april is over

(Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, Yale University, from “Dissection”)
image from this review of new coffee table book, Dissection

past, present, future

A couple of paragraphs from this article, Enlightenment Therapy, by Chip Brown:

" What darkness is to psychoanalysis, light is to Zen. In pursuit of mystic illumination, “the vast ocean of dazzling light,” Zen is cheerfully unconcerned with the manufacture and distribution of personal meaning. It tends to discount the authority of the unconscious and to ignore the significance of dreams. Students are discouraged from delving into the content of emotions. Where psychoanalysis is keen to unpack a patient’s past — especially those aspects of the past that distort perception in the present — Zen dwells on awareness in the present. This! Here! Now! Zen masters have been known to whack students with a stick.

It’s no surprise that such an unlikely pair got off to a rocky start. For decades the feeling of being “one” with the universe, prized in Zen as an attribute of enlightenment, was belittled by many psychoanalysts as an “infantile regression.” By the same token, the injunction “know thyself,” the ultimate chocolate-cherry in the candy box of Western wisdom, was brushed off by Zen adherents as a delusion. What’s to know about a conceit that has no fixed reality and more often than not is an impediment to experiencing Buddha nature? The self, as one Rinzai teacher put it bluntly, “is a malignant growth which is to be surgically removed.” "

-Chip Brown for New York Times Magazine, April 23, 2009
(again, full article here)

finding Riga

John Hejduk's Riga would be worth finding. Imagine yourself walking home from work, down the same streets, under the same lights. It would sneak up on you, abrupt. Maybe as if hitting a wall and bursting through.

Today is my first day with my new computer and I'm happy. What is it about newness? Novelty? I am going through the mass of files on my old computer and loving what I find.

another time

Minneapolis and St. Paul, Oct 2008

another place

Cuba, various places, Dec 2008

decisions, decisions

"Fig.2 - A taxonomy of uncertainties and decisions"

This diagram is from this strange article, The ethics of uncertainty: in the light of possible dangers, research becomes a moral duty, published by EMBO, the European Molecular Biology Organization, found on the web through Nature Magazine.

“Any scientist knows that knowledge is never complete and that research can do no more than produce estimates of what we think is happening. Science, at least in part, is not about facts but about odds. Yet accepting and realizing this principal uncertainty is a conceptual challenge, and it is within this framework that we must make decisions of a moral nature…Uncertainty itself has no ethical quality—it is an inherent attribute of a situation. However, in a potentially dangerous situation, uncertainty can trigger ethically adjusted behavior that aims to avoid dangers and diminishes risks." (from article above)

Also check out Figure 1, The Igloo of Uncertainty. The igloo schematically “distinguishes between open and closed forms of both ignorance and knowledge.”

I’m not sure why I’m so fascinated (and puzzled) by this article. I think I’m drawn to the language and its terms, even if they are used to discuss an unfamiliar topic in a way that is very different from what I’m used to.

The allure resides in the promise of clarifying certain ideas and relationships I’ve found difficult to define for myself: ethics, morality, danger, risk, certainty, uncertainty, research, facts, knowledge, and ignorance. The more I read it, the less I want to understand it word for word; and at the same time, I feel there must be another layer of comprehension or parallel reading to be distilled from it. But I’m not getting it.

The End of Philosophy, (no, not the Heidegger but this op-ed piece in, what else?, the New York Times), on moral emotions, or is it emotional morality?, is more of my grade level. It’s not especially good or compelling but I liked the concluding lines: "Finally, it should also challenge the very scientists who study morality. They’re good at explaining how people make judgments about harm and fairness, but they still struggle to explain the feelings of awe, transcendence, patriotism, joy and self-sacrifice, which are not ancillary to most people’s moral experiences, but central." (moral allusions and associations in scent?)

