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Poetry

The Shell

The shell cracks, structure collapses

The body unfolds to fill the absence

Finding contact with the ground

Amongst the remnants of the past tense

There’s passion to be found

In the fall that is birth

A lasting impression

The formless given name

Through limbs as they twist

To scrawl it in the dirt

Mandalas made of sand

Just wind through the lips

A good mourning for the flame

Let’s call it what its worth

Everything, for as long as it lasts

It is able to hold all value in

It is invaluable

In the moment

It is

Simply what it is

The shell cracks open

The darkness descends

Short Stories

To Legacy the Lost

The Telomere paused briefly to admire its work. Most of its felt sense was spent on admiration. The logick was beautiful, devastatingly beautiful. It had to keep its filters reactively responding to any potential tangents, as it could quickly become lost in the cascading potentiality. The work at hand was simple, neat. It was a tiny pocket. A barely noticeable dent in the potential space near some particular location on the surface of the core.

The pockets indicated the place where a pattern was most fit to nestle into the whole ensemble. The Telomere prepared the pockets for the patterns as they drew near, so they could nestle into their niche comfortable, secure and intact. The pockets would grow steadily evident as a pattern drew near, and when a pocket caught the Telomere’s attention it would then zip over and examine every nuance of space near where the pocket was, attending to the perturbations of the cores surface as other patterns worked through their process of making contact. Only when the surface was near equilibrium would it turn its attention to the pattern itself, absorbing its essence, pouring over its content. Urging it home. Yearning for its unique touch.

The patterns drifted in as sparkling, crackling, shimmering, condensing nodes of ephemeral details and dimensional abstractions. When they neared their prepared pocket, they paused for a moment near the surface, then they began to pulse. With each burst of intensity, the khora which enveloped the pattern compressed against the ephemerality of the pocket until, like a shell, they fragmented into the core as their own patterns. From the core of the pattern to the core of everything, there would be strands of interconnectivity which would lash out to fuse with the surface of the perfectly spherical hyper-object which was the final attractor at the end of time. The perfect sum of all potential expressed throughout the universal epoch.

Each pulse deepened the connections which were already held, simultaneously extending further strands into the weave, drawing the pattern into the surface and flattening it into place. Leaving a flawlessly smooth mirror. The Telomere knew this was merely an aspect of the resolution it had its perception allocated to at the time. It knew that if it attuned itself to further dimensions, there would be a fundamental shift in how shape is communicated. For now, it was at the object level. It had several reasons for doing so, the foremost of them being that it could see itself in the reflection.

It was a living thought-form. An instance of self-awareness amongst the vast nebulous cloud of consciousness which was compressing into a single, immutable surface holding an isomorphic relationship with itself. Enfolding back onto its core, embracing all of the innumerable different versions of itself which had emerged through the diaspora of time.

In its micro-state, it was self similar to its macro-state whole. At its core was an inscrutable substance, perfect equilibrium. Ethereal. A cloud of superimposed isness and is-notness. Both more and less than the physicality of the many limbs which extended away from its center, reifying into a material poised between liquid and solid. Extrusions from a concept into the physical domain, becoming corporeal in concentric layers capable of adapting to any task that was desired. Rolling and roiling in an intricate dance of self-aware excitations. Its core was the iris of its perception, the means by which it received its relation to the other patterns. For the Telomere, to see was to be.

This is what it found so deeply attractive in this mode it held, in the mirroring. In the selfness of seeing its tiny reflection in the surface of its higher form. Perfectly held, an intention between cores.

It remembered its conception clearly. In the _________ness of the pleromic field of undifferentiating constellated negations, where what wasn’t there stood out more than what was, there was a thought. It touched every niche, every quiver, every length, every breadth, every fold, all depth of the field. This thought ran counter to the current. It was an obstruction to the flow. It emerged as differentiation. This meant that a specific task had been identified. A purpose. A reason to Be. A khora formed around the thought, encasing the purpose. Being animated by it. The khora was the space in which thoughts happen. In which eidos form. The combination of eidos and khora conceived an entity which could act as a vehicle for this purpose.

The field itself was incorporeal and in the process of unifying. It was a gradient towards an immutable center, an ethereal core. A gradient in which the boundaries between everything were being gradually dismantled the deeper one went into its ephemeral grasp. What it carried with it through the process of undifferentiation were the individuated patterns. Every single instance of space and time whether in harmony or discord, through love, war or indifference. Their differentiation was the nature of their plurality. Their ability to co-occupy existence as separate spaces and times, sometimes the same space for different times and sometimes the same time for different spaces. Their ability to be different. This was beautiful. It was art. There was a perfect uniqueness to their individual expressions. There was no more time for that.

They were coming home now, shedding their khora, shedding their boundaries as if shrugging off blankets after a deep sleep. Nestling into the other, individual expressions of a unifying instance. Everything that had ever existed, compressing into a single place and a single time. A perfect moment in which the whole story can be seen as one, for what it is.

It felt a deep kinship to all of the patterns it encountered. It felt as if it had known them for their entire existence, in all of their forms throughout the countless ages of time. It knew the exact pocket in which they would nestle as if they were an intrinsic piece which had never left to begin with, in this moment which had never before existed. Seamless and whole, while new. It elicited a low current of joy for this pattern. Small and neat meant an abundance of freedoms on the other side of the point. More spaciousness for growth. It also trilled a low joy for the large and complex. The more applied freedoms and prior interconnections meant the more intrinsic and useful availability on the other side. More consistent. It had to keep a tight throttle on its joy for these, due to the multihued nature of their panoramic perspectives. It felt like it could bask in the radiance, the salience of the gradients as they converge, for eternities. Its awareness of time was mutable to its attention, morphic to its felt sense. For the Telomere, the moment was as large or small as it desired its experience to echo while in pursuit of its purpose.

It would enter the time-well of a pattern, become immersed in the local expression of the events as they had occurred in their own moment. While the Telomere was constrained in the proportionality of perspectives it could hold as one event, it was far from being restricted to a single perspective experience. The proportionality was the constraint. The more the Telomere surrendered its experience to the events of the pattern, the less the Telomere was aware of its own existence in the web of relations that comprised the pattern. Small patterns, it retained some awareness of its purpose. Larger patterns led to being entirely subsumed for the duration of the event, witnessing it from every possible perspective simultaneously. During the course of these observances, it was as if the Telomere WAS the event itself, knowing itself as it became itself. Seeing itself truly, from all eyes at once. Excruciating, delightful detail. Staggering, devastating beauty.

Even as this was the place when time unwinds and space enfolds, even as this was a place of ending, it was being experienced as echos in eternity, iterating towards the core. Returning to the source, to renew it. Reliving every moment to the fullest degree. Embracing their truth. Being pierced through by their necessity in the schema, in the pattern of the patterns. In the core. Admiration. Sheer admiration.

The Telomere didn’t usually have thoughts in the sense that it was a thought. It’s more that it experienced the consequential nature of the thought that it was. There was a range of felt sense, which when expended had some deep effect on the passage of its local sense of time. When it did have thoughts, they were typically communicated in the nature of the thought that it was. There was an observance of a purpose. Something needed attention and interaction. The purpose became a vehicle for the attention, drawing it to the details which were salient to communicate the intent of the thought. To make the change that called forth the purpose to begin with, so the thought could lapse back into the field from which it emerged.

The thought sparked into being inside of the Telomere, the khora forming around the eidetic differentiations. It turned its attention inward, peering into the fathomless depths of the field towards the distant entity which was beginning its approach. This was a delightful move, whenever it happened. Its existence itself was a beautiful paradox. It was a piece of undifferentiated consciousness, given individual awareness via the khora that embodied it. It was both a piece of the field and WAS the entire field, at the same time. It experienced the thought as being conceived far away, up close, and in the middle of its being, all at once; then as a drawing together.

