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Tag: self-awareness
Manifold Instants of “I”
If you happen to have curiosity around the function and latitude of the letter “I” in the human realms (as “I” certainly do)…here is a book that delightfully provides an invigorating wealth of instants and instances to consider…
Vanishing PointΒ by Ander Monson
and I recommend it to all levels of readers…highly
Decompression Addendum: Redefining Terminologies: Finding Words
“The variety of words is another error…I believe words must be conquered, lived, and that the apparent publicity they receive from the dictionary is a falsehood…I now recognize among the thousands the nine or ten words that get along with my soul; I have already written more than one book in order to write, perhaps, one page.”
-Jorge Luis Borges-
Rudiments: Places of Operation
Redefining Core Existence Terminology
Β
Family: those with whom one βbelongs,β chosen and not, like it or not, oneβs βtribeβ β born into and/or evolved and developed.
Home:Β states of being or locations, settings in which one IS.Β Settings in which one is freest to be.
Love:Β Β Β shared and mutual, reciprocal regard, respect, desire and preference.Β Those with whom one thrives and incites the thriving of.Β Intention and attention ( a relation between not inhering in beings)
Friendship:Β unmitigated affirmation, reciprocal and intentional.Β Native complementarity of being.
World:Β internal and external context at any given moment
Self:Β whom one is or shows up as in oneβs world β at any given moment: individual weave or presentation in circumstantial contexts and settings.
Language:Β whatever serves as communique betwixt individual and others and world (internal/ external)
I:Β utterer of language, behaver of behaviors, actor of actions, feeler of feelings β as regards the βselfβ
Other:Β any and all beings not the self-regarding individual
Vocation:Β that which one IS and DOES; self-perpetuating passion β that which drives and rewards, fulfills and seduces, nourishes and excites desire for an individualβ¦oneβs propulsion, desire and satisfaction in being.
Leisure:Β rest, reprieve, de-stressification
Fun/Play:Β light enjoyment, carbonated experience
Sex:Β whole-cloth woven world of contexts of one or more individuals
Art:Β combinatory effect of an individualβs self, world, vocation and play; any βotherwise-notβ creation of a living beingβs given and concocted whole
Thought:Β a selfβs languaging of βworldβ
Habits:Β automatic or instinctual activities of an individual, supposedly self-soothing or self-managing
Perception:Β individual sifting of βworldβ and βselfβ (see also: interpretation)
Reading:Β engaging the language of others or world or self-as-other
Intepretation:Β an individual or group of individualβs βspinβ on βuniverseβ
Universe:Β arbitrary boundary comprehending all that can be perceived/conceived by an individual or group at a given moment
Conception:Β consideration and invention of possibilities of βuniverseβ
Writing:Β an effort to live, to exist
Decompression: A Process
it goes on…this emptying search…
(Re)Assesments
Β
At something of a loss, what feels like a βcrossroadsβ except that perhaps nothing in existence is really either / or.
That was not a sentence.
Bewildered without anxiety, I approach a sort of noisy blank.Β A surfeited absence.
I have the amorphous sensation of being entirely undone and woven up as a satchel of my everything.Β Every instance of myself threads the material of an empty knapsack that is me, dangling from a stick over the shoulder of the world I inhabit.
That the bag, indeed, is empty.Β No objects or trinkets in that wee darkness to finger or grasp, no spirits to set free, emotions to unstopper.Β Nothing within to escape, not even air.
My entirety fabricated as an emptied bag.
All Iβve ever written, attempted, every action, thought, adventure or relation.Β All my labors, abilities, acquisitions, emotions and dreams; every word or intuition, fear or blatant risk, all ongoing consequence(s)β¦EVERYTHING β internal, external; past-present-future: is the skin of a being, the form and the boundary, the grafted substance of an absent individuality.
I experience this neither as a blockage, nor an impasse; no meaninglessness, purposelessness or ennui β simply a vague, obvious experience that all I am as a being is my interface with the world within and around me, idenitifiable without essence.
Responsible, shaped, recognizable and devoid of identity β no narrative or plot, character or definitive name, just an inextricably meshed passel of experiences forming a pliable veneer around a vacant hollow.
That all will carry on, as such, until its end.Β Experience upon experience, before experience, during and after experiences and experiments β weaving, threading, joiningβ¦this being-form, this walking thinking speaking shape, this perceptive living husk or porous shell, a wave and trajectory of experiencings.
To feign a purpose, an intention or choicy action as this reality requires some arbitrary groundwork β hypotheses and rudimentary organizational operations.Β What might this handbag proffer?Β Or emit?Β What song might be huffed from this void?
