The Spell of the Sensuous

Not nearly as racy as the title makes it sound (or maybe racier), this ethnography profiles mostly Aboriginal, Alaskan, and American Southwestern indigenous/oral peoples, and how their lack of a rigid, alphabetic language allows them to interact differently with the natural environment surrounding them.

Amazing that this book should come into my life as I'm looking to expand upon my original thesis on how humans' philosophy affects their interaction with their landscape--physically and visually.  Now I can play with cells, seeds, animism, and linguistics.  A dream park.

"...the traditional magician or medicine person functions primarily as an intermediary between human and nonhuman worlds, and only secondarily as a healer." 8  Healing as rebalancing

"His magic is precisely this heightened receptivity to the meaningful solicitations--songs, cries, gestures--of the larger, more-than-human field." 9 ...like stories, art

Change/rebalancing comes from the edge of cultures, the edge of civilization, existing on the periphery: "even there, moving along those walls, he may hope to find the precise clues to the mystery of how those walls were erected, and how a simple boundary became a barrier, only if the moment is timely--only, that is, if the margin he frequents is a temporal as well as a spatial edge, and the temporal structure that it bounds is about to dissolve, or metamorphose, into something else." 29 Time and space and their constant relation and flux.

On embodiment in a perceptually shifting world: "It is this informing of my perceptions by the evident perceptions and sensations of other entities that establishes, for me, the relative solidity and stability of the world." 39 ...thus the sensuous.

A "primordial life-world" of our perceptions, our "immediate lived experience." 40

The correlation between reading and hunting--"reading traces", "hunting the meaning, which would be the meeting with the Other." 96 Again the power of interaction and edges to make meaning.  Perhaps why people of so many different varieties are drawn to the colossal land-sky-water edge which is the beach/ocean.

In an oral culture "To speak was to live within a storied universe, and thus to feel one's closeness to those protagonists and ancestral heroes whose words often seemed to speak through one's mouth." 109 no alphabet=greater interpretive and connective power

"For only when a qualitative term is written down does it become ponderable as a fixed form independent of both the speakers and of situations." 111 rigidity of form and alphabet

"For the letters of the alphabet, like the Platonic Ideas, do not exist in the world of ordinary vision." 112  outside the life-world, the realm of human-to-nonhuman perception.

"Chiasm" is Greek for "crisscross", neurobiological idea of the interwoven optical fibers.  Also relevant to the interwoven, "reciprocal participation...between one's own flesh and the encompassing flesh of the world." 127-8

The "visual gaze explores the reflective surfaces of things, their outward color and contour...the ears, meanwhile, are more inward organs; they emerge from the depths of my skull like blossoms or funnels, and their participation tells me less about the outer surface than the interior substance of things." 128 Resonance and radiance...paired opposites?

The life taken on by reading the written word: "This is a form of animism that we take for granted, but it is an animism nonetheless--as mysterious as a talking stone." 131

"To spell...seemed thus at the same time to cast a spell, to exert a new and lasting power over the things spelled.  Yet we can now realize that to learn to spell was also, and more profoundly, to step under the influence of the written letters ourselves, to cast a spell upon our own senses." 133

Apache oral culture and location-centered-ness: "a topographic place becomes the guarantor of corrected behavior, the visible presence that reminds one of past foibles and that ensures one's subsequent attentiveness." 159  Attentiveness!!

"We ourselves are characters within a huge story that is visible unfolding all around us, participants within the vast imagination, or Dreaming, of the world." 163

On songlines: "The song is thus a kind of auditory route map through the land." 166 Again the pairing of visual and aural.  A set of directions, instructions, bringing order to chaos.  Concept of Ancestors going "back in" to the landscape, embodying the natural world--or it embodying them.

Dreamtime "is an ongoing process--the perpetual emerging of the world from an incipient, indeterminate state into full, waking reality, from invisibility to visibility, from the secret depths of silence to articulate song and speech." 169

"An unsung land is a dead land." Bruce Chatwin 171  Humans and natural world both need this interaction.

"Stories hold, in their narrative layers, the sedimented knowledge accumulated by our progenitors." 181  Stories = Grand Canyon!

