500 grams of carbon dioxide per passenger-mile flying
250 grams of carbon dioxide per passenger-mile driving

These are very approximate/average numbers and are affected by the type of plane/vehicle and its relative efficiency.

We are changing the course of nature. Or, more precisely, without life on this planet, nature would be different. We are life in this place. Or we are life, as life is a perturbation of basal flows. An always-inchoate flow, but never completely still. This is all we are, a way for the cosmos to increase entropy, perhaps, as some believe, the best way for the cosmos to increase entropy, to wind down, into a cold and silent nothing.

But it’s all in the language, isn’t it? And even the language needs to get shucked, ripped from its stalk, tossed away to reveal and remind of the truth that the word is not the phenomena that it de-scribes …

Back to:

All Roads Lead To Rome.

as principle.

The questions are, What is Rome, and What is a Road?

et cetera

Nine km. in three days, not bad — it’s actually getting easy — I need to do more sprinting and drills, but just moving faster is best, feeling the greater resistance of the water and consequent speed. That and watching the sky and listening to the birds on the walk from my office to the pool. The sky was exceptionally dark and clear last night, it got down to maybe 40F, pretty cool. Totally dreaming about being in the bush, as they say here, in the back-country, the wilds, the wilderness. To watch the stars sink right to the black edge of the world. Squatting, eyes tearing in the chill condensate of mid-night. The Southern Cross is practically at Zenith now which seems strange, but at a similar latitude as in the north in winter, Polaris also reaches quite close to Zenith. Pity no chance of catching a good sky on this tour. Now too many folks to visit with before possible departure, too many things to do, including whether not to leave again.

To every form of being is assigned
An active principle:—howe’er removed
From sense and observation, it subsists
In all things, in all natures: in the stars
Of azure Heaven, the unenduring clouds,
In flower and tree, in every pebbly stone
That paves the brooks, the stationary rocks,
The moving waters and the invisible air.
Whate’er exists hath properties that spread
Beyond itself, communicating good,
A simple blessing, or with evil mixed:
Spirit that knows no insulated spot,
No chasm, no solitude; from link to link
It circulates, the soul of all the worlds.
– Wordsworth. Excursion. Book VI, 1-15.

readying for a perambulation around the cosmos at any moment. readying for the moment of full-on change. readying for now.

Martin Buber and David Bohm — German-speaking Hasidim Jew phil-theo-logist/sopher and Anglo, McCarthy-black-listed quantum physicist. Unlikely combination, but in my practice, my pathway, they elicit a resonance unlike any others, although there are Legion sources of energized engagement that have made my trajectory a rich experience. All those Others who share the way(s). But I will work with these two as they both resonate. Simple, complex. One provoking an imaged-cosmos where there are no things only activated orders of manifestation, and this condition of being directly informing the way of interaction and relation between the Self and the Other. And the other thinker, sketching a cosmos which itself comes-to-be in the reality of relationship: within the encounter lies the source of all things.

Both these worldviews are highly idiosyncratic visions of the cosmos and also, consequentially, of human relation, but neither of them are mutually exclusive of the other. I find my own worldview shares at least this characteristic with both of them. But there are other ways in which our models overlap, and it is these areas which will stimulate the thesis.

The image of humans and their view of the cosmos that I always describe in a classroom setting is: (this after getting to know the students at least a bit) — “it’s as though we are dancing around the Void, each of us, in groups, pairs, alone, catching glances out of the corners of our eyes of it, calling out what is looks like in throat-tones frantic with fear, joy, and wonder. Sometimes a whole group will shout out in unison, the agreed-upon vision. Others stay to speaking the wind. Occasionally we turn to face it on, or are rudely pulled by the shoulder by another who is straying close to the edge. It has no name, yet we all insist on calling It something. Even when we turn our backs directly to it, we can feel it, perhaps even more than when facing it.”

So, idiosyncrasy is a way of movement (as point-of-view needs change), which leads to a clear albeit self-relative experience (impression) and consequent expressions regarding that. Springing from these two pathways (im- and ex-pression) is a third which dictates, in part, the motion of the point-of-view. It is a feedback mechanism which generates, gradually or quickly, a worldview which touches on the Void if only by discrimination against what cannot be directly named.

Okay, working (or “working”) in the office much of the week and weekend, not too effective, but I think I did finally begin to imagine a framework to hang all these words on. And it feels like one that will work. Norie gave me a couple other theses of former students of hers — very interesting works. My intuition about her seems well-placed. And it’s a funny expression of the morphing social network that I’ve participated in the last 20 years. Connected.

And swimming. Hope to hit 100 km/3 months by the time I move on. That’s attainable, easily if I take care of things.

This space accreting, while the gradual shutting-down of FaceBook proceeds. After the Lightning trip from Yuma through Calexico on northward to the Bay Area and back 48 hours later with my original road-tripping partner, Gary, sheesh: 36 years compresses into careers, children, life-trajectories, and gas prices. That and a running dialogue on the nature of the cosmos and human relation.

Regarding the FaceBook wastage, well, it seems quite right for the moment, no regrets. When only a minuscule fraction of hundreds of ‘friends’ notice the departure. Mostly the ones who do are also ones who find the whole thing tiresome and distinctly artificial. The ones with thousands of friends notice nothing in that sea of being known and wanted, busy as they pump their status (statii?) by the moment. After being an early adopter, and a participant for a time, it does seem to be only an accumulation of attention-sucking life-dross. A prime example of how media can absorb our attention without limit — making consumable, for consumption, the textually and visually reduced detritus of be-ing. And presenting that as a worthy object of a sizable chunk of our social life-time. Of the same dimension as the proliferation of bottom, side, and top overlay graphics on cable teevee screens.

I discover that I have suffered no irretrievable loss as I squeeze down the feeds (media consumables, eh?) to nothing. No you-tube fragments, no important NYT articles, no photos of vacation travel, no banal ego-feeding status updates. I suffer no gaping existential holes in my existence on the planet. Down to 200 friends, slowly deleting all content, connection, and demarcation in the account so it will end as a shriveled husk, a dried dust mote falling from the data cloud.

Workshop day begins: first the waka time on the river. Morning cycle down the river to the Putiki boat ramp, get there a little early, and feel the nerves as to what is possible with the workshop. There have been numerous anticipatory conversations in the last days about what I will be doing. I take a small paper with thought-notes and put it in my life-jacket pocket.