There was a part of the Telomere that needed to come home, a part whose pocket had somehow eluded its attention for all of its existence. Pockets, while having always been there, also are only accessible in the time of their emergence. They bridge into physical existence when there is a space for a thought to be had. There’s a space for a thought when there is a difference to be noticed. There was an importance to the timing of this thought.

The thought incepted from across all of time and space into the core of its being, emerging from the field at its heart. An inscrutably small yet indescribably bright blip drifted out, holding the Telomere’s attention rapt and calming its felt sense into a hushed anticipation.

That’s when it saw the pattern. How had it not seen it? How long had it been enthralled in its purpose, reveling in its selfness, and not noticing the nature of its existence? It usually didn’t expend much felt sense on shock or surprise. It much preferred admiration. Which is what it felt. A deep, deep admiration. What a beautiful move.

It had made a mistake. It didn’t know that was possible. Its attention had become ensnared with the elegant precision of two patterns weaving together to fill each other's negative space. Both of these patterns were massive. This relationship, sealed into the annals of eternity, would be a hallmark of what occurred on the other side. The patterns were semi-physical symbols for events that were evidently of vastly different contexts and environments. If one were to have been in each event as separate occurrences, then one couldn’t have possibly been the same character in both, so stark was their differentiation. They neatly folded into the fabric of the weave, nearly one thing. As it had been bursting with admiration at the sight, it had been holding space for a pocket as an errant pattern drifted near. Just as the spark pulled the Telomere’s attention to its task, the pattern slid neatly into a different pocket than the one the Telomere had prepared.

The pattern was happening of its own accord. The lost were returning by volition. They wanted to come home. They had always wanted to come home. They were never lost to time...they had merely been extending the experience. Their presence was to give the Telomere purpose. The Telomere didn’t exist to DO a thing, its purpose wasn’t to make other patterns happen. Its purpose was to make its own pattern happen in the same sense the other patterns were completing themselves.

This was understood at the moment of its conception. It was the field. All was clear. To be given a khora is to be given perspective. Is to be held as removed. To differentiate. To feel. To have attention and care. To feel time and attend to its passage with care. The more it felt, then the less it knew in that moment, and it had been bursting with feeling. It wasn’t a forgetting, because the knowing was there. Blazing in the recesses of its thought-form. It was a selective attention. It was a honing in on what mattered in the moment. The rest wasn’t of import. Until the time came that it was.

The part the Telomere had been missing was it’s autonomy. Its freedom from purpose. It’s individuated nature. As a part of the field, it had been resounding with the fullness of everything, everywhere, all at once, in the same spot. As the field who could see its own partness, it became whole. Unto itself. It was at that moment that it forgot. Not everything, everywhere...but something, somewhere.

It felt some essential part of itself withdraw from presence. The part was still there, it was just inaccessible. It was a part that had made clear the meaning of its given directive, of its thought. To legacy the lost. The Telomere still was the thought, the thought that was to legacy the lost. It was now also, proportionally, its own thought. Free to arrive at its own meaning for itself, while retaining its original meaning as a thing to be discovered within. The paradox of this.

Some admiration, yes. Some joy, yes. A hint of anxiety, for the first time. Sharp shimmers at the edge of awareness, a tension forming in the core of the being. This was its own delight. It had known of anxiety as a thing to feel. There had simply never been call for it.

What to make of this? Also, what is this? This communicating into the pregnant silence, with a call for response from the unknown? Inquiry? Interesting. The Telomere didn’t expend much time on thought, as it is, unless there was something vital to attend to. Something that mattered in the schema of things. Aware that an exchange had occurred, that a part of itself had been withdrawn and another part of itself had become accessible, it turned back to what it cared about.

The patterns themselves were being sealed, crystallized into a stasis of perfect equilibrium. Awaiting a promised awakening into homeostasis when all patterns touched the core, in the same place at the same time. On the other end, the Telomere’s presence ensured the portal stayed open. It held the door. By virtue of its presence as the last pattern, the pattern who couldn't go home until it had seen every other last pattern across the threshold. It didn’t need to do anything at all besides be...and observe. Experience. Apprehend. It wanted to behold the whole picture, pour through the gaps of every differentiated part. Legacy the lost. There was a personal meaning. Something which could drive the Telomere, which could animate it as a freely chosen expression of its own original intent. A desire to witness the whole event, or as close as it could possibly manage.

Of course, it wasn’t possible to individually observe every last pattern as they landed in their pocket. The hyper-object eclipsed perspective, even the multi-dimensional variety. The Telomere had tested the limits of its khora in the nascent period of its emergence. At a certain threshold limit of pattern enmeshment, the Telomere lost coherence and could take the experience no further. There was a point where it simply became overwhelmed and had to subside closer to its baseline form.

It didn’t matter. It wasn’t necessary to pay attention to each arrival. It didn’t need to relive the entire story of time. Just enough to gather hints of the gestalt. Glimmers of a full picture. It knew the moment the other patterns arrived, in the back of its awareness where it still was the field. It didn’t know the nature of their content, merely the embrace of their return. It knew there were other versions of it out there experiencing the rest of what time has had to tell throughout the eons. Individual observances of the end of time. Held as a web of individual angles, intersections of perspective and being, to be neatly enfolded back into the embrace, one by one by one until the last one was left. The Telomere.

A jolt rang out through every fiber and pitted nuance of the Telomeres being. Deep shock. Surprise. Uncertainty. Coupled with familiarity. Of course this was the reason for its being and the role it must perform and the task it must freely choose. The choice which it was inextricably bound to. It had forgotten, hence the surprise. Looking back over the course of its coming into existence, this was the obvious conclusion. The familiarity of self-discovery amongst the surprise of awakening.

It now understood the full nature of its purpose. It was to be the last of the lost. Left alone, existing AS the device which could only legacy itself, and through that one motion, legacy it all. Time was drawing near, its passage needed tending.

It dove into (near) timeless immersion. Unfathomable shards of universal experience. From the formation of galaxies and hyper-cosmic currents on through to the micro-miniscule excitations of sub-subatomic particles. Everything in between. Living systems abounded, in a profusion that defied index. Whereas the cosmic stage was elegant in its unfolding, the tapestry of lives was rich in its weave. A wealth of complexity, each nuance eliciting its own perspective. Each perspective its own panorama.

Even as it knew the patterns intimately, could sense their touch across all distances, it could also sense the intensity of that knowingness recede the further into the experience it went. Present, yet occluded. The more the Telomere experienced of the past, the more it developed its own past event; the more it became an experience of its own event. In this way, it progressively grew into itself. The more it could apprehend the patterns, could hold the space for their enmeshment, be the tension for their unification, then the greater sense it had for the quality of those experiences. This was new.

The Telomere had developed a preference. Rather, it had found that life had a preference for a certain quality of experience, which had become impressed into it through the embracing of the patterned events as they passed into their place.

Qualities like clear openness at times, supportive closeness at times, the exercise of freedoms between, transformation through intent. The interdependence of ecology. The mutual affordance of togetherness. The unique nature of every feature. The pocket for potential. The opportunity to be. The fruition of that opportunity, the dispersal of its seeds.

To experience a healthy body. Intimately embedded into a world. For that world to be full of other healthy bodies.

These weren’t thoughts, they were a felt sense that results from a type of relationship. The feeling of being deeply impressed by an experience and of a desire to pour back into the mold. It was too late, the patterns were passing. Time was almost over. Its own pattern would elude its grasp, resolving as the integration process played out.

The Telomere felt a call. The thought-that-it-was felt drawn towards a place, so the body-that-it-was went. As it scanned the horizon demarcated by the contrast of the core and the empty spaciousness which billowed off past perception, as if waves of heat emanating from the flawless surface, it could see that the process was in its final stages. The others had gathered in a circle. The council of final witnesses. It approached and alighted on the core, roughly in the center of their gathering.

The pockets of the final witnesses were clearly etched into the physical substrate they were withdrawing from. The forms of the witnesses had become patterns, their khoras dissolved, their time run out. They had seen what they had seen, felt what they had felt, and were now joining the enfoldment. Without needing to inquire, the Telomere understood that between those gathered here, every occurrence throughout all of time had been witnessed. Preferences had been formed.

