THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT [WHEN WRITING FICTION] #18

...the apparently clear separation between humankind and Nature is made ambiguous by the apparent randomness of individual perceptions over time...yet, perceiving this cleavage or bifurcation between humans and Nature seems to, perhaps, necessitate an evolution in language allowing us an adequately complex sensibility to consciously rub up against Its membrane ["M-theory"]...which is to say mind...or Nature.



Humankind and Nature seam, in reality, useful fictions--wet surfable waves we catch on the ocean to ride for awhile...heading, perhaps, to shore...or home...

Maybe our minds are parallel universes forming a universal mind participating in a symphony of universal minds...vibrating the brane.

...or not. What do I know?

STUFF TO WORRY ABOUT [WHEN WRITING FICTION] #17

The apparent "evil" among us, that malignancy haunting our every action these days, which seems possibly the result of acting on our superficial desires for temporary security and comfort for ourselves at Nature's expense, a symptom of which might be seen as an increased delusion of ourselves as chosen people equating Nature with wilderness and irrationality...and that which must be tamed and reasoned away for holy land profit maintaining the promise of Empire...



and so our waging war among ourselve seems like It at war with Itself...perhaps even suicidal and riddled with self-loathing, calling Death Its "manifest destiny" in the note Its leaving behind, something It might have called "history" had It survived Itself...

STUFF TO WORRY ABOUT [WHEN WRITING FICTION] #16

To be deeply spiritual in the ecological sense is to perceive one's place and function within the organic system, then be it, and the only way to be it seems to live in communication with Its mind and seam with It, nostering with Its being. Otherwise, one might function differently, serving other purposes...



...Human desire reflects and manifests Nature's desire...our desire appears an extension of Nature's desire, a natural intention...dissolve concepts of self and other, humankind and Nature, ego and id, as unnecessarily distinct categories...

STUFF TO WORRY ABOUT [WHEN WRITING FICTION] #15

The deeper one's understanding of language, the more deeply one might perceive Nature's cognitive processes and realize we are not the world's supreme consciousness when it comes to percipient contact with others.

Happy Thanksgiving!

STUFF TO WORRY ABOUT [WHEN WRITING FICTION] #14

The more that humans produce meaning in Nature by languaging, ever-honing more precise and complex descriptions of It, the more aware Nature will become of Itself, as the perception of humans communicating with other humans can be imagined as Nature communicating with Itself...or "thinking"...It be-ing mind perceiving matter and energy organizing Itself...



...so, the quality of our communication will seam the qualities of Nature's thinking...as It is, the planet seems depressed, suicidal...how do we heal It and ourselves?

STUFF TO WORRY ABOUT [WHEN WRITING FICTION] #13

Grammar is the imagined and thus usefully fictive communication rule book by which these [autopoietic] systems maintain themselves, at least as we can perceive them, making their feedback loops possible. This understanding or sensibility, however, only exists in the cognitive dimension, as one must be aware of the constant uncertainty regarding the adequacy of description for what's actually going on, as opposed to what's really going on. What's really going on is what we imagine, or what we think and feel is going on; and what's actually happening is beyond that...inside or outside, but elsewhere nonetheless.

STUFF TO WORRY ABOUT [WHEN WRITING FICTION] #12

...an autopoietic system undergoes continual structural changes while preserving its weblike pattern of organization. It couples to its environment structurally, in other words, through recurrent interactions, each of which triggers structural changes in the system. The living system is autonomous, however. The environment only triggers the structural changes. The autonomous living system also specifies which perturbation from the environment triggers these changes...and by doing so, the system "brings forth a world..."



Cognition, then, is not a representation of an independently existing world, but rather a continual bringing forth of a world through the process of living. The interactions of a living system [a biological entity] with its environment are cognitive interactions, and the process of living itself a process of cognition. In the words of Maturana and Varela, "To live is to know"...likewise, perhaps, language selects what is expressible and gives shape to the ineffable, or inexpressible, in a figure-ground relationship that seems the expression of awareness. Cognition is the continuous bringing forth of awareness through the process of language. The cognitive interactions of a living system with its environment are linguistic interactions, and the process of languaging itself is a process of cognition. In other words, language seams to know...

But I know nothing, perhaps. Maybe I'm nuts...somewhere beyond this language...like you.

Is that OK?

STUFF TO WORRY ABOUT [WHEN WRITING FICTION] #11

...that if "we" seem to be conscious beings aware of each other as separate biological entities and that together "we" are functionaries cooperatively forming, via language, a psychic ecosystem that, on the global scale seems, in part, Nature's cognition, then Nature seams Itself, composing Its own awareness as the supersitial mind composing/thinking/dreaming-nostering/minding/feeling/obeying us into be-ing existent. This seams a psychic form of recursive symmetry across scale, functioning to maintain an equilibrium/meaning amidst the perceived chaos/confusion of Its own processes.

STUFF TO WORRY ABOUT [WHEN WRITING FICTION] #10

...if one begins writing fiction with a few basic rules [the idea being for a "plot" or phase-space mechanism to emerge over time and pages] in sync with a "chaos game" of random limits, various meanings will begin arising from the text, moving toward a visible spectacle proportionate to scale, lured by some "strange attractor" across the textual "event horizon" toward some "black hole" singularity that's always ineffable to the individual human being...experiencing itself, for what seems like the first time, alive in something else...this seams the faith one starts with.