I am fighting with the impression that there is a superfluity of input for the participants — some have not been on a river or so. My dilemma becomes a question of when to jump in and alter the flow of events and protocols which accompany the waka and the enveloping and powerful Maori cultural scenario. It makes no sense to do anything other than participate. Where full participation is a position, an approach to an eventuality of contingent life-flow. I am observing the processes and vibes that are coalescing, seeing if there is a auspicious moment to intervene, but I see none. Back to participating. Enjoying it all. The newness, but also the familiarity and comfort which the Maori protocol applies to that (community-facing) unknown, and The River. (more …)

Abstract

The DCA project “The Road” is a psycho-geographic perambulation through a web of personal, social, and universal trajectories which form a new knowledge-base on the cosmos as an entropic system of energy flows. Within this worldview the project explores human presence, encounter, and interaction including a close look at the effects of techno-socially prescribed protocols on those indeterminate flows of energy. As a multi-modal online data-space, the project offers a variety of navigational strategies connecting a rich variety of audio, video, text, and image sources from the candidate’s extensive personal archive of creative material.

Introduction

The armature for this DCA as originally proposed was the concept of the amplifier. An amplifier is essentially a device that takes an incoming flow of energy (signal), and through an influx of power, generates a defined outflow of energy with a greater (directed) intensity. The amplification process needs an independent energy source to increase the signal strength. It also requires a set of protocols that guide the flow of energy from input through output: a coherent signal is a controlled energy flow as defined by applied protocols.

The road, as an expression of a techno-social system (TSS), exemplifies, or, more precisely, is one of these protocol-defined pathways. It was this realization during the last year of research which shifted my focus from the amplifier to the road as both a real and metaphoric concept that opens a rich space for inquiry. The road allows the TSS to express amplified energy flows along its protocol-defined pathway. It is not difficult to conceptually extend the idea of the road as any pathway for the directed and concentrated expression of energy of a TSS. (more …)

There is the cosmos, there is the individuated being (the Self), there are Others, there is the collective, the ensemble, there is Terra, there is all that is not the Self and the Other: there is the cosmos. What are the upshots of a completely unified cosmos? There are none of the above. There is only procession of is-ing.

Aside from a fraction of a kilo-ton of human-re-configured matter that has been more-or-less permanently jettisoned from the immediate gravitational field of the Terran system, all human activities are and always have been fully immersed in what, for the purposes of modeling, may be seen as a limited (eco-)system with limited energy resources. L-I-M-I-T-E-D. Followers of the develop-and-consume-at-any-cost economic philosophy appear to think that there is an un- at the beginning of limited. But are these limits germane regarding the scalar possibilities of alteration that 6.9 billion humans applies to the ‘closed’ system? Can this plague-species actually cause significant change? It’s maybe only a question of where on a sliding scale the alteration sits, and what range on that scale indicates ‘significant’ change.

It is not difficult to observe that all expressions of life have an affect on the immediate vicinity. The bed of dead leaves beneath the cottonwood, layered by age: age showing as a returning dissolution, collenchyma structures in the veins remain longer, the epidermis stripped away by insects, solar radiation, weather, and time. The altered rhizosphere full of exudates nourishing symbiotic microbial life which, in turn, alter the chemistry of the surrounding soil. The altered atmosphere, being distantly distributed by the wind, the absorption of Light. Animals consuming leaves, wandering away. Reverberatory. What does a tree do to the rest of the cosmos? It does. Clearly any form of life has this effect. It’s just a question of how much. Quantitative, with the qualitative in the affirmative, but still open to how.

Some final words on the residency period:

Energy of Situation

Rather than the production of new configurations of the energized world as a tool for individual continuance and relevance to the wider social system, I chose to concentrate on a fundamental closer to the bone, as it were, the production of new configurations of the energized world as a tool for individual continuance and relevance to the wider social system. What we do changes the cosmos, always, everywhere, (because everywhere’s are not separated nor distinct).

Traditional art production is (merely) the (re)configuration of certain flows in the near (and far) surround of the producer. My approach generally falls under this model but approaches the reconfiguration process from an entirely different path. Entering a ‘residency’ is (merely) moving from one (life)situation into another: we are constantly doing this in life, transitioning from one semi-stable configuration to another, with periods of more-or-less instability in between. If one leaves traditional temporal and spatial metrics behind, this process may be seen simply as the modulation of a constancy of flowing condition. The particular conditions and configurations of a situation dictate the potential range of reconfigurations possible, given the energy input of the individual and the embodied life-energy/life-time that is available. The configuration is merely a cumulative apprehended set of flows occurring with a reductive purview (and is always relative to the observer!) There is the ‘locally external’ factor of the accessibility of external energy sources for reconfiguring, but if one approaches the situation as a more autonomous and self-contained instance, the range of possibility is limited just as life-time and life-energy is limited. It is along this approach that I undertook this residency. (I will here omit a wider discussion of the framework of my personal model of the cosmos as there isn’t the room here to undertake it even in brief).

Every social structure (or formation) requires (attentive) energy to maintain its intrinsic (or necessary, mandated, desired) order. Without a more-or-less constant influx of energy, any system will tend to greater disorder. CLUI and its constituent formal organizational expressions (residencies, exhibitions, public manifestations, participants) require a certain level of energy inflow to maintain viability at a level acceptable to both the participants and the wider socio-cultural milieu that they wish to participate in.

As a direct expression of my own long-term praxis of facilitating creative situations, I decided to approach the residency as a (direct?) service to the (overt) sustainability of the organization. By putting my life-energy/life-time into aspects of the material infrastructure, I could guarantee, in some dimension, the continuance of the social structure, albeit in a form reflecting my own judgements (based on where I injected my energy into the situation). In basic form, this process is about raising the order of particular aspects of the system. The question of which aspects of course is critical. If I do not understand the goals of the organized structure (to propagate itself, to demise in (X)(t), to re-form itself), the input of life-energy may or may not affect those goals in a positive way. Indeed, the input of energy might even thwart those outcomes. This is where robust and sustained dialogue among the participants is absolutely necessary to identify those points where energy influx is crucial and most efficient.

The question of entropy and order extends directly to all techno-social systems: fundamental thermodynamics applies across the full range of cosmological phenomena. Any technological system (so defined as a sub-set of all possible systems) requires energy input from outside its defined edges to maintain the ordered set of relations and flows that are necessary for it to exist as a (unitary) system. This applies to all systems up to and including what we have collectively labeled the military-industrial complex.