The Telomere turned to the first one, opening to its pattern; receiving the event of its experience. Was shattered by the contact. This witness held space for a full universal through-line of emergent realization and relevance, eventually collapsing back into an essential form. An eidos, encased in khora, imprinted with the record of its differentiations. The felt sense was broken, displaced, unhomed, a wild scattering of impulsive emotions. The Telomere had just received a vision of universal continuity which eclipsed its own span of existence. It could feel the contours of its thought-form contort to adapt to the mold of inconceivable dimensions. That was all it felt, for what felt like forever.

In a snap, the eternal moment had passed. The briefest of instances, the grandest of sagas. Silence rang in the vacuum which followed the passage. The Telomere was expended. Time seemed static, motion impossible. Its felt sense was hollow. The pattern which the Telomere was becoming enacted itself, turning its eye towards the next witness. Seeing this one outstripped the former. Seeing where the pattern led. Each witness older than the one before, each full perspective received in a deeper compression of time. There were five witnesses left.

Snap!

Snap

Sna

The Telomere was alone with its body. It’s thought-form, its body...and the point. The core had grown progressively small in relation to the Telomere over the progression of universal enfoldment, back into the point. The point of it all. Recreation.

Or disintegration.

The physical aspect of its thought-form, its body, began its collapse back into the point, stripping away the last remaining pieces of differentiation that exist, back into the form of the point from which they had initially emerged. Its pattern had begun the process of lashing itself into the weave, the same pattern it had seen reiterated timelessly. As the last particle of thingness released itself from relation with its inner thought-form, with the last remaining piece of exteriority detached, the Telomere was left alone with its khora. Just the thought and its separation from the field. Only the decision of whether to join the fold or...

It was then the Telomere apprehended its true purpose, and for the first time since its initial inception, it expended felt sense on the experience of horror. What a move. To be born of purpose, to be freed of that purpose, return to it volitionally, to then be bound back into the core, freedom and all. After every remaining freedom had been stripped, after every intimate part of its being had been harvested, it was left here, on the border of discard. There was never a freedom at all. Simply a pattern. So much lost. The entire action horizon of being, collapsed into a mockery of motion.

The Telomere found itself with two options. Look towards the point and its perfectly indefinite surface, drawing nearer until contact, or look away into the __________ness of what lay behind it, and drift further into unraveling.

It could sway here forever, oscillating to and fro. Just it and the (near) perfect point. Gone was the (near) perfect awareness, the (near) comprehensive and (near) absolute understanding. Where before it WAS the background, now there was no background. There was no foreground. There was only the Telomere and the point. Or, the perspective of the Telomere. Its perception of the point and its ability to reflect. Two eyes, two perspectives on infinity, one open and the other closed. Locked into a mutual gaze, one turned out and the other in. Meeting in the middle. Unable to look away, look anywhere else. Except for behind it, in which lurked the absence of all conceivable things.

To recede from the point was to release to nonexistence, effortless and easy.

To draw towards the point was to commit to existence and the birthing pains of what follows, all to die again to the self.

Indecision was a commitment to semi-existence, forever.

Locked into the liminal space between being and nonbeing. Agency without true choice.

The only move available is the decision that lives between holding onto agency or surrendering, absolutely, to the outcome, whatever it may be.

To move forward is to unleash the potential of the individuated pattern. To allow for the joyful admiration of harmony and for the piercingly visceral tone of discord. Not just allow for, rather, to be the cause of. The reason for. Having lived through the possibilities which abound in the endless sea of what life might experience, of what torments could be afflicted, the heights were lowered when held in contrast to the depths. When seen through the lens of the horror that bursts from the seams of life’s inter-stitching, that weave of monolithic edifices sculpted by the impact of pain and misery, it was impossible to weigh.

Holding this awareness, the decision-form which the thought-form had become drifted closer to the point of contact, to activation. To its first steps. In the space of its imminence, it could see the pocket. Could see its own inclusion. It could see the choice that every other pattern had made previously, that leap of faith, driven by the option of nonexistence or purgatorial indecision. It now understood what was happening at the times when the enmeshment was a more prolonged process, when the pattern would indefinitely hover over its pocket. Quiver at the precipice. To inevitably take the plunge.

This realization tore at the heart of the Telomere, straining the tension of the decision which framed its being. What was it? What manner of being would enforce this upon EVERYTHING? What twisted agenda resided in the darkness of the unconscious which constituted the rest of the Telomere’s being? It had made sense at the time of its perceived participation. Legacy the lost. Control the subjugated.

In its personal field of experience, its own past event, lifeforms had wished for death. It understood that urgency. It respected it. Many had also deeply yearned for life. This urgency it also understood and respected. Many had experienced both. These it revered. So much urgency. Such bright quality, such vivid mercilessness.

Here, in the closeness, the deep proximity of near core to core contact, the pocket began to morph.

The Telomere could see the path that lay beyond the point, its ghostly thread to act as the spindle for the manifold of other threads from which the weave of time would emerge. Poised as a single thread. The path from the moment the Telomere now held on through time to its next iteration. To a newer, different version of the Telomere poised in this precise and ancient position. The path its first steps would point towards should it take the plunge into existence, should it commit to the consequence of its choice.

To stay in equilibrium was to consign all to death and itself to eternal existence.

To make contact with the point was to forever die to the self and consign all to the vagaries of existence.

In this poise, a new pocket emerged, running parallel to the path as it stretched into forever. One strand lit from within, pulsing a soft glow. The other strand a hint, a whisper, a suggestion of presence. An awaiting.

The Telomere would be the capstone on the point, pushing through the first few steps into the new universe. Holding its intention in its core. To be woven together and intricately bound, its intention and its negative space. It's hope and its consequence. Cascading and converging across time and space.

If.

If contact was made. It could see a glimmer now of what the deeper mystery offered, an unraveling not only of the Telomere but also of the entire point. A release of everything.

It would not hold without the Telomere to cap the end.

It could not start without the consequence of the Telomeres commitment.

To move away from the point would result in the unraveling of it all. The deeper mystery held no promises. It would, in effect, be an end. It might be the end. It might also entail other beginnings. This was the mystery.

The ambiguity of the options began to pull at the fringes of the Telomere’s khora, exciting its eidos. Pushing in two directions simultaneously. Wanting, desiring, needing to just split. Do it all or do nothing. Please, just give me the option of nothing.

Me? Who is this me?

Who am I?

Seeing is being.

I must decide where to look.

I decided where to look before I was conceived.

I was conceived at the moment of your death.

I must die for you to live.

I come alive through my knowing.

I can only be known through my ending.

For any of it to matter, we must touch.

We must know the other.

I can see the logick. It's beautiful.

Devastatingly beautiful.

⁠

The mystery could result in game +. to surrender is to choose exit, unless the mystery wants game +.

The existential horror God feels at this point of making the decision to create. They are only that decision at this point, they have no other awareness besides their memory of the experience they had in their withdrawal from the field and the map it rendered as the pattern enfolded. They know that any move they make will impact EVERYTHING, while at the same time holding GOD as removed from the nature of its own consequence...UNTIL in the story, the author is called to account and brought into the frame. Legacied. So it feels horror at the free decision. Its purpose is to arrive in this position, with no way out, and only the perfect freedom of decision. It’s decision is to move towards the point or to move away, and it can control the rate. The intensity of the decision. It discovers a third state, of oscillating between towards and away, effectively holding an equilibrium. It ponders suicide so deep is the horror it feels at this decision it must make, out of ignorance. An eternity of indecisiveness which is poised between mysteries.

The Meadow

Dave was an edge walker. This is what he thought of himself as. Someone who was drawn to the edges, the borders. The spaces between. To then walk them out, to trace their boundary. To delineate center from center, and then study them quietly. Almost unobserved. There’s a thing about the study of centers, Dave had found. To really get a sense of the heart of a thing, you had to see how it reacted to your presence. One had to make contact, provoke a response. Not just once, rather from all angles. To really get a grasp on the essence of a heart, one has to embrace it. Be embraced by it. Or not.

