Tag Archives: painting

Another Me

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I’ve been reading scifi again. In this reading reality as we wish to know it is upset by some sort of spatial distortion that causes the same transcontinental flight to land twice three months apart. Each passenger in the earlier landing is found to have an identical other in the later landing, not simply doppelgangers but indistinguishable pairs with the very same helices of DNA.

This got me thinking about how I might respond to such a situation, how I might respond if face to face with my identical other. Aware as I/we are of my/our hesitancy to openly embrace new acquaintances on sight I suspect the need for me/us to feel each other out would be necessary. I/we would need to recall experiences had in common and being psychologically identical make each of me wince in embarrassment thereby confirming I/we are two and the same. Identity issues would likely ensue confusing our social status; would I/we become known as they/them? (No slight to the LGBTQ+ community intended).

Hard to say how it might all play out. Maintaining a distance from us will probably be the best solution.

A Double Plus

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I’ve been reading about the impending disaster awaiting us if climate warming isn’t actively addressed. Along with renewable energy sources more and better batteries would appear to provide a pathway toward mitigation at the very least.

I understand the chemical element Lithium can be used to store energy and has the advantage of charging faster, lasting longer and providing more power than the convention alkaline battery. Apparently, there’s a large deposit of Lithium in Southern California being eyed for extraction using solar power, which would seem to me to be a double plus: environmentally beneficial and an optimistic reason for hope.

Still, resistance from climate warming skeptics stand in the way and must be overcome. I understand Lithium can also be used as a treatment for certain mental disabilities, can be directed toward those who exhibit certain deficient thought processes. Another double plus.

Sedona (March)

Gnomon

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I’ve been reading scifi lately. I know when I pick up a book of this genre there will be concepts, ideas that will stretch, challenge my understanding of how things can be. A gnomon, the reading informs me, is the part of a sundial that stands perpendicular to the horizontal plane on which the hours of the day are inscribed. In the book Gnomon becomes a metaphor (a being as well) for a conception of reality at odds, right angles, I guess, to what we understand to be so, dealing as it does with extranoematic ideas: concepts that lie outside the confines of human thought.

The story is of a futuristic, Matrix-like surreality of a controlling artificial intelligence that is growing increasingly oppressive, protected as it is by a firewall, ‘Firespine’, but opposed by a few freedom-lovers who would like to see it gone and Apocatastasis to occur, that is the restoration of creation to a condition of perfection. In order to do so avoidance of the planet-sized multiple consciousness, Zagreus (Greek mythology reference here) who absorbs beings that fall within its realm (sort of like the Borg on Star Trek) is necessary.

In the end the author informs us that we all we become Gnomon. I think I’m going to set aside scifi for a while.

Time

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I suppose it doesn’t take much imagination to understand time as a social construct, a means of keeping society organized. Counting the hours keeps us showing up on time so progress can happen, so we’ve accepted time as an absolute: the structure of our reality depends on it.

But what if we didn’t think of time in terms of seconds, minutes and hours? What if societal time was held at bay, not allowed to invade our psyches? If our natural rhythms determined the flow of our existence, being late would no longer be a serious concern.

Minimal servitude and an understanding partner might make such a thing possible.

A Perspective Altering Experience

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I’ve been thinking about the winter storm that occurred here recently. It was particularly devastating, heavy wet snow bending and snapping off 50-year-old trees and creating nearly impossible traveling conditions that left many of us home-bound longer than we’re used to. The event has me thinking about my relationship with the natural world.

I know Nature’s sublimity appears on nearly a daily basis: tornadoes, hurricanes, deadly fires, but the reality of experiencing it firsthand gives the event greater significance. My usual compatibility with nature has been upset. I’m experiencing a disconnect, an inclination to find nature as hostile rather than nurturing.

Avoiding a hostile natural environment may mean self-imposed isolation. Cocooning oneself into interior spaces might result in dark contemplations, socially unhealthy behaviors detrimental to one’s well-being. On the upside, I suspect the deeply insightful writings of the likes of Knute Hamsen and Soren Kierkegaard or the disturbing yet moving paintings of Edvard Munch wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the challenges they had to face living in the northern climes.