To whit, I undertook the following processes (and more): scrubbed the bathroom and kitchen floors, hands-and-knees, for several hours; wiped down most of the walls, especially the bathroom; reorganized and cleaned all shelves in the storage closet (refolding all linens, sorting dirty ones, putting extras (falling on the floor) into the trailer; sorting and checking all cleaning supplies); scrubbing the shower, sink, toilet; vacuuming entire floor, walls, ceiling, window frames, vents, etc with the shop-vac; wiping down all furniture; organizing and cleaning desk drawers; rearranged the furniture for maximal productivity; checked all electrical equipment, rearranging for ease-of-use; arranged library materials; sorted, (re)labeled file material; zip-lock-bagged cables in cable drawer; thoroughly cleaned the south-facing (and most north-facing) windows inside-and-out; replaced all window screening; cleaned all window frames on the interior; sorted and cleaned all kitchen-ware; cleaned the refrigerator and stove-top; cleaned microwave and all kitchen shelves; re-mounted the fire-extinguisher in a more available location; removed, scrubbed, and replaced the window blinds; raked the immediate back-yard (south); cut weeds and raked immediate front (north) yard; shop-vac’ed the trailer interior; leveled the wooden walkway to the trailer; swept the patios, collected all clothes-pins and put them on the clothes-line; arranged collected rocks on deck; cleaned telescope, fixed mounting; worked (unsuccessfully on web-cam); screw-nailed external trim in numerous places; scrubbed the exterior of the front door, repaired the interior window frame of the door; tightened bolts wherever possible; spray painted desk and several chairs (removing rust first); raked and leveled area between fence and pedal-car garage; picked up all major flotsam and jetsam accumulated in yard; organized and cleaned all media equipment; etc, etc, etc… (didn’t clean under the fridge or stove, though, nor did I tack down the rest of the linoleum … something for the future or so)

In the workshop: organized the pegboard with appropriate tools; vacuumed the entire space; organized the scrap lumber, scrap piping and metal; gathered all 4×8-foot sheets of drywall and plywood; gathered all screws/nails in one area, partially organized them; re-shelved all electrical, plumbing, other materials; organized all materials stored in rafters; gathered and sorted all tools in desk unit; cycled all rechargeable battery drives for tools; etc, etc, etc…

What affect this energy injection will have on the continuance of the organization is indeterminate: moot, relative, and subjective. It will affect the organization in some way, as will it affect the trajectories of those who come after me.

Early Confucian writings point to the “organization of things in organic categories” as a fundamental in dealing with the cosmos as a primary phenomena surrounding and enveloping life. Organizing is an intensely idiosyncratic process which, at the same time, is deeply linked to techno-social structures and their impression on participating individuals. One normative principle is like-with-like combined with some aspects of use and functionality. Moving from home to home with a frequency that is far greater than the norm, I note the similarity and differences in organizational strategy and behavior among a wide variety of individuals. My primary criteria for organizing is grounded in the functional philosophy of (engineering) optimization. This is the same process which drives wide swathes of the techno-social — the concentration of stuff to be formed and projected, deployed, into the technologically more complex future.

Of course, there is the fundamental question of long-term sustainability — in the sense that public attention drawn to the organization in its educational role (or role creating novel configurations of information/wisdom, and energized matter), this attention may then can be converted to abstracted fiscal instrument which is subsequently converted to hired maintenance versus direct application of the artists-in-residence in maintenance labor. It depends on whether one chooses a localized maintenance cycle or a more involved (and perhaps less efficient conversion cycle) to effect sustainable continuance.

Now, in concert with this level of physical ordering action, I tapped into, literally, many of the myriad manifestations of the military-industrial flows that were converging and passing-through Wendover. I drew energies off in the form of images and sounds to be re-constituted in the web domain for public sampling. At some level, my deep familiarity with both the existence of these techno-social formations and the sampling of the same brought up some elements of tedium in the process — and a concern that in the mere documentation, recording of the techno-social configurations for display within a core mediated manifestation of the master’s house itself (right here!), I was not only not contributing to the demise of such a system, but worse, was contributing to its continuance. No answers to that, the only pathway is the critical engagement and continuance of dialogues surrounding the ongoing situation in the widest sense.

And a final comment: The level of dust and dirt could be seen as a metric of encroaching macro/microscopic disorder. ‘Wind’over, as a locus of chaotic social and natural flows, exists in an increasingly entropic regime. Inexorable decline of order is the order of the day today, everyday, in the state of mind, state of be-ing that is Wendover. When the energy out-go exceeds the in-flow, Wendover will gradually return to the ground state of high-desert solitude. Perhaps Lake Bonneville will once again fill up, or the stresses of the extensional tectonics will cause a full spreading center to develop, and Wendover will be only a down-dropped graben flanked by plenty of volcanic activity.

Simple. Complex. Order. Disorder. Attention, focus, concentration.

Humans approach the ‘criticality’ of the global situation from a very species-centric view. (of course). If one looks at the flow of the continuance of life throughout its entire trajectory (back to we-know-not-where and we-know-not-when (and we-know-not-how)) — it is quickly noted that all species are transitory to one degree or another. Is there anything special about humans in this regard? So far nothing that humans have succeeded in doing has transcended the flow of life. There is the material/scalar aptitude with which we have accelerated the production of entropy within the limited planetary system. But this, in itself, is insignificant on any transcendent cosmological scale. If this is the only difference, then it might be said that we are only a more efficient life-form in that we cause this entropic acceleration. But even this aspect is relative. Each life-form will fully engage its energy sources and utilize them. To the degree there are readily available sources, life will expand its scale to take advantage of that abundance of energy, rapidly transforming it to waste. A pride of lions will not arrest its hunting of abundant prey unless satiated (and engaged in optimized procreation). Again, nothing new. It seems that the only disturbing characteristic that we sense somewhere in our perspective is the question of scale with our waste-production. Through windows of tele-media we have an (apparently) expanded perspective on the global picture. We see images of ourselves everywhere, engaged in the process of living. But this itself is suspect. A global perspective is a virtual artifice. Our awareness of our problem arises from an artifice of our own creation. What does this say about the problem? The perceived planetary scale is perhaps a distorted and very much reductive artifact embedded in our vision of life. But would the (limited) set of localized sensory perceptions lead to any different conclusions or ways-of-going?