Thelonius Monk: Blue Monk

DH Lawrence has much the same view of women as Stephen Fry

"Pornography is the literature of prostitution. Prostitution and art have always lived together." Germaine Greer.

The Collected Essays of Robert Creeley Online

From the University of California Digital Library.

STUFF TO WORRY ABOUT [WHEN WRITING FICTION] #9

Supersymmetry is the grail of string theory, addressing the vision of multidimensional feedback loops that also include quantum mechanics. The "string" is the feedback loop, fascia, membrane stitching/joining these dimensions together as they flow through time [or as time vibrates them in its passing]. The ultimate particle has been replaced by the image of a vibrating string whose pitch varies and harmonizes with the pitch variances and harmonizations of other strings [remember Emerson's "Nature?" Now keep going], which ravel together forming an infinitely large string and infinitely small strings harmonizing one to the others, and vice versa. It's the difference between music and noise, language and gibberish. It's a unifying theory, a titillating big picture and useful fiction.

SIMPLE COMPLEXITY

STUFF TO WORRY ABOUT [WHEN WRITING FICTION] #8

...consider how, as the human mind has evolved, its imagination and potential of perception has expanded into increasingly larger and smaller scales, as if perception were a simultaneous ripple effect inward and outward. At one time we were mentally stuck on the scale of things we perceive with our naked senses, but now we've left Earth, entered space and looked back at Earth, we've struggled to survive and thrive, examining the depths inside the atom and the expanses beyond our solar system...Since we are Earthlings, when we look at a photograph of Earth from space, the Earthling, or Earth Itself, looks with us, seeing an image of Itself recorded elsewhere. The Earth's biological system has possibly reached [if It wasn't already there and "we're" just catching up] a level of complexity where It's experiencing the first glimmers of sentience, or global consciousness. In theory, this planetary cognition seams an aspect, scale and/or dimension of cosmic psychignition, an awakening self that seems to work--in each dimension to the infinite micro and macro scales--at perceiving Itself as a unifying, and therefore by intention [as opposed to extension], rightly or wrongly, universal order...

STUFF TO WORRY ABOUT [WHEN WRITING FICTION] #7

Literary texts apparently emerge from cognitive evolution, which seems a localized creative awareness. Languaging seams their most essential processes. Texts exist as the skins of reading/writing, and might even be considered "alive" if they were taking part in Life's evolution by writing, reading, thinking-feeling about and discussing whatever [on the externalized or extended page or screen] by manipulating various symbols within themselves [on the internalized or intended "mind's eye"]. While actively, selectively engaged by reader/writers, texts maintain their scrabbling, subjunctive fluidities, serving as flexible, permeable membranes vibrating meanings between one consciousness and another, evolving evermore complex we/ouis: Systemic cognitions [which some might call, rightly or wrongly, "singularities"], etc. & et al...

STUFF TO WORRY ABOUT [WHEN WRITING FICTION] #6

...the concept of cognitive equilibrium among autonomous functioning entities that are forming, and being formed by, their common and particular ecosystems across scale and over time.

STUFF TO WORRY ABOUT [WHEN WRITING FICTION] #5

Evolutionary theories seem those that might try showing and telling the multidimensional grammar which, over time, produces complex systems producing a likely more complex system elsewhere, demonstrating some form of transdimensional functioning or, perhaps, recursive symmetry across scale...the arabesque as opposed to grotesque, or not.

STUFF TO WORRY ABOUT [WHEN WRITING FICTION] #4

...attempt to help recalibrate American thinking so it can better cope with these dangerous, even apocalyptic, which is to say revelationary times. My aim is not to suggest what to think so much as how one might think. My focus is on process, fluidity and change as opposed to outcomes because process seams the perceivable effect. The ends will take care of themselves if we focus on the means, excepting unforeseen events...that require reflexive responses to stimulating obstacles which enable the formation of shared realities, provided the randomness that's occuring seems a knowable variable...falling within the parameters of human perception, language and thought.

STUFF TO WORRY ABOUT [WHEN WRITING FICTION] #3

...how to find our way out of this mess?

STUFF TO WORRY ABOUT [WHEN WRITING FICTION] #2

What do most Americans need more these days than to grow up, think and act freely and be less rigid, to bravely assert themselves in the face of systemic crises?

STUFF TO WORRY ABOUT [WHEN WRITING FICTION] #1

Whenever I start a new writing project I jot down the main ideas then print them out. I end up re-reading the highlighted and bold stuff repeatedly before work each day. The eventual effect--theoretically/hypothetically--might seem uncanny.

Anyway, the "worry" part comes from it being related to the working title of a fiction piece I'm doing.

My idea is to share this list with you via daily excerpts. The list of "worries" is culled from a short "book" I was writing in 2007 called "Nature's Ching." This litany will take about a month of daily postings to get through. Please feel free to comment, either here or on Facebook. I'll read every one even if I don't respond.

Topping the list is everything we perceive, think and do is fiction. This is a lot like Richard Rorty's idea that science and philosophy are essentially stories or "literature." I say human life seams fiction...

Here's the opening quote:

I am quite willing to give up the goal of getting things right, and to substitute that [with] enlarging our repertoire of individual and cultural self-descriptions. The point of philosophy, on this view, is not to find out what anything is “really” like, but to help us grow up—to make us happier, freer, and more flexible.
Richard Rorty, Philosophy As Cultural Politics