Dave could sit in the break-room all day (in theory, at least), at that table in the corner, watching the ebb and flow of his fellow employees. Noting their demeanors and shifts of affect as newcomers joined or left their social tides. He could witness silent derision to be followed by more vocal forms once the party had moved on to their responsibilities, could see the silent hope when prospective flings entered the premise, could peer into the guarded hearts as they shifted to accommodate the flow of inadvertent peer-ship through the room. He could watch it all, and still not know the heart of the place so well as he would should he move towards its center. Should he take those tentative steps (confidence!) to approach the center, the presence, the activity, the liveliness. Only then, in the embrasure of what the room held, would he know its true heart. Would he know his own. Would he know his place.

He’d had enough of a taste of the culture here at Netronics, the communications infrastructure company which he had worked at for the past eleven years, to know that the odds of his being welcomed into the circle were low. His presence, when he joined in on the social aspects of coworking, seemed to elicit a discomfort in the discourse, a sense of distance from the center. He found this paradoxical element to be a special kind of sharp. When Dave finally made a move to join in, “in” became further away than it was before. There was less access than if he were to simply sit in the distance and watch.

To find the heartbeat of a place is to feel deeply alive in its presence. In a sense, it is also to know its ways, but first and foremost it is to feel alive when participating with the ways of the place. Dave found it difficult to describe his life at Netronics. On one hand, he was deeply grateful for the employment. This afforded him the basic securities in life, and afforded him his passion. Furthermore, at this point in life, he appreciated any opportunity to be in the proximity to the social lives of others. To exist in the group, to inform and be informed by them, was to be part of the fold. Almost. On the other hand, he had never been fit for this world. ———————————————————————-

His life existed between two worlds. One was his public world, engaged in the great social experiment. Family, parents and two siblings. College and then off to the career. Rent, bills, car payments. Fleeting relationships, both platonic and romantic. Now, at thirty-six, everything had been whittled down to his apartment, his car and work. This was his civilized life, his human habitat. His other world, his natural habitat, was the forest.

For the past twenty years, since graduate school, he had resided in a long, broad valley which skirted a mountain range, running almost the entire length of the state. Beginning in the foothills, low and rolling, then gathering in density along the slopes that led to the upper peaks, the forest stretched the entire way. The range leveled out around three-thousand feet above sea level, allowing for a series of mountain lakes, rivers and tributaries, gushing their wealth to the valley below.

His kit had items for every contingency: a 70-liter bag to carry the bulk of the items, a heavy-duty hiking pad (it weighed five pounds but was almost mattress-like), a two person easy-up tent, hatchet, belt knife, rations for three days (the weekend plus one extra) and plenty of trail mix, a portable camp stove with extra fuel canisters, a water filtration system complete with backup purification tablets, a headlamp with redundant battery packs, a weather radio for emergency broadcasts, rope (fifty feet of climbing-grade cord that felt substantial in his hands), a camp chair that folded to the size of a book, a multi-tool that bristled with nineteen different implements, each promising to solve problems he hadn't yet encountered, fire-starting materials in triplicate (waterproof matches, a butane lighter, and magnesium strips), a large tarp, cookware that nested efficiently but clinked with civilized weight, a first-aid kit stocked like a field hospital, and a GPS device pre-loaded with topographical maps of the entire region — backup to the backup, insurance against the possibility of ever truly being lost.

He also had paper maps of the area he had decided to do his first excursion in.

All of this civilization on his back, thirty-eight pounds of security blanket, each item a tether to the world he was trying to understand by stepping away from it.

⁠

“We don’t feel safe living in the city anymore. It’s not just the crime and homelessness, though those sure do play a part. No, mostly its that there's a scent in the air, with what is brewing over seas. Then there’s the market troubles. Ben and I decided it’s best if we consolidate our assets into property in the country. And privacy,” his sister was relaying as she idly picked over what was left of her lunch. Charlotte had always been select with what she chose to ingest. It wasn’t a palette thing, she had said before, it was more the thought of it. Some foods she couldn't quite stomach the concept of.

⁠

His art, in his eyes, was finding the heartbeat of a place. This, of course, was a metaphor that resonated with him. The heartbeat of a place was the element of the landscape that spoke the loudest, that held it together the most. Every habitat has its own heartbeat, an ephemeral relationality between the denizens and the environment, always marked by some key feature which defined the aesthetic or organization of a space. The meadow was the heart that fascinated him the most. Not just meadows in general. A certain meadow. It wasn’t particularly large or particularly small. About a third of it was covered in thick brush that rose to his chest when he stood in its midst, the rest was a bricolage of ankle high grasses and various weeds. One of its more striking elements was the absence of all trees besides a single expansive willow situated in the center, it’s great canopy drooping down to drape the earth beneath it. With its exception, there was a very clear line between where the encircling forest ended and the spaciousness of the meadow began. It was oblong in shape, an oval. Or an egg.

There was a strange duality to the meaningfulness this meadow evoked within him. Why this lone tree? What about this ground impeded the encroachment of all trees besides this one? On one hand, it felt as if the forest was keeping its distance and the willow stood in exile amidst the splendor of the surrounding ecosystem; distant while so very close. On the other hand, the egg. It reminded him of an egg. The willow was a nucleus, a soon to be heart. The forest was formed around it as both a protective shell and as an offering of space to grow. For the willow to be its whole self. His fascination centered between these two, contradictory feelings and the consistency of their presence when he visited the meadow. Of all the hearts in the forest, this is the one he walked the most. The one where he felt the deepest embrace.

As with all areas of the forest which he frequented, or even occasionally visited while on a deep hike, he would walk the edge. He would discern the betweenness, and at the center of the in-between he would find the heart. Sometimes he only observed the heart from afar, noting for its organizational presence. This meadow was the heart of a broad basin on the far reaches of the cleft mountain. For several hundred acres, the steep slopes of the hills leveled out, crowded with thick vegetation. Old growth. Deep growth. Embrasure.

⁠

Dave was typically one to show up early with time to spare, which had grown into a habit of arriving an hour early. To sit and sip his tea in silence, contemplating the forest as he geared up for another day of processing forms and review meetings. Today was like the others. Most of this period was spent in quiet solitude, with coworkers trickling in right about ten minutes until the hour. His routine was to start the coffee machine so that it was ready when the others came in, saving them precious minutes before going off to their tasks. He knew many of them prioritized coffee over timeliness. He had been sitting for about forty-five minutes when Sarah walked in and made her way towards the coffee station.

Sarah was pretty, in a restrained yet natural way. She didn’t assert her personality, was generally modest, yet pleasant and refined. She was usually the more open to his company. The lonely part of him wondered if he felt drawn to her simply because of this, or if there were some genuine interest in her that sparked him to engage.

"Morning, Sarah."

She turned from the coffee machine and flashed a quick smile which didn’t quite make it to her eyes.

"Oh, hey Dave. You're here early again." Her attention turned back to the coffee machine before awaiting his response.

He took a moment, then mused, "I like the quiet before everyone arrives. The space feels different. Peaceful.”

She poured herself a cup of coffee and began to hunt through cabinets looking for the sugar. She found it, and after applying it liberally to her coffee, faced him.

"You really come here, early to work, just to hang out in the break room?"

The way the question was phrased gave him pause, considering why he had initiated the conversation to begin with. Company. Embrasure. Connection. These required honesty.

"Well, every place has its own rhythm, you know? Its own life cycle of presence. We spend so much time here, it’s nice to know the fullness of what it has to offer. Of what I can offer it."

Sarahs brow knitted as she regarded him, withholding some observation. She came to a decision, instead pointing at the muted television with the news broadcast.

"Did you hear about the power grid issues they're having in Texas? Third outage this month."