No wonder people crave hyper-Terran (Celestial) visitation — what a perspective shift that would be. That we are not unique in a wider cosmos. That we are merely life. Only then might we be able to get on with it reasonably!

There is the cosmos, there is the individuated being (the Self), there are Others, there is the collective, the ensemble, there is Terra, there is all which is not the Self and the Other: there is the cosmos. What are the upshots of a completely unified cosmos? There are none of the above. There is only the process of is-ing.

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.)

David Brooks, columnist at the New York Times writes in this commentary on New Years Day:

Many people seem to be in the middle of a religious crisis of faith. All the gods they believe in — technology, technocracy, centralized government control — have failed them in this instance.

I have always enjoyed his pragmatism and basic awareness of a wider historical context. It frames the American Way as (merely another) expression of a global continuum of human presence on the planet. And he seems largely to avoid the hybridized reli(geo)-political Destiny’s Child(ish) mentality that so pervades the fragmentary remnants of mediated public discourse in this declining nation-state.

I heartily agree with his explicit suggestion that an issue central to the balance between the individual and the State lies in the strength of faith in centralized authority, and the concomitant surrender of personal autonomy, obligation, and responsibility. The question of larger or smaller (more-or-less pervasive) government is embedded in the larger question of the presence and operation of all (centralizing) social structures — ones which are making inexorable advances in dominating the fabric of the techno-social structure of the country and the globe. As has always been the case, there is no monumental State or any other structure of social organization that can be everything to all people all the time forever. He is very correct to suggest that the great moral issue relates to the taking of personal responsibility — as an expression of autonomy from, not dependence on, any wider social system, (and I emphasize here, not only the State — it is only one particular label for social organization).

The purveyors of technology market their goods to the participants of various techno-social systems as a means to instill control and thus order on the chaotic and threatening world ‘out there.’ The marketing plan, now in its 2.500010 millionth year, promises that if you surrender some of your life-energy to us, we will guarantee that you will live longer. The explicit reward for purchasing is a few extra moments to procreate successfully. There is no mention whether this extra length of life is more or less than the time surrendered to the system — you have to calculate that yourself. The system is hierarchical with many (dis)functional) layers, with some surrendering more time, others using more or less time to manage that time surrendered by thousands. The point is — the same that Brooks makes — that the surrendering process, the giving away of personal responsibility in the process of confronting the Unknown, is where maturity fails. All the complex protocols of the advanced techno-social system that we participate in will not alter the fundamental characteristic of the cosmos: in archaic lingo things happen, have happed, are happing. And, as I remind students and others whenever I have the chance, technology fails.

Maturity comes from facing what is not yet known, learning from it, that and the presumed development of wisdom that experience brings over time. Learning is a process that arises in the embodied interaction of the Self with the unknown (or the Unknown — it is an elemental feature of the (human-sensed) cosmos). This interaction may exhibit different levels of maturity. A mature being, having experienced numerous encounters with different aspects of this Unknown will realize that this is how it goes — there is little or no chance that a new encounter will be any different — so, a degree of stoicism, with a calculated strategy to do what is individually possible would seem best. Immature encounters with that Unknown give rise to the anger of being affronted, snubbed, or even snuffed by the cosmos itself. The effrontery of the Unknown knows no limit. And when the Unknown is conjugated with the infinite, human anger is shown to be what it is, a destructive and ultimately pointless diversion of life itself.

Learning is also a shared process, or can be. Where the autonomous individual connects with those others around and compares notes. Collective experience does sometimes (conditionally) improve on individual experience. Completely ignoring the wisdom garnered from others makes for a very unstable existence, one that is counter to any organized social system. It may be fun, but it is risky and a bit mad.

(Back to one of the core questions) — why does technology fail? It fails because humans, those who form technology do not have access to infinite amounts of energy with which they might control all the rest of the chaotic energy of the cosmos. It takes energy to impose order on chaotic flows. No matter the height of energy-tapping techno-hubris, there is always a bigger flow of energy out there, waiting to obliterate the set of carefully organized protocols of power of puny humans. Things happen, have happed, are happing. All the time. At all scales, every where. Statistics are for reductive hindsight rumination, not prediction, as prediction is merely part of that marketing strategy. Buy into this now and you will gain a procreative edge. Your technology will not fail. But keep in mind, things happen, have happed, are happing. Of course, more things will happen when there is more autonomy. Hmmm. This is the problem.

And anyway, is death really vanquished when it temporarily disappears from the artifice of this ultimately short-term effort to control the cosmos? Of course, length of life is correlated with improved ability to ensure that life goes on into a future: that basal of all paybacks, continuance. But is there a correlation between clock-timed length of life and quality?

He had a good life.
or
He had a long life.
or
He had a bad life.
or
He had a short life.

or a combination of the above…

We face a choice in every moment: where to place our individual and collective lives on a sliding scale between a complete and dulling surrender to the creations of human artifice as brought about at some level in any social structures and the high-intensity madness of pure autonomy.

Starting with the immediate body as a field-of-action to release control (versus the control-at-a-distance regime we are immersed within now):

Bushwhacking is a method to relinquish control of the trajectory of the body. By exposing the body to the unknown, one has to respond in real time, in the present. This present invites the presence of be-here-now and within that state of be-ing, the embodied self yields to the edge that divides the controlled from un-controlled. Precisely at that edge is the locus of active transformation and change. Making the next step into the unknown is, literally, an act of trust in the body, in a belief that entering the unknown will present possibility. Whether or not this possibility is merely the chance of the continuance of the species (in a biological framework), the projection of life into the not-now, the future, or whether it is an operative pre-condition for a transcendent state I cannot at this moment comment on. Somehow, this is a question that each individuated being self-wise has to make in each of those moments.

Human-controlled flows — those apparently known, defined, located, standardized, measured flows — are merely thin veneers on an un-controlled cosmos which dwarfs all. Or does it? Are we not energized elements, expressions of that cosmos, as much as any else? Does the scalar really matter when space and time are suspended (along with the artifice of Cartesian models and all other abstracted human frameworks)?

