"The absence of a common world we can share is driving us crazy." Bruno Latour
It was a great relief to read this quote from Bruno Latour, somehow nailing the issue I’ve had lately with what to write, how to write, why to write, and what has been in my way. Of course! it’s simply this: in the absence of a common world I don’t know where the work will land.
The reality is we are always creating, now and for the future; for today – there is urgency — an emerging urgency, an emergency.
It isn't enough to get better at getting better. To see visions or to have awareness and understanding. Let's try now to address these complex knots right at their source. We must root them, ground them, grow new plants, keep the forests flourishing or express our lives in a way that will tend to all creation. By that I mean loving action with the small parts of the whole creation that come to our hands today.
Yet in company with one another, our work expands to include so much more. Here each visitor is handed a spade to till the ground. Today, from this morning’s sunrise, I grow another magic tree in my magic inner forest.
At the surface of the heart, any ray of being can soar and engage with all others. These rays connect and interweave, at the same level, as we learn and grow. And most importantly, this is a way to contribute to the energy of the whole. This sort of work is beyond meditation, only because it is active – not actually beyond what is true meditation – I would say it is beyond practice and instead is an application of techniques practised over the years into what is perceived as reality.
Topics I’m thinking about
Here’s a catch-up of some of the thought-bits I’ve been saving to share with you:
Making permanent objects out of memories
Gypsy velvet for the fall
Early 20th century artists prefigured our AI universe
Growth vs depth
Slipping out of the trance of the computer for a bit
Hey, internet. Stop telling me what to do and how to do it step by step. You state a problem, state a solution, how to get to the solution. sheesh.
I’m so sick of reading declarations and statements as if they were true when they actually need further validation. It is stupifying.
Idle pleasures - grasshopper and the ant continued
I was naive in thinking that new media would change the world. It has, but not in the way I’d imagined.
But I still enjoy and learn so much in this otherworld - like these bits:
Charles Dickens really, really hated his fanboy Hans Christian Andersen. - Literary Hub
Max Read calls it the “content cascade” (his excellent newsletter is here )
I’m so impressed by this Old Lady Building Her Nest on a Cliff Face. I saved this link back in late September, when we thought autumn was on its way, before we had the waaay extended drought and hot weather. The nest-building still applies!
Sequoias! A Happy Foresting Family
A lovely family came to our place last month with 10 free little sequoia trees, and James helped to plant them. How wonderful to see this rewilding reforesting on an individual basis. The couple went to 10 different places and just planted trees for the future. When their daughter is grown, the trees will be grown taller. They say they grow quickly, but I won’t see their maturity. We all know trees are for longer lifetimes, for generations to come.
Streams of Significance
I’ve been watching several braided flows or streams of mind and here's one that rolled up through my attention. We have an evening every Sunday that we call Book Night. James and I go over to the library at the back of his studio and spend an hour or two looking at art books. I started on a shelf of photography and ended up with a book of mediumistic photos.
Not all the paranormal photographs were done with smoke and mirrors. Some seemed genuine, like Ted Serios “thoughtography” — thought projection onto polaroids.
Next morning, we had a great visit from Lee Crowchild, and I was glad to meet his co-host Erin Goodpipe, and his friend Deborah. They’d been on Vancouver Island shooting the eighth series of the paranormal show on APTN, The Other Side, this time with Lee taking the role of the Elder. (To be broadcast starting November.)
When we talked about some of the phenomena and stories, the book I’d read the night before came to mind. Then the thought flow changed to other topics and exchanges.
But one small stream or tendril persisted. The next day, looking for something to watch, mindlessly, we settled on good old Beetlejuice, another story of paranormal ghosts and afterlife. Was that the end of the thread? Almost — until the next morning at my aquafit class. As I moved in the water, the Belafonte song came on, “Shake Shake Shake Señora, Shake your body line” — there was the movie’s finale again, with young goth girl Winona Ryder dancing in the air.
OK, the fun of coincidence, and the message is …drumroll… everything is connected, everything is the medium, flowing in these streams of MIND. In keeping with the old movie theme of taking comfort in the past, we next watched I heart Huckabees with its great philosophical interplay, especially the whole concept of the blanket.
Shake shake shake Señora, it's all connected, and being confirmed now that Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger have been given the Nobel prize for experiments in quantum physics’ spooky action at a distance.
This is how I’m thinking about the streams of significance as they flow through and into my life these days. Carl Jung's synchronicity paired with the current — like a weather pattern — showing the impact or importance of certain ideas or flows of mind as they pass along in my life stream. It isn't meaningful necessarily unless I focus on it to make it so, but it is sort of linguistic— like the language of life or the universe, a poetics of understanding.
I’m not a passive observer. I’m aware that my observation is itself a part of the stream of significance. And this observation generates more flow, much as dreams evolve when we pay attention to them. … to be continued…
What do you think about all this?
He Made His Magical Kingdom
I’m impressed by James Hampton’s work so thought you’d like to see it. What’s your magical kingdom?
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Thank you Carol, Finally had a chance to read "Streams of Mind". Love, Roberta
My next substack, to be posted tomorrow, is also a nod to the arrival of material from various directions....the meaning of one event to another only determined (or not) after the fact. I think there must be a connection between that phenomenon and the Bruno Latour quote. A non-linear approach to the loss of a common world.