I was given a book I like very much for my birthday last fall from a friend I was feeling very uncertain about at the time. It is called The Principles of Uncertainty, by Maira Kalman. (small review here.) He knew I felt uncertain about a lot of things, especially my thesis. We both wondered without saying, how can such a hesitant and doubtful person ever find a way into this profession of ideals, decisions, solutions, permanence?

editing memory

Brain Researchers Open Door to Editing Memory
by Benedict Carey for The New York Times, April 5th, 2009

excerpt:
"How on earth can a clump of tissue possibly capture and store everything — poems, emotional reactions, locations of favorite bars, distant childhood scenes? The idea that experience leaves some trace in the brain goes back at least to Plato’s Theaetetus metaphor of a stamp on wax, and in 1904 the German scholar Richard Semon gave that ghostly trace a name: the engram.

What could that engram actually be?

The answer, previous research suggests, is that brain cells activated by an experience keep one another on biological speed-dial, like a group of people joined in common witness of some striking event. Call on one and word quickly goes out to the larger network of cells, each apparently adding some detail, sight, sound, smell. The brain appears to retain a memory by growing thicker, or more efficient, communication lines between these cells.

The billion-dollar question is how?"

Molecules. Everything comes down to molecules. Can they be considered the world's smallest beings? Yes, smaller things are known to us (atoms, electrons, quarks, neutrinos, etc) but do they have active lives, reasons to live, in themselves? Molecules seem exceptional, more purposeful. They have different identities and defined roles in the world- or do I just think this because the matter they compose seem more alive, even if they are not? Am I talking about the part or the whole?

Some time ago, I learned that all living things are made of cells, that cells are made of molecules, and molecules made of atoms. For some reason, atoms don't seem to have any personality of their own. Is it that while all things are made of atoms, not all things are made of molecules? Would it be true to say that only complex things are made of molecules? or that molecules always compound into complex matter? What scale am I even talking about? Atoms are incredibly complicated and energetic and the object of much concentrated study. I suppose molecules are associated more with biology and living things. Maybe that's why I think they are alive and leading interesting lives.

(Should I be equating "personality" and "complexity" with each other and with life and being? I'm not sure. I'm not really going anywhere with this anyway. I'm not sure what I even mean by personality, complexity, or life...)

In chemistry, an element is matter composed of only one type of atom- it cannot be broken down into simpler forms. Basic, inert, seemingly ineffectual in isolation- i.e. lithium, sodium, zinc - these substances are lifeless when not reacting to things external to themselves. They exist in a vacuum of sorts. On the other hand, molecules, formed when different atoms are combined in fixed ratios, can almost be seen to have a certain kind of existence of their own- complete with roles to play, jobs to do, expectations to fulfill. (this whole thought coming out of reading the brain/memory article and with the intention to researching more in depth/writing about scent molecules soon in the back of my mind). In my mind, molecules are alive in the same way a tree is alive, and atoms are dead in the same way a piece of plastic never lives.

Water molecules are particularly exciting. I remember marveling (being told to marvel?) when learning about its complex and paradoxical nature. (ice, its solid form, floats! and I remember learning something special about their magnetic polarized bondage to one another). And water in general is just kind of beautiful and lively and alive on its own.

thru' these architect's eyes

All this soundtrack talk makes me think of this song by David Bowie. I sort of considered putting it on my soundtrack but it felt out of place. It's a great song by an amazing performer- I should probably burn everyone another cd with just this song, over and over...

THRU' THESE ARCHITECT'S EYES

(Making a goal, is the goal, life's a goal, life's a...)