Go to your edge. This phrase comes up in yogic teachings in the West. It suggests a shaky physical state where muscles struggle to maintain some configuration that they are barely fit to do. Of course, that meaning may deepen as a practice becomes more holistic and not limited to the mere physical (think pilates). Moving further into the image — what would it mean to an animal to go to its edge? The edge would be the dividing line between living and losing control over all body systems (organismic death). A tad over that edge precipitates a very different outcome than a tad under. Can it be that non-human systems exist at that edge at all times and at all scales — that this is the condition of non-equilibrium states? Or can this be the condition of the cosmos at all scales all the time? But it would seem that human systems exist at this edge as well, except that the human species has abstracted/constructed numerous illusions suggesting that it is not subject to the same razor-edge condition. (The illusion of control of future trajectories.)

And it occurs to me later that our retreat from that edge is in our deep desire for physical body to be maintained, for risk to be lowered, for future to be statistically more attainable. This state-of-being perhaps arose through our stepping away from simple (animal) living, and into the future-tension of linguistically-mediated half-lives.

How to translate this image into a practice? Go to your edge.

reflections on neoscenes :: drift

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blurb for SNO gallery exhibition web site, November 2009, NSW, Australia:

blurb for SNO gallery wall, December 2009, NSW, Australia:

Establish (via dancing around) the fundamentals of the cosmos; establish (by chanting a framework for apprehending those fundamentals) what individual presence seems to be; establish (by tracing lived experience) what the dynamic of interactions of human engagement are; situate (humanely) those encounters in the wider social system (or continuum of relation); examine the impact/role of technology on/in all of this; frame a creative praxis that might transcend the limits of those impacts while taking into account an energized world view, and, indeed, lessen those impacts in a sustainable way; open an empowered pathway to decode what is happening along this moment in history. These are the primary goals of the work.

The idea comes that I can place different narratives and sonifications in the aporee context, making a global mapping of ideas mixed with sounds mixed with voices. But somehow this seems flat. Not that the platform lacks some aesthetic appeal, but the tendency would be to continue the same old process of archive-building (with the same old criteria of acquisition of material). Or, I thought about making a performative series in the Speakers Corner in the Domain. Still, the best idea to this moment is the one where I would simply engage with this material with one Other, expanding on it, presenting it in a dialogic setting, and reproducing that. Or this dialogic situation as a live performative undertaking with an audience.

[and there is always the wrestling between the tendency to overly-formalize the potential outcomes rather than going with my intuition. This arises from that historic/sporadic lack of confidence in the execution of 'public' works. Although ultimately the more spontaneous the production, the less pre-tension, the better and more energizing the outcome for the audience/participants. If only creative action came as easily as teaching (which, of course, is a subset of that creative action)].

Then there is this idea that technology impresses itself on the individual (a form of techno-determinism). I can remember working on the graveyard shift at Rockville Crushed Stone, an open-pit quarry in a greenschist facies area mined for concrete aggregate. It supplied the entire Washington, D.C. area with aggregate until the year after I was working there, the whole short-fiber asbestos scandal broke — the aggregate was found to be full of it! That’s another story. At the end of a ten hour shift of mucking (shoveling), clearing random piles of spilled rock from the monstrous crushing machines and the conveyor systems between them, my hands would start to lock around the shovel handle. To this day, if I spend an afternoon with a shovel, this still happens. Embodied presence re-configured at the effect of technology. One of my offices at UTS is on the 16th floor of the building reputed to be the ugliest building in Sydney. I decided a number of years ago that if I had the possibility of skipping the elevator and taking the stairs, I would do that. Some of my colleagues think this is a amusing quirk. It is, but it is rationalized by the idea that using or relying on the elevator to get there is re-forming my body in a certain way that I’d rather it not do. Or perhaps, I’d rather challenge my legs to get some exercise else they wither away, as they sit lifelessly propped on the desk chair below my torso as body is only engaged in finger-twitch typing-at-screen in this moment.

Is there any instance that a technology does not re-form the embodied presence of the user? If one is using the field/flow model of the cosmos, the answer is definitively, NO! Even at great (Cartesian) distance: even as subsumed by tele-presence. Then affect merely becomes an issue of what, how, and how much. Hypothesis? Yeah, okay, it is a hypothesis, but there is abundant evidence to let it lie for the moment as a principle. What would be counter examples? A human-constructed technology is a temporalized shift in the ordering of ambient matter/energy in a localized/distributed region. A negentropic ordering along anisotropic fall lines (thermal, chemical, or simply difference gradients). (Just as the body is the same shift or change or difference in the order of a region — and the body is a primary technology).

[One way of looking at technology is that it is a subset of the alterations that self-organizing life systems apply to the flows that they are immersed in. Uff, mouthful, when working from zero acronyms... Well, it's not really a subset, but it would apply, as the traditional definition of technology does, to a certain limited number of tool-wielding species. What is the difference between the air being a tool that a bird utilizes, shaping it, albeit in very a limited temporal framework, to allow the (necessary) utility of flight? Technology-as-means to re-form the flow of energy in the active system. Perhaps too basic a definition. It certainly then would include all life, which then suggests that life itself has, as one characteristic function: as a system for altering the flow of energy in the system.]

where to start. what to write about (if there ever is time to write here). impressions, expressions, observations, actions. food shopping: Woolworths, Coles, and the thousand-and-one small Asian food shops, and Paddy’s Market, 7-11s for expensive junk food, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Japanese fast-food. vomit stains smeared on black cut-basalt (rhyolite?) sidewalk paving. up-scale-chain consumer fashion depots line George Street, my commuter trajectory. old Ruger, Winchester signs over one empty shop-front, across the street from the Greek guy selling swords, Swat boots, and GI dog tags. the rest of the neighborhood Chinese-owned shops. restaurants with open fronts, tables spilling out onto the sidewalk, with one Lebanese place with hookahs. and the pubs, packed from Thursday through Saturday nights. late. girls with impossibly high-heels limp along tugging down impossibly short skirts that hike up and show pantied crotches at every tottering step. blokes, the NRL blokes, with bulging tee-shirts and vaguely Maori tattoos on biceps. and the suits. the business class. busy, very busy, very very busy. Japanese manga girls or so, adorned, liberally with things and things with accessories and feathered black hair and pale milky skin. Anglos, red patchy skin, (it’s the latitude), sometimes Tilley hats (I can’t bear to wear my new one at risk of appearing like one of these). baseball cap will have to do along with plenty of sunscreen on my UV-challenged nose.

the now-famous dust storm of ’09 I mostly missed except for the ubiquitous aftermath — a red layer of material as fine as chalk dust, such that, when wet, turns immediately into a dense pigmented wash impossible to really remove without numerous passes with a clean rag or sponge. the red morning I slept through, though I was aware of something irritating my nose and pressing on my lungs. the smell of ancient land laid bare through the efforts of hydrocarbon-dependent mono-culture farming. dust-bowl.

lunch with Morgan who just got into town a few days ago to work for CuriousWorks doing some workshops in WA (West Australia) starting on Sunday — six weeks in the Out Back helping kids tell their stories — Shakthi, CEO of CuriousWorks joins us. interesting organization facilitating creative learning solutions for under-privileged kids in under-served areas of the country.

alternating between productive dialogues, confluences, paths-crossing, and total wasted moments, with a feeling that the wasted ones are gone completely, life’s energy diffused into the cosmos. not to raise the state of being one iota. dark energy, dark matters. the moments understood are the opposite, streaked with Light and Lightness.

