...seeing is of course very much
a matter of verbalization. unless i call
my attention to what passes before my
eyes, i simply won't see it..." annie dillard
…antevasin… an in-betweener… a border-dweller. living in sight of both worlds… looking toward the unknown… a scholar.
…you know that noise, the whirr of instant something…and the delayed flow of the hot chocolate…it’s like summer camp, and middle school retreats, and 7-11 free hot beverages (at least temporarily)…i kind of love it…
We are here to witness. There is nothing else to with those mute materials we do not need….All we can do with the whole human array is watch it. We can stage our own act on the planet, build our cities on its plains, dam its rivers,plant its topsoils—but our meaningful activity scarcely covers the terrain. We do not use the songbirds, for instance, we do not eat many of then, we cannot befriend them; we cannot persuade them to eat more mosquitoes or plant fewer weed seeds.
We can only witness them— whoever they are. If we were not here, they would be songbirds falling in the forest. If we were not here, material events like the passage of seasons would lack even the meager meanings we are able to muster for them. The show would play to an empty house, as do all those falling stars which fall in the daytime.
This is why I need to take more walks…to keep an eye on things.
“Today I decided to stop pitying myself. Other than my eye, two things aren’t paralyzed, my imagination and my memory.”
— Jean-Dominique Bauby, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”
Sean: So what do you really want to do?
Will: I wanna be a shepherd.
Sean: Really.
Will: I wanna move up to Nashua, get a nice little spread, get some sheep and tend to them.
Sean: Maybe you should go do that.
-Good Will Hunting
How can anyone know what we are truly feeling? They can know what we tell them of what we are feeling but the translation skews itself on so many levels; from the conception, to the transmission, to the reception with this messy medium we call language.
Like a game of telephone, the passing of the message preserves not the original but instead a mutation that may bear no resemblance to the original.
I wonder if Einstein struggled with this, when as a young boy his teachers labeled him as slow and regarded him as stupid. Their inherent distracting bigness of self disallowing them to understand another, like all of us. So, how could they have known that while he bungled addition he was adding the magnitudes of universes, or at least paving the mental way toward these later discussions. And yes, he was alone.
(yep, jennifer, i’m pretty sure you’re one of the only people that reads this…thanks for the song)
Someone is tossing petals in a stream
Somewhere someone is standing at the foothills of their dreams
Someone got a paintbrush, is painting over doubts
Someone opened up his eyes and saw the sun coming out
Someone was captive and found the courage to get off
From a boulder in the well, somewhere the rain has stopped
Someone is finding the place where they belong
…
Everyone aboard on the merry-go-round
Some things will rise up so that others come down
If the devil don’t dance, heaven won’t shine
It’s a mighty thick haze and it’s a pretty thin line
If the faucet is tightened up the love won’t flow
If the love isn’t bright enough the corn won’t grow
If the night isn’t dark enough the moon won’t glow
when you’ve survived the above experience, you know enough to know to when to gift an itunes song…
