us and them

inspired by the song “us and them” written by my twin sister, caitlin stephens-north

the beginning, the reflexive

made in the image of God–the miracle of reflexivity.  we are made in God’s image, conscious like God, so that it may be possible to touch God with the senses and consciousness and ability  to think and say “I am” that we possess.

“God created human beings;
he created them godlike,
Reflecting God’s nature” (The Message, Gen. 1.26-28)

a miracle.  we are standing before the greatest masterpiece that may be and we possess the faculties to perceive a small part of its greatness, its towering, unimaginable greatness, and perhaps, for some, to Know It.  we see that this masterpiece is just a tiny window opening onto the infinite.  we see enough of this masterpiece to know its vastness.  were we made in some image other than that of God, there is no God (what we can see of GOD), no miraculous.  there is no Beauty, for Beauty is born of grasping after the infinite, attempting to touch the bottom of realness…the relationship of striving between us and GOD…the greatness, the mightiness of the universe.

my words are like-testify to my time;

they are falsely smooth, falsely grey.

Beauty, Wisdom and the Golden Mean

Gaining in insight has a structure:

Newly introduced or perceived information make one reread (reconsider the meaning of) a phenomenon.  The resulting reading may later be replaced by a newer reading when yet more information becomes available that changes the way in which the text is understood.  Ad infinitum.

The suchness of this process is backward-looking—made up of moments of rereading—for the reason that information relevant to the understanding of a phenomenon-text is revealed and perceived over time.

When we recount how our analyses of particular phenomena have changed over time, this is the kind of process we describe.  We sometimes call it “revelation.”

It is the structure of linguistic parsing, of academic discourse, and of zazen—processes that make proper reading of phenomena their goal.

Bear with me through a dense but light-hearted example:
Frida and Frederico are at a restaurant.  They stand slightly removed from a table set with food, around which three other people are seated.  Frederico utters the syllable: “ðeɪr.”   At first, Frida lacks the information necessary to decide whether Frederico’s utterance is the first syllable in a word like “thereof,” “therewith” or “therein” or a single-syllable word like “their”, “there” or “they’re.” (Let us assume that Frida and Frederico’s immediately preceding conversation makes either of these possibilities equally likely).  Frederico points to the food on the table, failing to supply a plausible second syllable, leading Frida to settle on the likely and thus “working” reading of “ðeɪr” as representing the word “there”—a single-syllable word signifying “that place,” to which, it is likely, Frederico is pointing.  In other words, she reads “ðeɪr” through two nested lenses; Frida reads “ðeɪr” first through the absence of Frederico’s utterance of a plausible second syllable, which yields a reading of “ðeɪr” as a single-syllable word, then she reads what she has decided is a single-syllable word through Frederico’s pointing.  However Frederico next utters the syllable “fud,” such that relative stresses on “ðeɪr” and “fud” are as follows: ðeɪr ‘fud.  Had Frida’s initial reading been correct—Frederico intended “ðeɪr” to signify the word there—the emphases on “ðeɪr” and “fud” would have been equal, as in: “There.  Food.”  Frida is compelled to reread the significance of the utterance “ðeɪr” as well as the significance of Frederico’s pointing, checking the available information (Frederico’s pointing in the direction of both people, and food, his phrase: “ðeɪr ‘fud,”)  against the two remaining monosyllabic words (“their” and “they’re”).  She isolates “their” as the more probably-intended of the two meanings, at which point, she reads Frederico’s pointing and his utterance “ðeɪr” in light of the multiple people seated at the table.  She decides that his phrase is intended to be parsed as “Their food.”  But Frederico foils her one last time.  He walks over to one of the people seated, takes a bite out of an exposed arm, and issues a sound of satisfaction as he chews.  Frida, astonished, is amazed to find that she must again reread the phenomena before her, as she settles on the most unlikely, however truest, reading yet.  She reads the phrase “ðeɪr ‘fud” in light of the currently most salient piece of information, Frederico’s cannibalism, deciding that his utterances may be interpreted as: “They’re food.”