Rather than distribute a message to recipients who are outside the process of creation and invented to give meaning to a work of art belatedly, the artist now attempts to construct an environment, a system of communication and production, a collective event that implies its recipients, transforms interpreters into actors, enables interpretation to enter the loop with collective action. — Pierre Lévy

A few minor references to energy and socio-cultural systems.

This view is simple, but outlines the fundamental situation. Research in thermodynamics (Prigogine, etc) has looked at the actual counter-intuitive problem of living systems countering general thermodynamic principles. It may come back to the mystical views of Simone Weil:

Two forces rule the universe, light and gravity. — Simone Weil

With gravity driving the coalescing of matter, the concentration of energy, or fluctuating densities (or simply fluctuation) of the cosmos. The anisotropic distribution of matter in the universe is not an insignificant evolving or existing condition. And Light, well, what may or may not be said about Light?

The diversity of languages is not a diversity of signs and sounds but a diversity of views of the world. — Wilhelm von Humboldt

Then the question of how to deal with all these books at once? Where to read them, how to take notes, how much to read in any one at a time, and such. Reading in the evening before sleeping isn’t very good, although restful. Mid-afternoon is optimal, but carving out several hours from the daily to-do grind makes that difficult. Having a space in the CMAI office is very helpful now, as there are more comfortable chairs. The collective grad offices are too noisy and busy. Dislocating to Bronte or a cafe elsewhere is possible, but not time-effective if only for reading. Ach!, the questions of methodology …

go to bed reading of Qi in Ted J. Kaptchuk’s treatise on Chinese medicine and wake up early from a deep dream where I was working with a group of boisterous and engaged young people who are somehow brought together by the impulse of Barack Obama. my immediate thought upon waking is why does a political figure enter my dreams? social action is important, sure, along with an interest in community dynamics, but a politician (community organizer none-the-less)? somewhat disturbing, though that thought is outweighed by the energy of the scenario. I suppose I am missing teaching. there will be opportunities for that in Oz, although I will keep it highly restricted to workshops rather than term courses. nothing should get in the way of the appointed task.

the Qi discussion illustrates the absolute difficulty in framing a concept in the language — the specific social protocol — within which the concept did not arise. the fundamental problem of translation. and in this case, translation of a term that is so formative to any worldview built on it that if one adopts that specific term, it will map, literally, where one stands in the world. and the ensuing conclusion that the adoption of another social protocol, language, precipitates a shift in worldview. no surprise there.

one global ‘solution’ to this issue especially in regard to fundamentals like Qi or energy (noting that even here I am making no one-to-one correspondence between the two!), when ‘comparing’ fundamentals, is to consider that each human individually is observing the world, and, at the same time, the social collective that they are participating in exerts an impressive synergy on all these points-of-view, and generates a collectively determined world view. this is the dominant social protocol, their language. Both the individual and collective world view are reductive apprehensions of essentially the same phenomena — that of be-ing in the world — seen from the particular point of view of that individual or collective. Of course, there are the instances where the worldview of the collective is impressed on the individual when the individual is forced to sacrifice personal autonomy to the collective — often through violence or threat of violence. it becomes a deep issue of personal autonomy or idiosyncrasy versus the power of the collective and where to set the line.

… the unusual difficulty in making Qi intelligible in modern Western philosophy suggests that the underlying Chinese metaphysical assumption is significantly different from the Cartesian dichotomy between spirit and matter…. (Furthermore) the continuous presence in Chinese philosophy of the idea of Qi as a way of conceptualizing the base structure and function of the cosmos, despite the availability of symbolic resources to make an analytical distinction between spirit and matter, signifies a conscious refusal to abandon a mode of thought that synthesizes spirit and matter as an undifferentiated whole. The loss of analytical clarity is compensated by the reward of imaginative richness. The fruitful ambiguity of Qi allows philosophers to explore realms of being which are inconceivable to people constricted by Cartesian dichotomy …. Qi, in short, seems inadequate to provide a philosophical background for the development of empirical science as understood in a positivistic sense. What it does provide, however, is a metaphorical mode of knowing, an epistemological attempt to address the multidimensional nature of reality by comparison, allusion, and suggestion. — Tu Wei-ming in Confucian Though

furthermore, the adoption of another linguistic naming system or protocol represents the potential of seeing the world anew. at the same time as it represents a separation from the dominant or previous system. this is an essential feature of the process of immigration, this identity shift that comes through a (linguistic) re-naming the world. but it is also inherent in the process of adoption of any protocol or technology that is produced and imposed on the individual.

month’s ending. All Hallows. images accruing in a form to share — 1996 (of this travelog) will be augmented first. complications with Berlin logistics, may throw off the November trip. and force a cancellation of Transmediale collaboration, hmmm. recalls the cafe9.net debacle in 1999.

end of the month, Friday.

finished with the DFW immersion. Oblivion is a brilliant set of stories, each one containing numerous positions, layers, points-of-view, (what to call the vantage of his voice/eye?). maybe the term channels applies. he has a multi-tasking eye, picking up information not just at the focal point of optics, but instead, immaculate macular generation. he has the recall, along with synthesis. imagination? springing from impression and spreading out through spaces which have not been mapped in that exact way. an example of voice-declaiming-self’s-model-of-cosmos. with a pivotal crux for the entire collection coming on page 326:

‘Who?’ She had ten weeks to live.

the deeply buried oblivion of our situation, now. everywhere. whenever. a weepy sad sketch of the human conditions. here, now. whenever. and a stiff finger punched into the chest of gloating cultural superiority. it all falls down.

how to push shaped impulse charges out, through the gate of psyche. and while pushing out, receive direct all the more.

