Learning how to see

If we have relatively good eyesight it’s easy to think that’s all we need, “I know how to see! Just open my eyes and look!” One of the first lessons from learning to draw and paint was that I had no idea what was involved in seeing. Not just that I was lacking techniques useful

Drawing Distinctions,

The following is an address to be given at the first session of a class at a school that as far as I know does not yet exist. Nor do I know who the students might be, or their circumstances. What I do know is that I’d like to be there, at the front of

Process

process early 14c., “fact of being carried on” (e.g. in process), from O.Fr. proces “journey” (13c.), from L. processus “process, advance, progress,” from pp. stem of procedere “go forward” (see proceed). Meaning “course or method of action” is from mid-14c.; sense of “continuous… As with so many words, we rarely look at where they came

Staying in the Drama…

Whew, I’ve spent years thinking what synchronicity might really mean. It is an interesting topic, but difficult to discuss, as language is structured on something like causality. Poetry, maybe… Getting the outside and inside to resonate synchronously: making the outside like the inside and inside like the outside. This actually, is what is irking me

Discover, Find, and Gather

In Qi Gong, at least in the ad hoc mongrel form I practice, there are three opening phases in our relationship to Qi, to the life force. I do not approach Qi Gong, or anything in life, from within whatever might pass for a mystical view. I do not willingly bring beliefs to any confrontation

A Turbulent Stream

This post grew in response to a conversation over at Leaving Babylon around questions of planning. We imagine ourselves on stable ground, or fear that we are otherwise in a chaotic jumble. We are within dynamic flows. These take place around us and within us and can be thought of as motions upon morphic fields

Missed Opportunity, the Failed Legacy of John Boyd

I’ve recently had reason to look back at John Boyd‘s work. This has led me to review his “legacy.” Even today his writings are only available through a network of self-styled acolytes and has been enshrined as the rationale behind a lot of very dangerous and very silly thinking that’s “informed” U. S. military adventures

Life Is Between

I continue to resist the desire to be catchy and to be interesting with hooks and arresting phrases that can be isolated and passed along to spread the word. I keep returning to the realization that whatever is profound is also very close to what appears trite, even obvious. That it takes a certain plodding,

Anxiety, Trying, and Other Alarms We Might Learn to Heed

What if we saw anxiety not as a condition, but as a useful alarm? First, we would invest less energy in striving to quash it. We would heed its warnings, but then, equally importantly, we would turn it off. Why is this such a hard thing to imagine? When an alarm goes off, it is

The Trouble with “Uncivilization”

There is a tremendous lurking flaw in any initiative that frames itself as a negative. We know that, yet we struggle with finding a framework, and a simple title for it, that denotes the activities around weening our attention from the grip of civilization without resorting to this awkward and negative term, Uncivilization. This may

Notes on the Sources of Art

This piece has grown during the writing, pushed ahead by the ambition of its title, only slightly modified by the insertion of the word “Notes…” I’m resisting the urge to break it up into my customary 1,500 words. I need to break that habit as much as we all need not to get too comfortable

On Conservatism

Humans have been profoundly conservative for most of our existence. That statement is rendered meaningless if we take conservatism to mean what is sold in its name today, or believe in what passes for the span of human existence as our self-professed conservatives would insist it to have been. Let’s pry the term away from