Love Poem

New Things

“The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal”

-William James

Theo Jansen, I believe, should be the idol of our class. Nothing in my day has sparked my sense of novelty and unison. Nothing has leaped forward in time and space, utilized everything coming before to synthesize something completely natal.

Utilizing sacred geometry, which we find everywhere in nature, and seemingly imbued into the basic human aesthetic, (not to mention the proportions of the human body), Jansen utilized perhaps the only known universal constant, Phi. Phi is a simple ratio that can be approximated like this: A is to B, as B is to A+B. (It is the only pattern of numbers that can be expressed with only two numbers. All other patterns require three.) The patterns of sacred geometry (such as Metatrons cube, which actually contains the possible projection of a hypercube, which is a four-dimensional object) were revered by ancients such as the Egyptians, Greeks, and Hebrews. (not to mention some pretty far-out new-agers) Anyway, Jansen draws upon this universal for the purpose of creating life! To not fear being the creator, as Rilke wrote, is the raison d'etre! This also perfectly represents the liminality of truth that I wrote about previously.

In a vastly different space, novelty arises from the utter rejection of history and human endeavor, a rejection of past and future that seeks the present through embodied motion. In the film Dogtown and Z Boys, we find a much less integrated invention. Skateboarding and surfing became cool not because of the multitude of connections, but becasue of the outcast-status and exclusivity engendered by the image. The film captured the culture well by focusing in so specifically on the coolest of the cool, the "originals". It shows another seemingly universal truth: that what is exclucive and specific will be desired by the masses. But there is another level to it, one of motion, of freedom, and of innovation.

Other cool scientific/artistic/begging the question of the basics of life:

Ferrofluid

Walking Cornstarch

Effing the Ineffable

Some highlights from Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet

"Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life."

"Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now."

"If only they could be more reverent toward their own fruitfulness, which is essentially one, whether it is manifested as mental or physical; for mental creation too arises from the physical, is of one nature with it and only like a softer, more enraptured and more eternal repetition of bodily delight. "The thought of being a creator, of engendering, of shaping" is nothing without the continuous great confirmation and embodiment in the world, nothing without the thousandfold assent from Things and animals"

This last quote ties in directly with Abram's thesis. Thouhgt is nothing apart from the Other. The depth of Rilke's letters' expressions of duty, of anguish, of Eros, of philosophy speak directly to my core. There is a sort of empiricism that good poetry effects that Science can never reach. The exact truth of the liminality of experience, the expression of the in-between--this is reality!

This reading contrasts heavily with the article "How Much Art Can the Brain Take?" by Stephen pinker, who reduces art to the need to be entertained; to satisfy our receptors in our brains that satiate us. But what of the anguish? The duty? The calling? Pinker shouldn't write about art, apart from his own. Becasue there is enough poetry going on in biology and neuroscience and evolutionary science that he doesn't need to stretch his worldview to encompass things he obviously has little skill at measuring. This is just why there are multiple intelligences in the world. You cannot measure the whole world with any of them. We need poets and scientists, dancers and linguists, philosophers and counselors to realize in concert the wonderous multiplicity and unity that a multidisciplinary approach to reality fosters.

Last night I dreamed that a bunch of scientists were studying a live heart, beating, with wires comming off it.

Here are some pictures.

(The orange one is by Ava Vargas)

Camping

I remember making the decision to go to Catoctin Quaker Camp, fearful, up in a tree, hiding from the new idea of going away at nine, out into the wilderness, among strangers. But My mother, who had been a camper and counselor there, luckily convinced me, and after spending eight summers out in the Blue Ridge, away, thank goodness...I can clearly see that Camping has taught me more than school and socialization, hands down.

The teachings of a tree were recognized by Einstein as surpassing those of a book. And the breathtakingness of a buena vista, the primal feeling of awe; The feeling of silence on a mountaintop rock. These were my teachers. My soul came back to me every summer, and I let myself drain out into the dysmal middle and high schools in the winter, because I knew I would be replenished by the nostalgic and ritual return to nature every summer.

Reading parts of Meyer's How To Shit In the Woods brought back specific memories for me. Friends shitting during a canoe trip getting stinging nettle all over their butts; waking in the middle of the ninght to the "high beams" of an inconsiderate camper going for a poop; She reminds me of the truth of people's separation from nature; the fear of pooping outside, the utter ineptitude of most humans to be in the woods for even a day or two. I had this taught to me at such a young age that I take it for granted. I am always ready to trounce through leaves and crunch sticks in the elements. I remember hiking late at night, in the rain, half miserable, half enlightened. It's at the edges of our comfort zone that we feel really alive. My Yoga instructor quoted her own teacher as saying, "when shaking is happening, learning is happening". We must be uncomfortable, at least a little bit, before we realize that we can be comfortable. We find it along the way in a song, in a conversation, in a leaf, or a smell. The only thing to worry about out there is worry. (and hypothermia) But mostly worry.

I think the focus on hypothermia in this class is very telling. It connects to the body-as-subject of Marleau Ponty. The body is keeping you alive, not the other way around. But that still sounds like a split. The body is keeping itself (you) alive. But we can make choices that kill us. Generally we (me, my friends, many college students) don't drink enough or eat well, which are the main forces keeping us alive (duh) and out in the woods, we don't stand a chance without proper fuel and protection. Learning to protect myself from cold is really enjoyable for me, because personally, nothing feels more satisfying than being way out in the middle of nowhere, and yet being totally warm and comfy. Humans don't require that much to be happy. Just the basics: water, shelter, food, warmth.

Being on hiking trips alters consciousness because it alters time and space. The effect of moving across large spans of physical space seems to protract time. Every second is another view, every word of a conversation is linked to a memory of a place on the path; a view, a rock, a butterfly. Thus a week in this manner contains what a month normally would in terms of raw experience. It also alters companionship. Campers are in it together. If somebody needs help, we have to help. There is no ignoring each other when you are hunkered around a fire or under a tarp in the rain. People are forced to acknowledge one another.

In this way, I made the best friendships, listened to the best silences, and felt the most myself, that I ever have in my life, being surrounded by nature, and fellow campers. It makes us drunk on divinity.