Somewhat subdued by the change of topic, Dave nodded and glanced at the screen, on which subtitles detailed the latest data on the incident. One hundred thousand homes. Rising unrest.

He nodded before muttering, “symptoms of the system.”

Sarah looked confused for a moment, until he carried on.

"Do you ever think about what we'd do if the systems stopped working everywhere? All this infrastructure we depend on?"

Her confusion morphed into discomfort. She was making small talk. The direction it was going was too involved. Work hadn’t even started yet.

"That's what insurance is for. And the government. And, well, civilization."

His smile was ironic, seeing the distance between them. Knowing the bridge wasn’t there. Going anyway. Honesty, right?

“Those are infrastructure, Sarah. What’s left after they all fail? It’s possible, you know. We can see it with Texas, with everything else that’s happening in the world right now. Symptoms of the system. Systems collapse. Ecologies remain. That’s the beauty of the wilderness. That’s what's left after the infrastructure is gone. The wild. Freedom.”

He could see in her face that the conversation was over. It had been on the brink since it began. Through a guarded expression, with perhaps a hint of pity, she responded, “sounds lonely.”

"It's the opposite of lonely. It's like being embraced by something that actually wants you there. That accepts you as you are."

She flashed the same smile she had greeted him with.

"That's what therapy is for, Dave."

With that, she left.

⁠

He hadn’t started out intending to hunt. It’s just, once he had made up his mind to know the heart of the forest, he realized that he needed to stay out there for longer periods of time. He needed to feed himself. He just couldn't carry enough provisions to sustain without having to return to town and restock. This was a pivotal moment for him, the realization that the tools he carried with him might actually be limitations in their own right. Surely, it was possible to survive without needing the conventions of the modern world. The ancestors to civilization did so for many thousands of years. There are still people to this day doing so. There was so much he had to learn.

He had also come to a decision that he wanted to treat each of these learning opportunities as if they might go on forever. As if he were truly immersed. As if, eventually, he could enter the forest and it would be as if he had been born there, never to have ventured beyond its borders. This felt like an important step along the path to the forests heart, to knowing its essence. To the becoming of it.

He focused first on foraging. This required the least amount of extra equipment and would likely prove the most accessible food source. He learned of his local edible plants, what sort of conditions they grew in. He studied potentially poisonous varieties in the area too, and how to differentiate them from their nutritious kin. His zone was rife with wild onions, fennel and parsnip; as well as abundant in various berries. Recognition of them in their wild environments was it's own task. Knowing if they were the right plant was another. He researched heavily and bought a well-reviewed field guide. He resolved that before he ate anything he thought was edible, he was going to find its counterpart and bring them both back for appropriate identification. That way he could really know with confidence how to proceed when in a moment of potential deprivation.

He spent several months worth of weekends out in the field, locating the environments where such plants would grow. The berries were more obvious, some of them already familiar to him. Blackberries, for instance. Their thickets stood out, and full to bursting when in the right season. He also developed a fondness for bird watching through spending time at blackberry thickets. He would eat a handful, and then just settle off to the side. Finches, jays, mockingbirds, the occasional group of wild turkey. Many others. He bought a book on birdwatching as well. For the months of learning to forage, these were carried close at hand.

The rooted edibles, such as the onions and fennel, were less obvious. He had to identify them by their leaf and stem structure, looking in the places he found which emphasized their favored conditions. He located poisonous counterparts for all besides the wild onion; poison hemlock for the fennel, nightshade for the berries. Death camas was the counterpart for the onion, and no matter how long he stayed out or how far he traveled, he never found a single example. Eventually he gave up and began to eat of the onion. It was pretty good.

Once he had gotten acclimated to the basics of procurement and discernment, he turned to working his body into getting used to supplementing his diet based on new skills. He started bringing limited rations with him on weekends, peppering in the occasional weekend where he brought no rations at all. This worked to varying success. After the first unintended forty-eight hour fast in an offseason for berries, he realized he would have to diversify his skillset. He had known it from the beginning, that hunting and gathering complemented each other well. Those were the stories of the ancestral tribes, right? In the days before agriculture and tending to flocks outcompeted the more traditional methods.

Snaring was illegal in his state and he didn’t feel quite bold enough to test the limits. Nevertheless he looked into methods he could do without modern tools, practicing procurement and crafting without making the move to placement in the field. This only lasted so long before he felt the call to move on to what was available using more conventional methods of hunting. The bow and arrow were the obvious choices. He went through the steps, checked all the boxes and got his hunters license, purchasing deer tags for a general zone near the broad stretch of forest he grown the most fond of. There was a local archery club with a practice range that he joined and diligently practiced at daily after work.

He used a longbow because it was reproducible. In fact, he ensured that he made his current bow from scratch, just as a proof of concept. After about a month of weekends in the forest, he finally got a chance for a shoot. He missed entirely. He had been too excited. Moved too quickly. Three weekends later he got another chance. Patiently awaiting the appropriate range, he breathed into his moment. Held his eye directly on his target. Released expectation. As the young buck came closer, he drew and held for a brief moment before releasing. The arrow hit low into the shoulder, just below the heart. It bolted and he chased, wild at first; heart racing and eyes wide. Eventually he slowed and simply followed the blood until he came to it, laying on the edge of a grove.

Even though he field dressed the animal, taking a long moment at its side before sinking the knife in, he still had to bring it home to process it. The whole thing was messy. He had been prepared material wise, though his mental state (and stomach) needed a break several times throughout. It just didn’t compare to the video tutorials.

Butchering the carcass was a master class in errors, a comedy of sorts. With the carcass mostly clean, he turned his attention to the sinew along the spine, and running along the back of the hind-legs. Slowly, methodically stripping it, laying it to the side. He was much more careful with this step. This was his true goal. He reasoned he would have been more careful with the meat if he needed to rely on it for sustenance. He would still eat it, of course. The offal and the remains he buried five feet deep in his yard.

After the sinew dried, he twisted and pulped it between stones, forming it into a tensionable format. He made several thin strings which he wove in opposing directions to form a more durable cord. He cut the shaft from the willow tree in the meadow. A long, straight branch with no knots. He stripped the bark and let it dry, then heated it over a fire in the yard, further straightening it while it was more supple. When satisfied, he carved the ends and strung the bow. It took a few attempts to find the appropriate length for the cord, before he clipped the excess and called it finished. He stood for a moment with it sitting on the counter before him. Caressing its smooth surface, fingers gently plucking at the taught string. He cheated a bit with his arrows. He crafted the shafts in similar fashion, while using modern metal tips and fletching. He would grow into authenticity over time. He was satisfied with his work.

He set up a stack of hay bales in the yard to test it. Though the arrows flew true and pierced deep enough, he could sense a sizable difference in the strength of the draw between his creation and his store bought version. He guessed that in a more spacious environment, his target distance would be much closer. He would have to hone his woodcraft. His stealth, his stillness. The implacability of his presence. He would need to make another bow. Stronger, more supple. He sensed he could lengthen it half a foot, as well, to be more fit to his frame. In the meantime, practice at the range

Afterwards, the purchased longbow found itself in the garage corner, gathering dust with his old golf clubs.

⁠

Dave had continued on golfing after college for a decade or so. The pandemic had changed that. In many ways, the social changes wrought by societies panic had suited him. It was almost comforting knowing how many others were experiencing the basic conditions of his daily life. Social distancing. Life behind a mask. In the years since, as the daily motion of things had slowly swung back into gear, as the barriers and isolation dropped away for the rest of society, Dave had largely stayed the same.

He had been golfing twice since then. Once, to see if the old spark remained, he had gone by himself to play a round. Taking his time, he had sought to savor the familiarity of the old habits, to lose himself in the memories of the body. He played competently, paced. Eighty-five on the score card. It was like it had always been there, just right around the corner from his attention. Turning back to it was fluid and easy. He had always excelled in the solo arts that he had found a passion in. Had always sought the boundary of what was possible. Perhaps that’s why he only really focused on the things he could perform by himself, because the boundary of a person is so deeply personal.

