holdings in us (traumas, repression, grave fear or terror, shame) will be engaged and something will ensue – usually either openings or closures. The following was composed as an attempt at a relational account of this…
We Open Doors
We struggle. We stumble forth. We reach, we ramble, we run. We learn to walk. We tumble and waver, we stride. We overhear, we listen, we engage. We greet what we encounter, we welcome and inquire. We reciprocate. We open doors.
We gaze, we laugh, we remember and rejoinder. We wander, we wonder, we happily agree. We chide and we dispute, we recommend and reason, we exclaim. We open doors.
We step forth, step through, we open chambers. We confess. We beg, we plead, we rest and bless. We sing. We join, we sway, we dance. We kick and scream and wriggle. We resonate. We hurt and we forgive, we open doors.
We whisper while we shout, we worship and succumb. We praise and denigrate, argue, negotiate, we push and we budge. We hesitate. We wrestle with the locks, we suppress and unremember, we fabricate, we lie. We pry the doors.
We change the stories. We imagine. We concoct and recreate. We design a thread and tell a tale, we corroborate with doubt and love. We fear and we recall. We reassure. We swoon, we falter and we soothe. We open doors.
We enter dungeons. We smell the dark. We trigger mines. We panic and react. We flee aimless and return, we grasp and seek and hope. We lift the doors.
We reach the wetlands. Cross the plains. We clamber mountains holding onto rope. We knot and we undo. We disrobe and arm ourselves. We bleed. We heal. We stack the rocks. We open doors.
We attach and we press on. We scab and suffer. We get lost. We recover. We holler, we recoil, we respond. We widen cracks and we expose. We grope, we censor, we divide. We rage and we varnish, we forget. We ask and refuse the answer. We testify, profess. We strain and crawl. We collapse. We guard the doors.
We collaborate. We weave and tear and shape. We invent. We threaten cores. We gird our hearts and steel our minds, we clasp our hands. We jump and weep and fly. We grieve. We repose, we dialogue, we alchemize. We sear. We use our weight. We bolster. We open doors – they slam us.
We protect. We damage and arrange. We repair. We gossip with our notions. We theorize, we enter forests. We drown and cradle rocks, we float and we resign. We hear the latches, we peer downstairs, we take our steps and count the beats. We’re keeping time. We feel the tremors, we sense the snap, we open doors.
We break them down. We tremble. We contract. We slither, wriggle, wind. We explode, we come undone, we disappear. We hear the lock. We search the key. We gather, we conspire, we close in. We close doors. We seal, we paint, we turn. We shrink, explore, thin out. We look away, look forward, look about. We separate and margin. We barrier and bind. We open doors.
We pause, we blind, we wish. The doors shut tight on what we’ve opened.
All my Words are Silent 