This is where I seem to be.Β Evaluate.Β Assess.Β No pillars, few givens, a smattering of beliefs and bones and hunches, a median vocabulary of gestures.Β From this β what pretend to build?Β What fabricate?Β I find that I want to, have desire to, create.Β Make out of what is woven β everything that forms me / allows me to be β but in what manner?Β Open.Β Free.
As if the absence is realized, the content in-formed, substance resulting from wafting motions and play.Β Capacity for invention.Β Something like soap bubbles β materials forming a translucent and wobbly funhouse mirror of shapesβ¦leakingβ¦nothing!Β Yet capable of popping fragments like droplets or spittle, or words.
This seems to be where I am.Β I know not what might emerge, but Iβd like to leave some trace of the fabric experience has made of me.Β Scraps or ephemeral stains, artifacts.
Additional Instants of “I”…I think
“We spontaneously obey and follow an inner voice because we know it to be personal.Β
What would we say if we learned that in descending into ourselves to find our solitary voice we meet an alien one,
the voice of words?”
-Edmond Jabes-
Adding it up
Reading, Writing β the βRithmetic
You know, I honestly donβt know why I think of the many things I think of.Β βAboutβ usually, yes, usually I can surmise why I stick to a thinking project β it might be something that troubles or worries me, maybe it involves something about which I care deeply or enjoy β then Iβll ruminate around on the subject or object for awhile, attempt to figure or follow the thinks, arrange some digits or sounds, contents, feelings or symbols until I make fit or get lost in the simple joy of tinkering.
But then other times, and really quite often, I canβt locate the instigative trail or balancing of reason for why (or how) items pop into or swish by my apprehending (apprehensive?) brain.
For instance, just now (and itβs precisely the unknowing that prompts me to write about it, to squeeze it through language), I was sitting quietly to desk after a very full day of soccer games, bicycle rides and birthdays, perusing Ron Loewinsohnβs Goat Dances, Anne Carsonβs plainwater, Jon Andersonβs The Milky Way and Robert Creeleyβs Collected Essays β a very normal way I have of grounding myself, discovering a location by mapping found paths, when sploosh! across the internet of my mind zipped:
βI guess I always read and write as if my life depended on itβ
Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β And then I stopped.Β Closed the books, slid them aside, rested my chin in my hand and gazed toward nowhere, wondering what question that sounds-like-an-answer phrase was responding to or anticipating.
Why would I think that?
Lost in language like dancing and syllables, stars and night skies, withs and relation and choros, why would my only clear thought (recognizably anyway) be:
βI guess I always read and write as if my life depended on itβ?
Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β When something stops me like that, and I already hear a rhetorical response, but no answers satisfy and questions only multiply exponentiallyβ¦
I grab loose blank notebook pages and a ball-point penβ¦
and begin doodling, dabbling, and βshowing my work.β
βI guess I always read and write as if my life depended on itβ (implied automatic resonant answer: because it does) leads precisely (in this case, given all the contingencies and conditions) to the chicken-scratching rambling preceding this period.
In other words, not to a solution, or perhaps even a working equation or problem, but simply to activity.Β Reading, writing, thinking it out in lines, shapes and signs.
Now during all this scribble-sketching around the inceptive phrase, my bodymind has been mantra-ing responsorials:Β βbecause it really does,β βbecause Iβm not even aware of things happening until verified in language,β βbecause life just occurs and I donβt know about it until I manifest the experience some way β bounce it off of a counterpart or internal funhouse mirror (otherβs words) to learn what it is and isnβtβ and so onβ¦so-called βreasonsβ I guess?Β Hypothetical rationales for the random (apparently) phrase having typed itself in my nervous wirings?
The only βfact,β as I experience them, is that this phrase: βI guess I always read and write as if my life depended on itβ clearly spat itself across the innards of my cranium while I was going about the very normal activity of recovering, soothing, pausing and nourishing myself on books at hand, wishing somewhere it hadnβt taken me all day to reach this quiet, wishing somewhere that all conversations went like this listening, wishing somehow I had something that felt like it needed to be written down, wishing somewhere that I understood myself.
And alas: a baffling sentence in response to no one silently carves and engraving on my consciousness:
βI guess I always read and write as if my life depends on itβ
My entire body replying: βwellβ¦YEAH!Β It does!Β Itβs the only way YOU know that thereβs possibly LIFE at all, and not just sensations, emotions, thinkings and dreams; reactions, responses and stimuli!Β Without reading about it or writing words out I personally have no concrete object to sound my experience against, to test a happening β everything else out there from spouse to βgodβ is always moving, shifting, adapting, changingβ¦just like me.β
βI guess I always read and write BECAUSE my βlifeβ depends on itβ
All my Words are Silent 