Solstice come and gone. joined in the aporee solstice happening down in Kreuzburg last night at 23:59, the official moment of the Solstice. is today’s darkness because of the knowing of the long slide to 21 December? or does it matter? swinging, Light to dark. the performance ritual, reflecting on last year’s foray up Pool Creek Canyon in Dinosaur on that Solstice, does not evoke the energy. and screening the old Solstice videos from Ice Land also do not provide the right resonance. what is the essence of performance. making visible the energies stored up when in stellar regions. or?

the streets are chaotic after Turkey beats Slovakia in the European Cup.

Wolfgang bestows a couple of good Solingen kitchen blades in exchange for computer consulting:

Mini-Yatagan — Windmühlen-Küchen- und Obstmesser “Mini-Yatagan”, konvexe Klinge, nicht rostfrei, aus hochwertigem Kohlenstoffstahl / Carbonstahl, blaugepließtet, Griff aus Kirschbaumholz-Schalen

Klingenlänge: 85 mm

Der Yatagan. Diese Form hat einen langen Weg hinter sich. Dem türkischen Säbel entlehnt, über Frankreich zu uns gekommen, hat dieses praktische Messer immer seinen Platz als Obst-, Gemüse- und Kräutermesser. Mit der Spitze läßt sich beispielsweise ein Apfelkerngehäuse besonders gut herausschneiden und auch die bauchige Schneide und gute Ausgewogenheit erleichtern das Zubereiten von Gemüse, Kräutern und Ähnlichem. Das Windmühlenmesser gehört zur Serie der “blaugepließteten” Messer von Schleifmeister W. Fehrekampf. Das Blaupließten ist das aufwendigste Verfahren der traditionellen Solinger Schleiftechnik.

Man erkennt eine solche Klinge an der Lichtbrechung, die sich in den feinen Schleifschrammen als bläulicher Regenbogenschimmer darstellt.

Last day of the month. Skipping this forum mostly because of the extent of other writing that is happening in the moment. Floods of text-framed energies, directed along one path or another.

Virtuality limits the potential for changing ones point of view. Watching a screen is, literally, a sustained process of maintaining a static point of view. This is in extreme juxtaposition to the process of primary observation of the world as moving through it.

Days are spent writing about amplification and other phenomena that arise from the unequal distribution of energy and matter in the cosmos.

Friday evening I participate in the Migrating Realities conference that Mindaugas has initiated. There will be many familiar faces there: nice. So, a brief presentation in addition to the regular act of active participation:

Window Weather: A Nomad’s View of Reality

The history of the human use of glass, the chemical compound silicon dioxide (SiO2), prescribes a novel point of view on the nature of virtuality, and consequently, the nature of reality. This presentation will sketch a history of that attenuation on individual realities and offer some views on the techno-social system that we are migrating through.

Later in that same evening, I have to remotely present for the conference panel in Savannah, and immediately after that, a live 30 minute visual-sonic set at the opening night of migrating realities. Going to be a stressful day, to be sure.

attenuated transitions, on the same route taken two months previous almost to the day. across the Central Valley, and the ascent of the Sierras. not too crowded for a Saturday around peak season. so much drier than two months ago. most creeks in Yosemite are dry washes. fill the 10 gallon bladder with water from the high-pressure spigot at the east end of the Tioga grade. fill the water bottles and the 2.5 gallon tank as well. and drink a good fill. cold, damn good water. courtesy the Donner Electric Company. there are two spigots, another man is filling a large bladder in the back of his SUV. when I’m done, a pickup pulls up, the guy mouthing “get outta the way!” to me as I get into the cab of my truck. contorting my mouth into a variety of shapes, without using any particular language or vocabulary, I then smile and slowly pull away, waving. on down the road, south on 395 past Mono Lake, being passed by cars moving at excess of 80 mph most of the time. going backwards whilst going forward. one sedan passes. I vaguely notice the occupants. fifteen minutes later a tableau reveals itself. several cars parked on either side of the road, and that same sedan flipped over in the median, a group of people milling around. the D200 records several shots as I pass, transcendent. to Bishop. from Bishop one heads a bit south then east into the White Mountains on a very steep and twisted paved road which ends up in the Deep Springs Valley passing the mythological Deep Springs College. about half-way to the College is the turn-off into the Bristlecone Pine Wilderness area. a 40-mile trek on a bad dirt road. to the locked gate. tooling along, following the principle that wash-board surfaces are best negotiated as such a speed where the tires only have contact with the wave peaks, not the troughs, you get a smooth ride. while filed at the back of mind, another maxim taught/learned during the School of Mines summer field camp — “driving on a dirt road is like driving on ball bearings.” suddenly that mushy feeling with handling. hmmm. slow down. damn. a flat. the fourth this summer. good thing yesterday I had replaced the previous spare which had a 3-inch slash from an unknown source. the current flat tire has a similar gash. changing it as fast as possible, damnation, get covered with the fine pale beige dust. twiLight somewhere shortly off, and another 25 miles to go before getting to the locked-gate/trailhead. I had to think hard whether to continue without a spare or turn around and get back to paved life. with a uncertain heart, I went ahead, trundling along at no more than 5 mph. well, at least it gives a nice view of the passing scenery. consequently, I didn’t get to the gate until well after sunset. there were a couple other cars. there was a hard breeze blowing though with the air around 4% relative humidity, it didn’t feel as cold as it actually was, but it was plunging fast. the daily fluctuation can easily be 40 degrees F (30 C). ground cloth (a heavy black plastic sheet), three back-packing sleeping pads, the wool poncho from Colombia, bivouac sack, down sleeping bag, sheet sack, pillow, down vest, and fleece jacket. after a quick dinner of re-heated pasta from the night before, I crawl in, leaving a small slit to watch the stars through. only just warm enough. over-tired from the drive and the altitude, stunned awake by the stellar intensity, hardly sleep, catching a few scattered Perseids. I’ve not seen stars like this in years. this particular location, aside from the modest amount of air pollution from the rest of California to the west, is as dark as can be found in the lower 48 states. that and being up at high altitude. the stars were not positioned as in a dome of sky. rather, they appeared without perspective, nor were they simply pasted, flat on a black background. they appeared full and with depth and an obvious shading of dark matter obscuring the center of the Milky Way. enough overall Light to see easily. I had the feeling of plunging forward into them, clearly manifest as a space, a cosmos that I was floating into, chill wind flushing any illusions of being on a planet. flying despite the gravity of the chunk of rock pressing against my back.