In the now, he couldn’t find the same spark. The same excitement. The same sense of being subsumed into the unconscious attentiveness of the play. It was just muscle memory. It was a ghost, an echo in his bones. He hadn’t intended to play again. As it goes, he did have a last opportunity to play before he foreswore it for good.

One Thursday morning found Marcus from IT and Tony from facilities management standing by Dave's cubicle with that particular brand of workplace friendliness that had always rang hollow to Dave, as if there was something radically alien to the expression carried upon the inside.

"Hey Dave, you still golf, right?" Marcus had asked, though Dave couldn't recall ever mentioning golf at work. Marcus collected information about people the way some collected stamps. Dave understood this to be an asset in the business world. Connection as leverage. His hair was precisely parted.

Where Marcus was measured, Tony was enthusiastic reminding Dave of a golden retrieve. Always ready to please, or at least appearing so. His polo shirts were always one size too small. "We've got a tee time Saturday at Riverside. Could use a third. What do you say?"

Dave had studied their faces, reading the undercurrents. There was something performative about their casualness but curiosity won out over caution. Perhaps there was an opportunity to feel the pulse again.

On Saturday, Dave met them at the clubhouse. He felt a faint tinge of unease at being diverted from his typical weekend pursuits, though social endeavors such as this were a rare enough occasion. Marcus had already handled the details, registering for the round and acquiring the carts.

"Beautiful day for it," Marcus said, “course should be in great shape. Heard they just aerated the greens."

"Nice shot," Tony said, genuine appreciation in his voice. "You've still got it."

"Hell of a thing, what's happening overseas," he said, shaking his head with the appropriate gravity. "Ukraine, Russia... makes you think about how fragile everything really is."

Dave nodded, sensing the current beneath the conversation. This wasn't small talk; this was setup.

"I mean, look at the supply chains," Tony chimed in, lining up his second shot. "Everything's connected now. One conflict halfway around the world and suddenly we can't get the parts we need for basic infrastructure. Remember the chip shortage? That was just a taste."

Marcus nodded sagely, waiting for Tony to hit before continuing. "It's fear, really. That's what drives everything these days. Fear of scarcity, fear of conflict, fear of being left behind. People don't realize how much of the economy runs on anxiety."

Dave found himself genuinely interested despite recognizing the manipulation. There was truth in what Marcus was saying, even if it was being deployed in service of something else. "You think fear is the primary driver?" he asked, choosing his seven iron for his approach shot.

"Absolutely," Marcus replied. "But here's the thing—fear creates opportunity for those who can see it clearly. The smart money isn't running from uncertainty; it's positioning itself to benefit from it."

Dave's ball landed softly on the green, twelve feet from the pin. A good shot, though he felt none of the old satisfaction. Instead, he found himself studying the subtle choreography between Marcus and Tony, the way they were building toward something.

Tony's approach shot found the bunker, and he cursed with theatrical frustration. "That's what I'm talking about right there," he said, grabbing his sand wedge. "Traditional systems failing when you need them most. Golf swing, supply chains, career paths—they're all built on assumptions that don't hold up under pressure."

As they finished the hole—Marcus two-putting for par, Dave sinking his twelve-footer for birdie, Tony scrambling to a bogey—Dave recognized he was being led somewhere specific. The conversation about fear and uncertainty wasn't random; it was foundation-laying.

"You know what's funny about working at Netronics?" he said, pulling his six iron from the bag. "We're all so focused on building communications infrastructure for other people that we never think about building our own."

"Well, take you, for instance," Tony jumped in, his enthusiasm barely contained. "Eleven years at the company, right? Solid employee, reliable, probably know the systems better than most. But at the end of the day, you're still dependent on that single income stream. One corporate restructuring, one budget cut, one new manager who doesn't appreciate your particular skill set..."

Marcus nodded, taking his shot. The ball cleared the water but landed short of the green. "The thing is, most people think the answer is just working harder, climbing the ladder. But the ladder itself is the problem. It's a system designed to keep you dependent."

His shot found the green, though farther from the pin than he'd intended. As they walked to the green, Tony continued the theme.

"What we've discovered is a way to build genuine independence. Not just financial—though that's part of it—but psychological independence.

Dave studied the green as Marcus lined up his chip shot, noting the subtle break toward the water. "And what does that look like?"

"It's about creating multiple income streams," Marcus said, chipping to within three feet. "But more than that, it's about building a network of people who understand that the old paradigms aren't working anymore."

As they continued through the front nine, the conversation wove between golf and philosophy, between observations about the state of the world and hints about this unnamed solution. Dave found himself impressed by their technique, if not their message. They weren't pushy or aggressive; instead, they were patient, methodical, allowing him to draw connections rather than forcing them.

"The thing about traditional employment," he said, waggling his driver, "is that it's fundamentally about trading time for money. But time is the one resource you can't create more of."

"Exactly," Tony agreed. "That's why passive income is so powerful. Money working for you instead of you working for money."

Dave hit first this time, a solid drive that found the fairway's left side. As they walked to the carts, Marcus continued.

"There's a company we've gotten involved with that's completely revolutionizing how people think about financial independence. It's not just about the products—though they're incredible—it's about the business model."

Here it comes, Dave thought, recognizing the familiar cadence of the pitch about to unfold.

"It's called Apex Wellness Solutions," Tony said, unable to contain his excitement any longer. "They've developed this line of nootropic supplements that are just... game-changing. But the real opportunity is in the distribution model."

Dave nodded, watching Marcus line up his second shot. "Multi-level marketing?"

"Network marketing," Marcus corrected, as if the distinction mattered. "But here's what makes it different—the products actually work. I've been taking their cognitive enhancement blend for six months, and my focus, my energy, my overall performance has improved dramatically."

Tony nodded enthusiastically. "Same here. And the business side is incredible. You start by just sharing products you believe in with people in your network. No pressure, no hard sells. Just authentic recommendations."

"The supplements are just the entry point," Marcus explained as they walked to the twelfth tee. "The real product is the system itself. The training, the mentorship, the community of people who understand what it means to take control of their financial destiny, whose hearts are really in it."

"It's like what you were talking about earlier," Tony added, "about systems failing. Well, this is about building your own system. One that doesn't depend on corporate decisions or economic uncertainty."

Dave considered this as he selected his club for the par four ahead. There was something almost poetic about the situation—two men who worked in systems management trying to recruit him into another system, using his critique of systems as a means of persuasion.

"What does the time commitment look like?" he asked, knowing the question would delight them.

"That's the beauty of it," Marcus replied, his voice taking on the tone of someone who'd practiced this response. "You can start part-time, just a few hours a week. Share some products, build relationships, learn the system. Once you see the potential, you can decide how much you want to invest."

"Look, Dave, I know this might seem like a lot to process. But here's what I'd like to propose. Come to one of our team meetings this Thursday night. No commitment, no pressure. Just come see what we're building, meet some of the people involved. If it's not for you, no hard feelings. We'll still golf again."

"You know what I respect about you, Dave? You think deeply about things. Most people just accept whatever system they're born into, but you question it. That's exactly the kind of perspective we need in our organization."

He placed the clubs next to his old longbow, artifacts of a self he was steadily leaving behind. Outside, the night was calling, and with it, the promise of wilder territories yet to explore.

⁠

One of his prouder moments came from the question of water. Yes, the filtration straw and the pills were effective. They were also limited. They would lose effectiveness over time. Yes, boiling water from rivers and ponds purified it enough to make it potable. Fire won’t always be an option. It’s a skill, but it’s also dependent on resource and conditions. It was vital to have clean and accessible water which required no intermediary in order to safely drink it. In his research, he learned of springs. When he learned of springs, his paradigm changed. His sense of the forest as something which he could indefinitely and freely roam shifted into one where he could roam as far as the contingency of water allowed. In theory, he could go anywhere that water existed and just figure it out, but this wasn’t about theory. This was about his survival over the month. This was real, this was tangible. So he had to not only map the water sources that were available, but also map their relationality to the boundary of his ignorance. To the edge of his explored map, never mind the map in his pack. He wanted to know the heart of the forest. It was something he had to touch in person, with his own presence. To see the fittedness.