We are not surprised at Frida’s astonishment.

That is because the experience of the miraculous is the emotional valence of the process of coming to see greater Truth.

The conch shell structure I describe can be understood as moving outward from the seemingly general, frequent, obvious and experientially mundane, to the new, particular, less-than-obvious and experientially miraculous.

When the witnessed phenomenon is framed, as in art, looking backwards through the conch shell from the miraculous, is witnessing Beauty equal in magnitude to the miraculous.

I first felt the truth of this thesis while watching a scene from a documentary—Jest to Be the Best.  In one scene an American street performer in the “jester” tradition interviews an instructor at a British school of circus performance.  The theoretical language the instructor uses to describe his school’s approach to teaching performance techniques, language like “advanced hatwork,” and the level of rigor of study he describes compelled me to consider the street performer as “serious,” against the common understanding of the street performer as without a formal education.  The presence of a mediocre American jester looking on, presumably wishing he were “real,” like the British instructor deepens the uncanniness, (the improbability or “miraculousness”) of the whole affair which is deepened yet again by the fact that such uncanniness is caught on film, and not staged.  My respect and appreciation for the documentary grew with each revelation.

Another example: a performance becomes more impressive when a new trick is added.

A woman is balancing on a unicycle.

…blindfolded.

….pedaling down a hill at 15 mph.

…darting around obstacles.

…and when new obstacles are introduced into her path…she STILL navigates around them deftly.

Each new piece of information forces us to reconsider how the other skills were performed, and result in a reading of the entire performance as more impressive, more astonishing, more Beautiful.

This is why narratives have “arcs” and climaxes…why time is required for a story to develop.  We must acquire the knowledge necessary to properly read, to in fact re-read the events of the story.  Were we to have all of the information at the outset, the reveal, the feeling of qualitative newness that constitutes the experience of breathtaking Beauty, would not exist. Beauty always swoops in from the wings…because newness comes from what is before us…what is within us…or both.

The labor of imbuing the reader of a text with the feeling of astonishment at the significance of the text is divided between the text and the reader.

Those heralded as the greatest artists create texts that work to make clear Beauty’s depths to their readers.  Through their texts, they make the experience of “this is Beautiful” inescapable.  We call these people geniuses because they are able, against the outward-spinningness of the task, to find new interpretative lenses that allow hitherto differently understood phenomena to be read in a new light.

Those with the greatest insight carry with them the capacity to see infinite Beauty in all things.  They do the work that the text does not.

jij.,bukjw,kmnonlkjpllkjp.n   i couls qeirw NTRHINF BWCXuaw ir ‘a LL RHW Amw.

God’s eyes

an elaboration on simone weil:

as narenda says, difference is only a matter of degree.  the differences between one human being and another, between a human being and a rock, a rock and a quark, are only ever a matter of degree.  what is it but a few degrees of difference that separates the way a person “sees” from the way a rock “sees”?  or experiences? God needs each of us to be His eyes…to help Him see the Creation in exquisite detail.

imagine a fractal…whether differences appear to be minute details or large contours depends on the level of magnification.  the differences amongst human beings are simultaneously great and slight.  as are the differences between human beings and rocks.  or rocks and rocks.  or rocks and quarks.  each of us touches the Creation in a way that is unique, and yet patterned through our relationships to each other.  the Creation is infinitely intricate in its manner of experiencing itself.

even in one moment, infinitely many possibilities are being lived out, and yet, God has this Creation to enjoy for eternity, watching it morph every minute, as the possible gives birth to the possible gives birth to the possible…

poem

she doesn’t love through tiny holes.

she would rather her love burst from her tear ducts, the soles of her feet, mouth, hands…

then let the latticework of her thoughts, or the tangles of her sinews, muscles and nerves

stem her love.

structure

thoughts:

the structure of language is the structure of my thought.  the structure of language acquisition is the structure of my learning.  for now at least.

