Writing, we invoke…

Writing we invoke. If it is ever to be anything more than a display of cleverness, writing is an act of prayer. We seek out; we ask for; we hope to receive something from beyond what we think. What we think we know.

“Let’s be realistic!”

We feel the weight of this admonition upon us everywhere we turn. It stands like a wall between us and it echoes in our minds. We take it as a warning. In fact it is our prison.

Navigating Quality

We’re inundated with arguments and counterarguments over what are considered facts and counter-facts. There is a scramble to create ever-larger data-farms to handle…, well, all the data. There’s also been a curious turn of phrase used by one buffoon, George Will to describe another, Donald Trump. Will has claimed that “Trump doesn’t know how to

Addiction & Creativity

Addiction is getting stuck. Seeking relief from suffering instead of perceiving proprioception, we chase a form of release. It is temporary. Its effects lessen each time we resort to it. Our connection to clarity of perception – including a lived sense of its limits – weakens. Repetition digs us deeper.

Contamination

Our progress today is more of a process of disillusion. We are confronted, assaulted, by evidence of the enormity of what is taking place. We react in various ways. Sometimes we strive to deny what is going on. We distance our selves from awareness at the risk of numbing in-attentiveness. Sometimes we buckle under the

A Web of Obligations

We tie ourselves within a web of obligations, forgetting that while these so-called acts of responsibility are meant to help us fulfill our lives, they actually keep us from it. What struck me was the way we handle the mid-term. It’s not just in the short-term that we do everything twice. In the mid-term, in

After Comfort

We have resigned ourselves to accept that life’s purpose is to chase after comfort. This leaves us in a very uncomfortable position. We begin to prod and peer to see what might come after comfort…. Money, power, agreement, advantage; these all promise comfort. The key here is in promise. In our appetite for comfort we

Communication, driven by assumptions

We cannot connect or communicate intentionally without some assurance of common assumptions to buoy us through the effort. I find that through subtle hints – the sort of unintended communication that takes place whenever there is one organism perceiving another and “making sense” of what they see. Through these hints, if I feel the gap

Complicity and Contingency

We live somewhere in tension between complicity and contingency. It’s not a linear polarity, this space. These are not categories with any sort of rough equivalency. Complicity is a state. We are within a relationship to the forces that seek to destroy. Some of these we are aware of, others are hidden from us, some

Plans, Projections & Masks

This post is a bit of a departure from my common practice. It is left as a lightly edited transcription of a meditation of a few hours duration from a few days ago. It was written as each phrase or sentence or paragraph came to my attention as I let go of any attempt to

We Are Dissatisfied.

We are dissatisfied. And then we expect the other, the world, to change to accommodate to our dissatisfaction. Our dissatisfaction stems from our confusion. Our expectations compound our confusion. The sheer wrongness of this position holds us as if hypnotized, paralyzed, and unable to take in what the other, what the world, is showing us.

Algorithms and Intention

Algorithms. While teaching a week-long course in half-model making and marine drafting I came across a tangible definition of an algorithm. In drafting we use splines, long, thin wooden battens that we bend around control points held by lead weights called ducks or whales. The shape, density and grain of the wood influences how it