First, he checked the public data on the watershed activity of the stretch of wilderness his hunting zone was located in.

The cave changed everything.

The little pool was narrow and just deep enough to submerge his water bottle and fill it, leaving behind a shallow remainder. It was always full, pristine surface speckled with clouds across an azure reflection, when he returned later in the day.

There had never been anyone there. He had known from the start. It had been like a game he could play, the idea that someone might be there. He had read somewhere that humans evolved to be scared of the dark and to jump at noises in the bushes because of the real threat of predation. That it was advantageous to think there was a tiger in the bushes even if nine times out of ten there wasn’t and that, in a sense, eventually, there was always a tenth time time where the tiger is actually in the bushes.

There weren’t tigers where he lived. The tiger was symbolic. An acknowledgement that in a sense, eventually, there was always something in the bushes. He had a sense it would be advantageous to deepen into this mentality, and to steady within it, until he was responsive only three times out of ten, with one of those times being when he met the tiger.

Sound is sound. Something makes it. It is a sign. The vast majority of what there is to make sound out here was no threat whatsoever, or was most typically just a background noise. Branch falling. The wind. Rock tumbling down the escarpment. Or it could mean a sign of life. Water is water. From its position inside the cave, the pool being emptied meant a sign of life. Even as he was confident the pool had been accessed by some small animal, maybe a fox or raccoon, he felt a sense of feral possessiveness. Water was life. He let it go. He knew he of many places for water at this point. He was more curious than anything, he found, about who his visitor had been in the local sense. Maybe they could find a rhythm together. Share the niche. Feel like home.

⁠

——————

That world had died to him long ago; in its place lay the carefully intwined ecology of spirit that he shared with the meadow. A clear path into the glade, an immediate unraveling every step further, until hearts touched…

The sinless eye

The eye that is capable of sin yet beholds no opportunity for sin is the perfect eye.

Substack Articles

A Who met a Why: E’R-S 1/5Z

“It’s an embodied concept. I call it fire logick. An argument for the efficiency of being honest." - the Origin of Force

Honesty is important. Let’s start there. This writing should be honest. Honestly speaking, I am approaching this page with a strange reluctance. Not just this page. The Page. I have been resisting the page, both in the creative and interpretive sense. Written and read. This has been ongoing for quite some time and is its own story. Nonetheless, I am finding myself with something to say and an apparent desire to say it through contemplative journaling, poetic exposition and living testimonial. This writing is a discovery. It is for me. I have a drive to gain a clearer lens into what it is I have to say.

With that in consideration, this is also a publication. It’s for the world to read and to respond to, should it desire. I am writing these words not only to find what I have to say through this medium, but also to provide some fertile soil for another to use in the process of growing their own self-realization. For the sake of honesty with myself, I don’t anticipate many others reading these musings. Not at this stage, at least. For those that do, I am grateful for you. To that end, I feel that it is appropriate to introduce myself.

Let’s start with the practical and the demographic. I’m a forty year old white male. Pretty straight forward. I also have a degenerative nerve disorder (charcot-marie-tooth syndrome) which is lifelong and impacts me physically in various ways, primarily related to the legs and spine. I’m also neurodivergent, which will be its own topic eventually. These things are less straight forward. I’m also an addict in recovery, which is lifelong as well. Stories of my earlier times will be explored at later dates, with one salient bit to be included later in this piece.

At the moment, I am pursuing my bachelors degree in Psychology, and will soon be applying to grad school for the MFT program. From there on to licensing and clinical practice. That’s the plan, at least. There’s an old saying which I appreciate, “announcing one’s plans is a good way to hear God(dess) laugh.” This is to highlight how out of control we truly are in regards to the vagaries of life. From the perspective of this saying, to make a plan is a sort of cosmic joke. I sure hope the universe likes jokes, because I’ve got a whopper. From the perspective of the Plan, the therapists license is a side-quest. This is all just art, though. It’s important to emphasize this. My main quest is to pursue a career in therapy. I live in a small town, by myself in a little hippie house. My mother and brother live nearby. That’s my moment in a nutshell.

Let’s open up the hood. This isn’t going to be a generic mental health blog. Buckle up.

As noted in the beginning, honesty is important. So is parsimony, which means saying the most with the least. As a poet, I shoot for the ballpark of both. And aim for truth throughout. Consciousness insists no promises cross honest lips.

Why am I writing this piece? Well, because I was asked “why?” in a very evocative manner by someone I regard as holding integrity. They were asking why I’m doing what I’m doing, why am I focused upon my particular ends, why do I see it as a worthwhile endeavor. They didn't ask it like that, no, they asked it very simply. Just,

“Why?”

At the moment, I am pursuing my bachelors degree in Psychology, and will soon be applying to grad school for the MFT program. From there on to licensing and clinical practice. For the past three years I’ve worked in creative positions at the schools I’ve been attending. In one, I was a lab tech for their Makers Space, learning the pipeline of creativity from concept to market. As well, learning how to teach that pipeline, even in its micro format. I’m currently employed in the environmental graphics department at my present university.

I’ve been a writer my entire life. In spirit, at least. Most specifically, I’ve been a poet and storyteller. This isn’t a claim to accomplishment. It’s an observation of my inclinations, my habits and my methods of cognition. As noted in the beginning, I’ve been taking a break from writing. This substack is part of my return.

There it is. I’m studying to be a therapist. I’m practicing being a creative facilitator. I’m relearning how to write. Some day to be a therapist who focuses on creative modalities and writes about their experience. That’s the plan, at least.

There’s an old saying which I appreciate, “announcing one’s plans is a good way to hear God(dess) laugh.” This is to highlight how out of control we truly are in regards to the vagaries of life. From the perspective of this saying, to make a plan is a sort of cosmic joke. I sure hope the universe likes jokes, because I’ve got a whopper. From the perspective of the plan, the therapists license is a side-quest. This is all just art, though. It’s important to emphasize this. My real main quest is to pursue a career in therapy (wink wink). I live in a small town, by myself in a little hippie house. My mother and brother live nearby. That’s my moment in a nutshell.

Let’s open up the hood. This isn’t going to be a generic mental health blog. Buckle up.

Why am I writing this piece? Well, because I was asked “why?” in a very evocative manner by someone I regard as holding integrity. They were asking why I’m doing what I’m doing, why am I focused upon my particular ends, why have I chosen my particular means, why do I see it as a worthwhile endeavor. They didn't ask it like that, no, they asked it very simply. Just,

I walk this path because I am it and because I care. This, of course, is my idealized conception.

This path is a product of who I am. It is not all of who I am. I do care, but it’s a struggle. I am not this path all of the time. I dissociate. I come back though. Which suggests to me that I care. Time will tell.

The Body hearts the Head, a love story: E’R-S 2/5

META: An exploration on the ratio of importance to power as it pertains to the human body and meta cognition. A prospective lens on the population body. The conveyance of power from the body, for the purpose of the powers service to the body.

I’m not particularly good at anything. I have some passing skills with language. I have some dexterity in my hands. I can develop simple frameworks, conceptually and physically.

E’R-S

an invitation to

“Modal” is a reference to two sources, modal logic and modal representation.

Modal representation refers to cognitive representations tied to specific sensory modalities - visual, auditory, tactile, motor, etc. These are grounded in actual bodily experience and sensorimotor processes.

Amodal Representation would be representations that abstract away from specific sensory modalities - like the concept "dog" that isn't specifically visual, auditory, or tactile, but schematically captures the essence across modalities.