Curvature of time: Read Eliade's Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return

"The letters of the alphabet...begin to function as mirrors reflecting us back upon ourselves...short-circuiting the sensory reciprocity between that organism and the land." 187 "reflection" as "loop"

Time = circular trajectory of moon and sun and stars, "demarcates and encloses a spatial field", like the horizon-- "the same shape as perceivable space." 189

"manifested" vs "manifesting" and the "power of human intention" to catalyze this process 192

"Eternity lies not in a separated heaven...but in the promise of a future reconciliation on earth." 197

Heidegger (Being and Time) time = not just "now points" but "ecstatic".  Fundamental realities, "opening us to what is outside ourselves", connecting different layers of existence and perception 205

"There belongs to each ecstasy a 'whither' to which one is carried...a particular 'horizon'." 209

Horizon = future, promise, receding, withheld.  underground = past, support, refused.  Both hidden from present moment/perceivable landscape. 214

Story of the Emergence, people "climbing up a reed or a tree, mimics the emergence from the soil of the corn and other plants...from the depths in search of sunlight." 218  humans = seeds, "gestation" periods, wombs

"the ineffability of the air seems akin to the ineffability of awareness itself." the "mind" not as something inside us, but as something we are all, collectively, inside of. 227

Language as a "veil" 255

" 'the inner--what is it, if not intensified sky?' " 262

"Language, for oral peoples, is not a human invention but a gift of the land itself." 263

"To make sense is to enliven the senses." 265

Imagining Argentina

This was a magical, colorful book ostensibly about Argentinians' struggle against their oppressive government in the 1970s, but also about the power of the imagination, a story on story.

"A sympathetic vibration between the strings annihilates distance so that the future and the past rush into the present." 34  Relates to this continuity and cyclical nature of time I've been pondering a lot lately.

"I walk because I love the place, because it is always the same and always different." 67  Songlines, dreamtime--walking creating a place, walking creating you, everything creating each other

"Standing there, I had the distinct impression of people hiding within themselves, and I realized that my sense of the city's accessibility was false.  I had seen its gestures, heard its voices, but it kept much to itself and I did not want to know that part, the way you would rather not hear about a lover's past." 69  Maybe this is more true of places you are not native to? Or maybe the inaccessibility, at some level, of any one thing to another.  Or the illusion of separation between things, and people's wish to propagate it.

"He was not going anywhere in particular; rather, he was searching for something he could not even name, so the condition of his mind was necessarily different from ours--attuned to indistinct possibilities." 72  How I feel so often.

"It's not often that you see life and fiction take each other by the hand and dance." 206  ...or is it?

Big Small Things

Some new imagery to add to the rest of the summer's art.
Got thinking about these when I saw a micro image of the AIDS virus in the Genome exhibit at the Smithsonian--and more importantly, thinking about how they might make some really interesting statements when combined with other themes like

-natural landscapes, specifically American Southwest, canyonlands
-portraits, images from news media, thinking of doing a more politicized series
-Hungarian woven patterning/any ornamental design

I'll be playing with the ideas of decoration as a source of pleasure and an end in itself, and how that focus on aesthetics contrasts (or maybe doesn't) with issues such as humans' relationship with the earth and with each other.  Are humans to the earth what microbes and bacteria are to humans? 

Stay tuned for how this relates to seeds too!

Celtic interwoven patterning of shapes

Macro-eye, filigree

passageways and doors, openings, bubbles surfacing, dancing on top

songlines, dreamtime, lace

Roger Dean dimensionality--this color scheme. Broccoli

this color combination and explosive outward movement

symbolism of central pairing

separate yet intertwined worlds

depth at center

central focal point, blurred haze surrounding

leaf, seed, radiation

glassy

more dancing

bees, honeycomb, storage, harvest, tiny city

Mist

This time-lapse video, aside from being visually gorgeous, got me thinking about what our movements might look like to things that move less.  Do we look like a fast-moving mist or fog to a tree? Do we move too quickly to be seen by rocks and earth at all? Are there other ways we all perceive each other?