____________________

“introversion”: so called because it is seen from the “outside.” so many words are what things look like from the outside…not what they are.  to see a thing from the inside is to see what a thing is.

and yet there are no things, only structure.

a thing is structure from a vantage point.

_______________________________

human nature is Beauty-seeking

Beauty is filling space-time.

Beauty can only exist with parameters.

infinite Beauty is made possible through the finite, because there are infinitely many ways of rereading the infinitely many phenomena present in one phenomenon.

Beauty: seeing more is  re-reading.

seeing is reading.

seeing is only ever reading.

________________________

being vs. being seen: Self vs. Other

________________________

words on canvasses in an art gallery vs. words on a computer screen.

________________________

most cultural paradigms are built on quicksand.  we take as evidence of a notion’s or practice’s value the fact that it exists in language, and the fact that it is talked about as being valuable.  e.g. “i should attempt to ‘get to know’ the nanny.  when someone asks if i know her i will say ‘yes.’”  have you actually “gotten to know” her or have you just asked her pointless questions?  what is so valuable about “getting to know” her?  and if it is valuable, is it possible?  and is it what you are doing?

gnan and bhakti

bhakti is a fire, born of the heart.
gnan is an oil lamp, born of the mind.

both are born of Love.

without gnan, bhakti cannot be wielded, but burns everything, making the body a flaming hell for the soul.
without bhakti, gnan has no worth. words on a page must be illuminated by the heart to become true.

but these things are only true when gnan and bhakti are impure, not themselves.

pure bhakti contains gnan.
pure gnan contains bhakti.

Erin makes a statement about herself

The love I had for my words shattered a month ago. That is good. It was supposed to.

I have grown very silent.

I am connected to nothing.

But I do not feel desperate. Something other than desperation drives me to write. I am driven to write because people call me Erin, and talk to me, and expect responses. I don’t want to answer. Because I am terrified of what I cannot say, and what I will say in place of what I cannot say.

I am terrified of the unsayable words I am attempting to say now. I’ve already given up.

I do not know for whom, if anyone, I am writing.

At this time, my words either sadden or bore me. When I am compelled to speak with others about anything I care about, I feel storm clouds roll in. My words do not shed light because the object(s) they would illuminate are specks in the distance. And I am left wedded to lies. I say my words are lies…because, to be true, any statement I make must be read in light of very many delicately chosen ordered words…and I am never able to supply those words. I haven’t been able to type. Hence I haven’t been able to write. Hence I am a liar.

Even now, I am a liar. And yet I write anyway. Because I have to. Because if I do not, I die, though I know that for anyone paying attention, my words will most likely create only confusion.

More often than you would probably suspect, in order to not lie (or lie less hideously), I need time and a place to put my words (like a whiteboard or computer) so that all the delicate complexities might stay, and not slip back into the mush of my embodied instincts…and even then, even now, I fail.

Conversations, therefore, are particularly hard.

Everything I say is hideous to me. Hideous. Sickening.

I don’t think I can not lie.

If my words seem to shed light, it is an accident. They are being misread. These daily accidents may or may not be harmful, helpful, or neither harmful nor helpful. Of course I cannot know how they are being read, I can only know how I, or another intuitive person, might be expected to read them, based on what I put forth, and the reactions I receive. In many cases, it doesn’t matter that my words are misread. But in some, it does. Those are the instances that I am discussing. I can’t be more specific about the natures of these instances, because I can’t predict necessity.

In a recent conversation with a friend, I said: “I’m really not getting this across.” And he replied: “Well, I’m not confused.” Nothing is a surer indicator that I am not communicating what I know, than the absence of confusion.

“What I know” is stupefyingly complicated, especially to me. “What I know” is all the contradictions, all the “yes”s and “no”s, all the razor thin subtleties in the world, held in perfect balance. “What I know” is everything that has ever been said to me, everything I have ever read, seen or heard about. “What I know” is beautiful, but not for the reasons you might imagine. “What I know” is not what I knew yesterday, or a minute ago…or it could be…who knows. “What I know” is about feelings. “What I know” is essenceless. More than anything, “what I know” is about an unwillingness to tell a lie twice. Because that is the way my brain works. It enters into seeming contradiction, and destroys that contradiction through reconciliation on a new plane.

