as quoted in Katinka Ridderbos’ book on time:

John Vallee, 54, lives near the trestle that spans the Crane Creek and was watching TV when he heard a loud screech. He went outside and first thought he saw a blanket tangled under a rail car. Then he realized it was a person.

“It’s going to be hard for me to get to sleep,” Mr. Vallee told Florida Today. “I can’t get it out of my mind.” — AP

The energized impression and apprehension of be-ing leaves us with resonant formations in embodied memory. And it is resonance that best circumscribes (models) the phenomena of the propagation of empathy from the Other to the Self. Although there is no hard evidence in humans, the concept of mirror neurons would seem to support the idea of resonance. Caught a lecture at UM with Deb on “Empathy in Normal Adult Development and Neurological Disease” with Bob Levenson from UCB which got me thinking of the actual mechanism that allows for the transmission of the energies of expression across Cartesian space from the Self to the Other. The obvious model would be the transmission of band-limited radiative (visual, auditory, touch, etc) energy which then is apprehended by the neural system, a system which is sensitive to ‘matched’ or similar experiences that have already impinged and impressed themselves on the body system. This impression process changes the body system from one energy configuration to another. And any life system will have fundamental resonant pathways — these would be necessary determinants of basic learned experience — whatever the particular and precise mechanism is (mirror neurons being perhaps a primary model), the idea of resonance seems to be key. Resonance would depend on some accounting of sameness and difference as per prior embodied experience and the persistence of impressions (which themselves are configurations of energized neuronal structures: memory) among other factors. There would have to be a means for rapid energy pattern-matching across a huge volume of semi-fixed memory structures in the brain — it would be impossible to check all possible prior impressions with all live incoming impressions, so there would have to be some kind of disgressionary or limiting function to the process in the form of step or directional filters…

I can’t get you out of my mind…

Woodys #133, 1253 Iron Springs Road
10.558 gallons
$2.619/gallon
$27.65

The vis insita, or innate force of matter, is a power of resisting by which every body, as much as in it lies, endeavors to preserve its present state, whether it be of rest or of moving uniformly forward in a straight line. — Isaac Newton, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica

Momentum. It’s easier to (continue to) follow a prepared pathway, or a pathway that has allowed, formerly, the development of a certain velocity and quality of transit. Shifting pathways requires adjustments in … everything, not just velocity. And change … is … difficult. But why? Is it a force of instinct that keeps track of optimized behavior, deterring one from engaging in potentially non-optimized or energy-intensive experimentation, or is it merely the threat of social dissonance, or dis-position?

Looking for a path to follow. Which one. Well trodden, worn, abandoned, crowded, one-way, two-way, or simply not there.

Make one.

And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, then to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them. Thus it happens that whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they do it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly, in such wise that the prince is endangered along with them. — Niccolò Machiavelli, “The Prince”

Make change because all is change anyway. The Prince will guarantee his incremental redundancy by not embracing all the evidences and actualities of change that he may possibly apprehend.

In the Book of Changes a distinction is made between three kinds of change: nonchange, cyclic change (recurrence), and sequent change (non-recurrence). Nonchange is the background, as it were, against which change is possible. For in regard to any change there must be some fixed point to which the change can be referred; otherwise there can be no definite order and everything is dissolved in chaotic movement. The point of reference must be established, and this always requires a choice and decision. It makes possible a system of coordinates into which everything else is fitted. Consequently at the beginning of the world, as at the beginning of thought, there is the decision, the fixing of the point of reference. … The ultimate frame of reference for all that changes is the unchanging.

The question of change is an incremental valuation. All cannot change all the time. Where change can occur and where it may occur and how change will occur is constantly in flux. Social systems seek to attenuate flows of change which are too powerful, and to amplify those which are insufficient, as judged by the momentary contingencies and needs of the system. It is the task of judging the temporal scaling of response to the evolving conditions which will provide auspicious outcomes.

If everything now becomes about the Road: it all falls along that infinitely converging line, that pavement rising to the foot, hard, on occasion scraping the nose, the knees, or the palms; it is both that which is down-trodden, and the means to get there. A path for social flows, climbing, gathering, consuming, dispersing. Freedom, indeterminacy, hydrocarbon wastage, imperial protocols, signage, regulation, safety, danger, possibility, newness. On the road, carrying the old with oneSelf, in a worn knapsack, that which is old, known, important, very important.

So, three or four threads: 1) the Self on the road; 2) the encounter with the Other on the road; 3) the road as an expression of the techno-social context for human relation; 4) what to do on the road that cannot be done elsewhere or under other conditions — what the road proffers to life, how one gets there, that and imagining the end of the road (Oz! to meet the Wizard (or Sorceress) hehe, from the Yellowbrick Road to Oz, now ain’t that whacked!).

In that moment I was able, so to speak, to place myself in a future which may one day be realized. I saw not only what I might one day be able to do, but also I saw this — that the anticipation of the event was an augur of the deed itself. Suddenly I realized how it had been with the struggle to express myself in writing. I saw back to the period when I had the most intense, exalted visions of words written and spoken, but in fact could only mutter brokenly. Today I see that my steadfast desire was alone responsible for whatever progress or mastery I have made. The reality is always there, and it is preceded by vision. And if one keeps looking steadily the vision crystallizes into fact or deed. There is no escaping it. It doesn’t matter what route one travels — every route brings you eventually to the goal. “All roads lead to Heaven,” is the Chinese proverb. If one accepted that fully, one would get there so much more quickly. One should not be worrying about the degree of “success” obtained by each and every effort, but only concentrate on maintaining the vision, keeping it pure and steady. The rest is sleight-of-hand work in the dark, a genuine automatic process, no less somnambulistic because accompanied by pains and aches. — Henry Miller, “To Paint is to Love Again”

Writing on the road. The translation of movement and sensual input to text. Learning what filters to apply, what social protocols to apply, what protocols to transcend, what to hold, what to release. Discipline.