Even Cowgirls Get The Blues

"It's the people who have been deformed by society that I feel sorry for.  We can live with nature's experiments, and if they aren't too vile, turn them to our advantage.  But social deformity is sneaky and invisible; it makes people into monsters--or mice." 62

"Is love space? Or is love something we use to fill space?  If time eats the doughnut, does love eat the hole?" 93

"Certainly that sputterless little candeflame of the mediocre mind known as "common sense" has never produced anything worth celebrating." 123

"Don't be outraged, be outrageous!" 173

"It's like my life is sparkling in every direction, through all of space and all of time." 178

"There are many things worth living for, there are a few things worth dying for, but there is nothing worth killing for." 197

"In times of widespread chaos and confusion, it has been the duty of more advanced human beings--artists, scientists, clowns and philosophers--to create order.  In times such as ours, however, when there is too much order, too much management, too much programming and control, it becomes the duty of superior men and women to fling their favorite monkey wrenches into the machinery." 201

"A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed." 208

"Only cretins and logicians don't contradict themselves.  And in their consistency, they contradict life." 224

"If you take any activity, any art, any discipline, any skill, take it and push it as far as it will go, push it beyond where it has ever been before, push it to the wildest edge of edges, then you force it into the realm of magic...illuminate its relationship with all other things...to that point of cosmic impact where it becomes all other things." 241

"The people who see miracles are the people who look for miracles." 254

"For the person courageous enough to seek it out, disorientation always leads to love." 296

"Whatever goes wrong can be used to your advantage, provided it goes wrong enough." 308

"Love easily confuses us because it is always in flux between illusion and substance, between memory and wish, between contentment and need." 330

"Maybe the human animal has contributed really nothing to the universe but kissing and comedy--but by God that's plenty." 340

"Playfulness ceases to serve a serious purpose when it takes itself too seriously." 343

"Yes...everything is getting worse.  But everything is also getting better." 350

"Our brains are forever having fun with us by making us learn over and over what we've known from the beginning." 352

Trenton Ave Arts Festival

Ran into some local, beautiful, repeated-line-ish things this Saturday--a day of amoebas, which feeds in very much with some recent pondering on the primal purpose (or lack thereof) of pattern and decoration, and with a certain Tom Robbins book introduction.

First, Elizabeth Nentwig:

Then, The 50/50 Company (named so because they make and sell only 50 of each print, and unfortunately these are the best quality photos I can find of the work). 

Exciting Wilmington Things!

A 5500 square foot sailing mural, soon to be the largest in Wilmington! Making a dream of mine come true in the most amazing way!  Check it out, if you can see it, here, and like our page and follow our progress:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kalmar-Nyckel-Mural/122633837927442?fref=ts

It is a more than beautiful thing to be enjoying life this much!

To Whoever's Out There: Hello and Thanks!

This blog has officially hit the 5000-page-view mark!

...something which prompted me to do some serious reflecting on exactly what I am doing here.  

When I started blogging in 2009, I used this space to keep track of research for my senior thesis.  I titled it, one could say rather immodestly, The Universal Story: A Painted Investigation of Figures Within Their Surroundings, Based on Daoism and Native American Philosophy, although the more I think about the act of story-telling--whether in visual, audio, or written form--it seems to be one of the most powerful tools we have to connect with one another while becoming irrevocably our own unique selves: one of the things that makes us human--universal indeed.  Practically, blogging was also a handy and at the time trendy way to connect with other undergrads in my program who were documenting their research in a similar way.

When I left school, most of the time I'd once spent looking at art and thinking about epistemology of necessity changed to time I spent planning lessons and thinking about how to catch my years-behind high school students up to their more affluent peers.  At the end of each day, the part of me that was crushed by this new burden wanted nothing more than to escape into a world inside a book, and escape I did.  But I noticed that I read so fast I often left myself with a color, a feeling, an impressionist painting of what I'd read, and the details, the words which I could take with me, sort of flew out a mental window.  So I very sporadically started writing some of them down here.

And now, when I find myself with more time (though never enough) to reflect and think and paint and draw and write, I've come back (full circle? ellipse? amoeba?) to something like the original purpose of this project--all the while coming to terms with the fact that I am not only a compulsive share-er (of all these thoughts and quotations and images and ideas) but also a compulsive stat-checker (of this blog).  It's been really moving to see my words reaching both places I'd expect--like the US and Costa Rica, or in the case of posts about Australia or Azerbaijan, spikes in those respective countries--and places that are a surprise to me--like Reunion and Borneo.

It's strange and beautiful, I think, that I don't know exactly where this project is going, nor do I know exactly who it's going to.  And yet, it's such a primal, crucial thing to share those things that grow inside us--really, that's all we have and all we're here for.  So I'll do the only thing I can, which is to take a half-step back and see where all this leads.