In fact, I should not call “what I know” “what I know,” but “what I aim to talk about.” I don’t know “what I know.” It doesn’t even exist within me. I really don’t know anything. Well….I do and I don’t.

When asked a question, I cannot hold the full answer(s) I would give in my head at once. The moment I begin to speak, even if I have chosen words that I can believe are theoretically defensible renderings of my truth, by speaking, I invoke what I cannot actually communicate within the parameters of conversation. Usually I am so flustered by the impossibility of communication that I don’t even choose good words for the beginning of what I know will be an insufficiently rendered thought. (I talk about “sufficiency” because at this time, I do not care that a thought is communicated “in full,” only that my words do what they’re supposed to do.)

If I could type, I would need time, a great deal of time, to say what I mean. I would need time to *mean* anything. I have realized that my old skills and tricks are more harmful than helpful for communicating my thoughts. They are harmful because they turn what I know into readily intelligible English.

Before, dignity was the best weapon I had. I could instruct my readers to hear my words as dignified. But that was taping a rocket to the back of a radio controlled model aircraft, saying: “Fly to the moon little friend,” and foolishly believing it would somehow make it there. A writer can be dignified and deluded. And that is how I now hear my own words…as dignified and deluded. Not worth listening to. Not worth saying. Beyond insufficient. Pointless.

And because I hear my words in this way, I don’t know what to say. In the presence of others, I feel like a ghost, or a skeleton—all of the meaning behind my words dropping through my substanceless body. If I am loved I don’t know why. Because I show nothing worth loving. And if what I show appears to be worth loving, it is an accident. Meaning must be compacted, consolidated. It might at any time be confounded, diluted, made into something it was not intended to be, or worst of all, issued without intent or care. All I see of myself, from the outside, is dilution, meaninglessness, ugliness.

I would not ask others to have unwarranted faith in the subtlety of my thoughts. The notion sickens me.

I would not dare to love others, or allow others to love me, if all I can give is this meaninglessness. (In that maybe I am wrong. I’m sure that if I try, I can see how it is good for me to be a ghost. Those are already my thoughts).

For the purposes of this piece, I am not talking about “being known” or “understood.” I am talking about existing with love in the realm of people.

At the moment, I choose emptiness. As I write I feel emptiness, and a faint melancholy. Often I will avoid speaking or stick to triteness to avoid living in a state of perpetual dishonesty. Or I will choose solitude because I can love tenderly my own elusive essence. It is the essence of transcendence itself.

In solitude, I am myself. But almost universally in the company of others, not at all.

Once around people, I find that I cannot simply “be myself,” because being myself means being honest and loving. Honesty and love are the same…aren’t they? Maude could bring others along for her joyride through life. Piero Manzoni shat in cans. The Buddha left his family. True love can take many forms. These words, these thoughts, are what I have to give. They are the form my love takes. And I did not choose it. When I am asked a question, or when I am otherwise compelled to speak, to show my love is to tell the truth, as far as I understand it. And the truth I would speak, no matter what it is, is always bigger than I can say. It is always different from what I say. Therefore writing has become, through necessity, my art. I have needed to write in order to be (more) honest and loving. And I am not…still.

But as my words continue to fail me, my emptiness converts to deep sadness in the presence of others.

Perhaps it is just momentum that keeps me here. Perhaps I need to leave the world and people, and return only when I’ve mastered my craft. I am coming to believe this more and more. That requires getting treatment for my arms.

I know what needs to happen. My words must showcase their embeddedness in structure. Simply to communicate, I must reinvent language with every word. I must craft an alien language, that doesn’t allow the ear, eye or mind to relax. I must say again and again to the reader who says “I know what you mean,” “Not this. Not this.” Because I do not mean anything you have heard before. I do not mean what you heard me say yesterday. I do not mean what you know I mean. That is all I am capable of saying. And not because I want to say it, but because you asked.