Leaving aside the refined mapping of experience-once-removed. And instead, gathering experience first hand, in the moment, where circumspection is wistful, wasteful, or even dangerous.

Music on the road. Traveling minstrels, buskers, harmonica-playing hobos. playing for people on the road, or playing whilst on the road. Meeting at the roadhouse. Beyond the city limits. What goes down when humans engage beyond the control of the proper social order. What goes on outside the ordered flows of town. Interstitial in the sense that between towns lie the open roads. bandits, women and men of loose moral fortitude, and wild animals. The space of chaotic flow.

We suspect that even though travel in the modern world seems to have been taken over by the Commodity — even though the networks of convivial reciprocity seem to have vanished from the map — even though tourism seems to have triumphed — even so — we continue to suspect that other pathways still persist, other tracks, unofficial, not noted on the map, perhaps even “secret” — pathways still linked to the possibility of an economy of the Gift, smugglers’ routes for free spirits, known only to the geomantic guerrillas of the art of travel.

As a matter of fact, we don’t just “suspect” it. We know it. We know there exists an art of travel. — Hakim Bey, Overcoming Tourism

What is the nature of what is feared outside the purview of human controlled flows? Is it merely nature? It is the presence of (or the risk of) death — that singular element that lies completely beyond human control, for ever? It cannot be erased from the wild kernel of being. Some seek the thrill of facing it, some hide in states of paranoid control to keep it as far away as possible, backing away only to fall over a precipice unseen behind. Religion is the construct that irrationally rationalizes the presence of the unknown, of death, and of corrupt social order.

… back to the road …

The body of speed. (hunt and/or be hunted). Movement is the first escape from death. Running to safety, to the nearest tree. Running to fetch the weapon that you left at home. Running for the crowd so that the odds of getting eaten are marginally lowered. Running fast. Running to change places. Running to make a moving target. Running for help! Running to the Library!

The Book as fuel for keeping warm and The Book as weapon: dictionaries and encyclopedias work best for both purposes. Book as pillow. Book as door-stop. Book as object sensed orbiting centers of cultural gravity. Textual asteroids and debris. Escape that field.

The Book as tool for enhancing procreative potential and staving off death. Rather, Books on how to enhance procreative potential and how to stave off death. Reading about how to enhance procreative potential and how to stave off death. Reading-while-driving. Speed. And then it comes. uuuuuhhh.

nah. gotcha, I’m outta here, step on it, hit the gas, burn some rubber, spray some gravel in ‘is face…

The condition of virtuality arises when humans create a situation which attenuates the flows that are impinging on their sensual and embodied presence. When technology is defined as a way to alter the paths of energy flow: virtuality is a subset condition of the altered flows such that the flows that are obviously (or not!) entering the body system are attenuated. The obvious (materialist!) subset of the widest set is that grouping which attenuates the classical sensory-input spectra. These may be ‘scientifically’ framed based on typical wave-based mechanical and electro-magnetic physics: the EM frequency band of visible Light, the pressure-induced electricity of touch, and so on. In a holistic approach to presence, the affectations of flow are continuous, complete, and substantive.

Alluding to yet a further subset is the use of glass as a specific form of energized matter which is placed between the eye and the ‘world out there.’ This is a fundamental form of virtuality, where silicon dioxide is introduced as an attenuating filter of flows between embodied presence and the cosmos. (this is a short intro to a longer text on the history of glass that’s cooking on the back burner.)

viam munire. Stretching my Latin. The Road for Munitions? Or, Road of Fortification or Road of Security. Homeland Security? Interstate Defense Highway System. Autobahn. All roads lead to Rome.

There needs to be a repetition of certain concepts at numerous junctures — energy, thermodynamics, flows, order, flux, fields, reminders of the Newtonian language, control, image-based articulations of all key-worded concepts, and precise observations on the structure-of-relation of the (declining) Military-Industrial system. Choosing examples of technological deployment, tracing the affectations of it, across the full distance, simplifying (reducing) the connections. Connecting the altered flows and the ‘original’ flows, along the entire way (using thermodynamics as a foundational guide).

Dialogue, sound, and music are good examples.

Identifying between altered and originary flows is in itself is likely an impossible task. I would suspect that all comprehensible flows are already in a (corrupted!?) state?

2. Maintaining identity of product

a. Each field must be identified with a number or other designation on the field application form and other pertinent documents.
b. Maps showing field identities and locations must be maintained and furnished to crop inspectors.
c. Field inspected product must be positively identified at all times.
d. A bin or lot number must identify all bins.
e. If product is bagged, bags must be identified with a stenciled lot number or a tag securely fastened to the bag.

3. Record requirements

The following records must be maintained:

a. Field number
b. Amount of product harvested
c. Assigned bin number
d. Record of any product transfers
e. Assigned lot numbers
f. Copies of all completed agency documents