gravity vortices spinning out from solar-venusian intersection draws me along, trailing, but engaged at high altitude. als kleiner dunkler Punkt vor der Sonne vorbei. a tracer.

after a nice afternoon re-connecting with Simon, listening to a whole slew of new sonic impressions since the last time we crossed paths long around about a decade ago across on the other side of Germany. decades that include the age of The Wall, a mark largely erased from the Berlin landscape. only a quick glimpse down the Unter den Linden to the Brandenburger Tor. can’t see anything, the linden trees obscuring most except the spinning Daimler-Chrysler ikon.

thinking that this place would be a nice landing zone. with energy that is picking up, focusing. but it would also be necessary for it to be a humanely warm place. no solo mio.

day and night sounds on Goslarer Platz outside Wolfgang’s flat are urban and rural at the same time.

the Colorado is sluggish, cloudy, and low. beside the road it passes through many lands that will burn, have already burned, or are burning right now. so it goes.

Glenwood Springs, head for the busy Hot Springs Spa for a few hours. never been in all these years of hot-water soaking elsewhere: it’s expensive, and the water is too hot for a regular workout. but it is extremely clear, salty, and relaxing. the scene is utterly American. chaotic, summertime noisy, full of seemingly satisfied people. I film the scene. there are foreigners there, getting a better deal than only two months ago with the slide of the dollar against the Yen and Euro. I have made 20% on the money that I left in my Merita bank account in Finland. too bad there is only USD 500 in it, had to shift the rest here months ago when the Euro was at its lowest point against the dollar. banks always win, so it goes.

stop at a rest area in Glenwood Canyon, don’t read the instructional signs about the spectacular construction of the interstate in the canyon — well, yeah, I do, and it is all bragging like the eighth wonder of the world — but do appreciate the solar (active/passive) designed toilet complex. shit warmed by the sun. tromb walls, solar water heaters, solar panels for the ventilation fans, banked northern exposure (banked and buried roof), Arcosanti with composting toilets — titillating the tourists from Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Iowa. too bad hardly anybody else builds things like that here in the solar West. form trumps function, so it goes.

and in perused memory, halfway through Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water by Marc Reisner. it’s a detailed and well-researched treatise on water and the West. historical abominations that continue in this day. dams, irrigation projects, the madness of re-directing the flow of energies. of this stupendous place. overheard the phrase “when will the other boot drop?” humankind is wracking up a massive debt of energy that it has re-directed from its necessary flow, like a temper-tantrum with little kids, when they are too much controlled or ignored. they explode with pent-up energies. the world is waiting for this. anybody clever enough to understand that in the present is seen the kernel of the future, look around, and see the word apokalypse printed on each compiled imbalance. the transformative crises (plural!) will grow in cataclysmic intensity. somebody made an artificial polio virus this week, where will that bring us? they ponder if it is alive. it paralyzes mice and kills them. dead. science of science-sake, so it goes.

dam it. so it goes. but we can’t have that! re-route, congregate, compile, merge, co-mingle, and tap off the chaotic flows of the cosmos.

it is midsummer. moon waxing, not full yet, but there is not so much that touches the eye with length of day, brightness, or even the memory of winter still etched in body. wintering in Colorado was easy. brilliant, and I repeat to many souls that “you will never hear me complain about the weather here.” how is it that I survived Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and especially, Lapland? it is all memory. now. some written here, some not.

shuffling through boxes of books and other things, I think: what’s all the energy focused on the reproduction of art? what is the obsession of getting all art configurations onto paper accompanied by words? paper is an easily preserved object, (the archival word), this is a related factor — to avoid the death of the material object, immortality of the material (the thousand year Reich). seems also related to democratic socialism. that the production of culture should be spread to all, equally. though it is, in the end, not egalitarian propagation by any means. the absolution of “you had to be there.” that an individual’s experience should not be singular, it should be reflected from the collective. rooted and growing only from the collective. not the individualized interpretation of unique seeing (as the reproduction applies a stasis to point-of-view (who’s point of view IS it?), it denies a multiplicity of points of view (portals into the realm of the spirit regarding see-ing and be-ing).

you can relive the voyages of the great explorers — advertisement

partial solar eclipse near sunset. under the trees at maximum, the ground is scattered with crescent suns. recalling the family history of eclipses. used to note on my resume — that I have experienced 12 minutes of totality during the first 25 years of my life. that’s 12 minutes of time, accumulated during 5 total solar eclipses where the sun is completely covered by the moon. in order to experience this, one must be in a location that happens to be on the center line of the eclipse path. this is a swath of land about 40 miles wide and several thousand miles long along which the deepest shadow of the moon is cast during the eclipse. the shadow traverses this path at very high speed, so that any one point on the line receives a maximum of four to five minutes of total shadow. totality is a natural phenomena not to be missed, if one has the opportunity to travel to a point on the center line. my father happened to be an amateur astronomy buff who took me to 5 eclipses. his interest seemed to be mostly technical, it was driven by the desire to construct equipment to record the event in a variety of formal ways, followed by a focus on the actual recording of the event, and lastly by the intensity of the natural phenomena. the eclipses I experienced were in the company of groups of other amateur astronomers for whom the event was again, primarily a scientific phenomena. there was little if any discussion as to other aspects. although, it is very true that during the time immediately preceding second contact — when the moon’s leading umbral (shadow) edge actually overtakes ones position — and third contact, when the trailing umbral edge passes by, there is a palpable sense of hysteria in the air. darkness at mid-day, a black flaming hole in the middle of the sky, dogs howl, birds stop singing, and people are afraid. reductive science eases the throat-hold of rationality on the situation. leaving the throat to growl, howl, and squeal in guttural reaction to an event that presents the world as it should not be: paranormal.

Two deja vues today as Loki and I drive around to thrift stores looking for some clothes for him. There is a tornado alert for Northern Virginia all day, and for much of the day a heavy soaking rain falls. Strange weather for this time of year, and hidden in the strangeness are these short instances of second-sight. Living dreams that I had some time ago. Dreams that I remember clearly but cannot grasp why I remember them, or why I had them. I could not describe them to Loki. At the moment they were happening, I could only sit and watch. Looking around for cues to find the silver string that ties the self to self, and self to cosmos.