Stomping along on this big Philip Johnson
Is delay just wasting my time
Looking across at Richard Rogers
Scheming dreams to blow both their minds

It's difficult you see
To give up baby
To leave a Job
When you know the money's from day to day

All the majesty of a city landscape
All the soaring days of our lives
All the concrete dreams in my mind's eye
All the joy I see thru these architect's eyes

Cold winter bleeds on the girders of Babel
This stone boy watching the crawling land
Rings of flesh and the towers of iron
The steaming caves and rocks and the sand
Stomping along on this big Philip Johnson
Is delay just wasting my time

It's difficult you see
To give up baby
These summer scumholes
This goddamned starving life

All the majesty of a city landscape
All the soaring days of our lives
All the concrete dreams in my mind's eye
All the joy I see thru these architect's eyes

yesterdays' news tomorrow

catching up on my nytimes
to look at tomorrow:
Picturing the Recession
First You Shut Up, Then You Grow Up
A Weekend in Hanoi
Malls Test Experimental Waters to Fill Vacancies
Chinese Hunger For Sons Fuel Boys' Abductions
Lost in Space With Dido and Aeneas
A List Of The Most Wanted, by the EPA
Fighting Intensifies in Sri Lanka
Brain Researchers Open Door to Editing Memory
DNA Test Outperforms Pap Smear
Answering Baseball's What-Ifs
When All You Have Left Is Your Pride
Mapping the Cultural Buzz: How Cool is That?

manual labour

Trying to conjure up an abstract but drawing a blank, worried (constantly worried!) I'm going to shoot blanks, one after another.

Instead, here are some things I wrote down as I watched that interview earlier. To preface these notes I should mention that I had no idea who those men were as I watched their conversation... I had the vague sense that one was a somewhat famous artist, and the other, a well known television personality. It was nice to watch and listen with no preconceptions, no preformed biases other than knowing it was going to be a certain kind of talk - not a candid chat amongst friends, not a scripted act, but something walking the line between.

While I was quite taken by what Clemente had to say, I wasn't that crazy about most of the actual pieces shown. They are nice and all but don't really resonate with me, strike me down like I like to be struck. Strewn in this posting are some that I like more. What I do like about the work is its incredible and vast range in style, media, impulse and imagery (this from a precursory look at what came up in google images) - its consistent change. So while I love looking at beautiful images, right now, I'd rather hear reflections from a life being lived artfully. I probably see too much beauty already, without knowing what to do with it.

Some notes out of context:

boredom and empty afternoons
waiting
not decisions but acceptance, listening, not understanding

wonderment
physical presence

make room for luck, luck will make room

deepest human desire is for narrative, for images, for drama
to have and tell a story

there is no hope for a rational society

light and shadow
dark ground - the undefined, the unknown, things that don't have a name
important to consider that ground, it will feed you and give legitimacy to what you do- darkness, shadow, vagueness, forgetfulness

experiences of mortality and relativity
who is under the persona, masked

psychedelic experiments, the person i am can disappear at any moment
fragility and questions of being

doubt, change

"the most interesting time is now"

portraiture of the total person, not that moment in time

art is manual labour

horizons, rivers and wells, floods

female bridge and male castle
flexibility and inclusivity vs simple complexity

separation from people makes one weak, you are result of people around you

not a circle but a spiral, opening up, dimensionality

letting go
openness vs clinging attachment, stopping flow

narrative of form
forms of narrative

eroticism metaphor for spirituality

talent - language - communication

contemplative traditions

interdependence of all things

cultivate your vulnerability

*All images by Francesco Clemente

narrative of forms

Long, inspiring interview of Francesco Clemente by Charlie Rose (and a sweet and condensed one with the late Bernie Mac after).

Rosanna sent me the link the other day and after watching the video just now, I can't help but feel thankful for a lot of things. Thankful for artists like Francesco Clemente and professional conversationalists like Charlie Rose. For people who post things on the internet whether or not those things are interesting, banal, useless or true. Also for having the privilege to see, hear, absorb, or disregard any of the stuff out there, floating. And most of all I'm thankful for my dear friends, who point things out to me (or at least try to - I can be kind of blind) when I'm missing the point... we really are, as Clemente says, just a collection of the people around us.

swimming to ship

images from 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Stanley Kubrick
with thanks to surfling.org

yeah, i'm feeling a little lost...