Here are a few words from the introduction of Bird by Bird, a book on the act of writing, by Anne Lamott, which seem to fit quite nicely here:

"[Writing] provides you with some sort of primal verification: you are in print, therefore you exist.  Who knows what this urge is all about, to appear somewhere outside yourself, instead of feeling stuck inside your muddled and stroboscopic mind, peering out like a little undersea animal." xiv

"[I] knew what it was like to have someone speak for me, to close a book with a sense of both triumph and relief, one lonely isolated social animal finally making contact." xix

"I started writing sophomoric articles for the college paper.  Luckily, I was a sophomore." xxi

"Do it every day for a while...Do it as you would do scales on the piano.  Do it by prearrangement with yourself.  Do it as a debt of honor.  And make a commitment to finishing things." xxii

"It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony.  The act of writing turns out to be its own reward." xxvi

"It is work and play together." xxix


And, should you feel so inclined, I'd be more than happy to read your comments or stories.  (...seems only fair, a little quid pro quo, after all this time :) )

My Place

This is a story about the power of story--how one family unveils (sometimes painfully, sometimes comically) its own generations-hidden history and comes together in the most beautiful way.  It centers around Australian Aboriginal culture, which after my research into Dreamtime and my roommate's recent return from that very place, seems more than coincidence (although I think I've stopped believing in coincidence and starting believing in co-incidence).

It's also about the power of place--something I've been thinking about very much as I've come back to live in the region, if not the exact area, where I feel more or less native; as I've been contemplating the seasonal cycle which has imperceptibly become a part of my own rhythm as I've grown older--or perhaps shaped that rhythm; as I've made my home more transient than ever before yet at the same time more rooted in this soil, literally and figuratively; as I've experienced what I can best describe as an ever-so-slight sort of culture shock every time I transition between Wilmadelphia and Philmington.

And it's also got a strong-woman-strand woven throughout.  The men are typically either absent from the narrative or absent from the family, with few exceptions.  It makes me, in light of many could-be-seen-as disappointments with the concept of harmonizing my life with a counterpart of the male variety, realize that while I still want that kind of partnership, a life intertwined with some awesome women would do quite a bit to fill up the ever-expanding vastness that is my heart.

It was especially interesting to read this after Tom Robbins' densely packed, metaphor-ridden prose (which I found out is written sentence by sentence with little or no revision, a process that takes about a day per page).  Here, the individual sentence structure and metaphor were second, by far, to the very act of storytelling.  So my selection of quotes is a bit thinner, but nonetheless worth a ponder.  I don't have page numbers on me; I'm in one home and the book's in another.  Here goes:

"You never heard anything special unless you were very quiet."

"Let me pass this way but once and do what good I can.  I shall not pass this way again.  Maybe someone else is walking a road that's like mine."

"Our lives fell into a pattern." (I've been thinking so much about pattern lately--culture and meaning and pleasure and ornamentation all wound up together into something like making sense of why we're here)

"Someone's got to tell, otherwise things will stay the same."

"One day, the place would be desert, the next day, green and gold everywhere."  In the context of the book, referring literally to the landscape, but also seems to reflect the natural ebbs and flows of the thinking-person's life, the cranial landscape if you will.  Or even if you won't...

"In my heart, I heard it."  The only place we can really, truly hear anything, I'd say.

Can You Camus?

About a month ago, I borrowed Camus' L'Etranger (The Stranger, en francais) from my friend's bookshelf.

Hadn't read anything of substance in French since my high school stint with Lord of the Rings (finally a method to make it last longer than a week)--but it was funny how fast it all came back.  

And funny how what I am mainly left with when reading in a different language is a much more...well... impressionistic impression.  While LOTR was full of darkness--obscurite, ombres, nuages, etc--L'Etranger was just the opposite--full of blinding light, blinding sun, blinding heat, all of which sharply offset the dark, tragic events--a heady contrast like a photo through too strong a filter, distorting reality.  I felt like I had to squint while I was reading, like I was an aveugle myself--but maybe that's Camus' point--that there is no way to see an un-distorted truth.

At least, that's the best I could understand it.  Maybe someday I'll read it en anglais and test out my hypothesis.