Dream World

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I’ve been revisiting the ideas of the dream/reality conundrum as depicted in the Matrix scifi stories. The dream state the films present is so intensely real, there are no give aways, no non-contextual interludes as often happens in actual dreams. The dreamer is unaware that he is physically inactive and sedated, kept alive by chemical means, he’s living a dream.

Anyway, I’ve been finding myself lately mentally wandering off, envisioning imaginary places and situations I’m pretty sure never existed or occurred. But, upon further consideration perhaps these memories are in fact reality and what I’m presently experiencing with pencil in hand is a dream.

I’m really not too concerned, though, because in either case, real or imagined, my experiences are fairly pleasant.

A Theme Park for the Disenfranchised

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The disenchantment with and removal, these days, of monuments to past figures of note whose behaviors, in retrospect, are being found wanting has me in mind of a recent trip I took to eastern Europe. After the fall of the Soviet Union a massive effort to remove the statuary of the communist elite found in most every village led to the creation of a ‘theme park’ near Vilnius in Lithuania. Large scale sculptures of Lenin, Stalin and lesser known figures were situated in a park-like setting with walking paths inviting public viewing. With apparent tongue-in-cheek the park’s designers circled the figures within a moat, high barbed wire fence and guard towers. It is an attempt, I suspect, to remember their past in a proper context.

Animal Nature

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Numerous paintings have been done over the centuries of peasant celebrations, often in wooded settings, where revelry is apparent, debauchery implied. The imagery captures times, sometimes after harvest when food has become abundant after the lean months before, other depictions suggesting spring when mankind recognized the rebirth of nature and the fecundity it implies.

The ancient Greeks depicted the animal nature released during these times of celebration as animal/human composites: satyrs, fauns, nymphs, suggesting, I guess, that the human inclination to give into one’s natural urges was less than civilized.

There are some of us, I suppose, who might benefit from such emotional release, civilization overlaying, as it does, a blanketing guilt upon those who might pursue such Bacchanolic revelry. Maybe we should rethink our moral priorities in the interest of mental health.

Disinformation, Rumor and Gossip

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I’ve been reading lately about the perpetuation of disinformation that social media has allowed to spread quickly and widely these days. Sometimes, deliberately conjured false narratives based on non-existent facts and perpetrated by bad actors are sought out for various reasons from entertainment to reinforcement of intuited beliefs of deep state conspiracy.

It occurs to me the inclination for many of us to spread gossip is ingrained behavior. Intentions are not necessarily malevolent, but, even so, rumors that may start harmlessly: interpretations of neighborly idiosyncrasies, maybe, have always had the potential to devolve into dangerous fictions that may cause great harm: thousands of ‘witches’ were burned or hung across Europe in the 16th century, rumor and innuendo have led to the demonization of minority communities today and on-line threats of rape and murder directed toward victims of disinformation are commonplace.

Whether those guilty of spreading disinformation are fear driven or just mean-spirited it’s hard to take a liberal stance on speech freedoms while aware of the potential harms rumor, gossip and disinformation can cause.

Ahimsa

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The eastern religious principle of Ahimsa proposes that one ‘do no harm’: to achieve enlightened insight one must come to the realization that all things human and animal, animate and inanimate have soul-like presence, deserve respectful consideration.

The Jains are a traditional Indian religious sect that take the principle of Ahimsa very seriously. The deeply spiritual among them practice extreme measures to avoid injuring any living thing, plant or animal, will avoid walking at night so as not to injure unseen insects and mask so as not to inhale any sort of minute flying being. The idea is I guess, that in order to achieve Ahimsa one must get in touch with what one imagines that even the least of life forms has valid meaningful existence.

With this in mind, I found myself recently watching a tiny winged creature walk across my pants leg. I wondered where it might be headed, whether it might be seeking food of some sort. Certainly it must be considered a conscious being aware of the dangers around it and what stone it might find that would willingly harbor it for the night. Would it be able to form a bond with the sheltering rock one might assume has being in itself?

There is something enlightening about acknowledging the validity of our fellow beings.