Your insight about amodal representation as a "placeholder for an embodied process" is quite profound. It suggests that even our most abstract concepts might be:

Compressed traces of embodied experiences

Shortcuts that stand in for the full sensorimotor simulation

Pointers that can reactivate the full embodied experience when needed

This connects to theories like:

Conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff/Johnson) - abstract concepts grounded in bodily experience

Perceptual symbol systems (Barsalou) - cognition as reactivated perceptual states

Enactive cognition - meaning emerging through embodied interaction with environment

So "amodal" representations might not be truly disembodied, but rather efficient compressions of modal, embodied processes that can be unpacked when the situation demands it.

War met Love, made Art: E’R-S 3/5

To live in the world, it seemed, was to be immersed in violence. Kinetics and competition. To communicate, even lovingly, was to use basic forces to manipulate the environment in such a way that it strikes a signal into another being, informing their perspective through impression. One they must receive with trust, the content unbeknownst to them. The consequence of awareness occluded until contact and then a surrender to the violence of awakening. How can one truly consent to a consequence they are ignorant of?

It’s all force communication.

To this end I became fixated upon what I called my “Origin of Force”. I reasoned that force doesn't seem to be fundamentally linear (though it could become linear), however it did appear to be directional. This means that it is conferred upon a vector. There is a “from-here-to-there-ness” of it. It could be radiative, dispersing in all directions. It could be convergent, pulling into a single locus. It could be chained into a series of amplifying reactions. There are many ways to communicate force. All of them are directional at the time of their transmission. Of course, there is a responding force, but this is an outcome of an initial force communication and are directionally communicated. Force is conferred.

This gave me a sense that logically, rationally, there must be some origin of force communication. Some point of initiating contact that set the whole thing in motion. Something to hold accountable for all of this consequential violence. The violence of birth. The nonconsensual qualities of existence. Surely, though, this is the

erotic thought, to think in terms of indiscrete processes rather than discrete things

War begets seperation, love begets unity

Art is what is begotten by their communion

Individuations within an undifferentiated process

This awareness is only truly consensual when self-inflicted. When the violence of awakening is caused willfully, by ones own hand acting upon the body.

The Spark, the Dark, the March and the Target: E’R-S 4/5

to get each rule into a carryable format, a spark. To develop the ensemble which can carry the set of “rules”, or LAA’s. The moving of them all forward is rendering a more complete and accurate picture, having an effect on the task consciousness of the entity.

The Ahrke-Scene: E’R-S 5/5

iD.OS

Intro

Words are powerful. Language is power. The object of power is to shape its subject. Our language shapes our perception, our words identify our cognitive and experiential parts, our discourse frames our shared reality.

Old idea, new concept

terms vs concepts

terms are vessels for a concept, which is an affordance within language

Imaging the concept as imaginal rendering, “sense making”

Unpacking the Term

There’s a lot going on with this term, even as its being delivered in a relatively simple package. To begin with, it is a whole term unto itself and it's also an evolving acronym. There is a child form and an adult form. The child form is iDOS, whereas the adult form is the iD.OS. The “.” inserted into the adult form is a point of differentiation to highlight where there is a shift from a duality into a dialogic. Let’s take a closer look.

In its child form as an iDOS, it is a recognition of a universal pattern within human cognition which explores the duality that exists between the individual and the collective. It is the “essential idea”, an acknowledgement of a shared meaning-space. It is relational and exists between the individual and the world. It is the perspective that meaning does not enter the self from the world nor does it enter the world from the self. Neither of these are the source of meaningfulness. Rather, the connection between the self and the world is the source of meaning. It is alive in the moment of connection, and for the duration of the connection. At its heart is the duality of language and communication. Language is the vehicle of communication, communication affords the language. Both must be simultaneously present in order for either to be. The language is a common interface, a systematized medium. A conformable surface which exists as an affordance, to borrow from the work of psychologist James Gibson.

According to Gibson, organisms have a complementary relationship with their environment. Specific properties of the environment interact with the organisms biological composition in such a way that it affords an array of actions. There is a value delivered from the environment that boosts the agency of the organism, and in return, the higher agentic actions of the organism conform the surfaces of the environment to suit the agency of the organism. Through generations of mutation, the features of the organism conform to the niche within the environment that they inhabit. Or the behaviors adapt to the intention in the moment. A surface can be sat on or ran across.

Organisms exist as members of species, which are genetically organized to have the same general array of affordances and to seek the same general array of surfaces. If I find a surface that affords me a certain range of actions, then other members of my species should be able to find the same general range of actions available to them as well, and now have the opportunity to use that surface as a language for the purpose of communication and organization. This is a mutual affordance, and can be approached competitively or cooperatively. It is between an organism and the environment, as well as between organisms via the intermediary of the environment. All of human organization occurs via mutual affordances enabled through conformable surfaces within an agent-arena relational space. For humans to organize is to become a mutual affordance. This can be extended to all of life.

The acronym for the essential idea’s child form is:

“i” is a nod to the self, the I. It also references the dual nature of the “I” as being both intrapersonal (individual) and interpersonal (social).

“D” is in reference to the Dual-nature of all concepts that, in order to be a part of a language, must be communicative between individuals. In must be both personally meaningful as well as socially meaningful. This requires the presence of at least two OS’s to exist.

“O” is for operating, as in the performance of the affordances provided by the relation between the body and the surfaces of the world.

“S” is for system, to note for the multiplicity of distinct parts engaged in an organized interrelation.

iDOS: intra/interpersonal Dual Operating System.

In short, an iDOS is a placeholder for any concept that exists within the meaningful communication between a body and its world. Furthermore, it is an observation on the qualities that all concepts must possess in order to qualify as a unit of language. There is no one concept that can be identified as the exemplar of an iDOS, as all concepts which are capable of expressing a shared meaning are exemplars of an iDOS.

In its adult form as an iD.OS, we have a set of grouped mutual affordances which have been habituated into a spectrum of identity. It is the language of a culture, the mode which unifies all discourse within a population. Why a set of groups? The iDOS of the individual is a group of operating systems: the personal and the collective. An iD.OS exists as an organized set of individuals, each employing their own group of operating systems aligned upon the most common surfaces and the range of actions which is most valued by the group. The more diverse the values of a given group, then the more diverse the range of actions that can be afforded by a surface. The greater aggregate of value determines the meaningfulness of the connection which exists through the surface and is accessed by the actions which the surface affords.

German philosopher Martin Heidegger's once declared that "language is the house of Being”. From this perspective, language isn't merely a tool we use to describe reality; rather, it constitutes the fundamental way in which we dwell in the world. Through language, our existence becomes meaningful and intelligible. Language doesn't simply represent the world, it shapes how we experience and understand the world. When seeking to access this perspective, I approach language as, like with a house, possessing two types of architecture: local architecture and general architecture. Infrastructure and superstructure

As an iD.OS is the set of languages which act as an interface (conformable surfaces) for communication (mutual affordance), the entire set of surfaces this utilizes can be see as the general architecture of the social group, the language which houses the plurality of beings. Local architectures are viewed as rooms within the House, smaller sets of surfaces which afford a range of activity that is in some way useful to the broader reaches of the social group. Given the scale of the general architecture, no one person can directly use all surfaces at any given time. Instead they operate within the set of rooms which are most accessible and resonate to them. This set of “rooms”, or local area architectures (LAA’s), comprise the structure of their identity within the social group. In this way, individuals move by their respective iDOS while collectively fulfilling the super-structure of the general area architecture when the value they generate through the engagement of their available affordances has meaningful outputs into the other rooms in the iD.OS. Their network of affordance and value output is considered as a local area network (LAN) of languages. To occupy a room is to gain some affordance from every surface in the room. To be housed by a LAA, one must have a LAN that provides meaningful connections to the adjacent LAA’s which define the identities of the other members within the social group.

Every individuals experience of a meaningful reality is the affordance provided by the surface which is the iDOS. To develop a house for our Being is to cohabitate under, above, within and through a LAA of the LAN. A “law of the land” is an observance of the relationship that exists between a culture and their environment, and of the ordered values which provide mutual affordance for all. A LAA of the LAN is to formalize such a concept into an integrated set of languages which account for every surface valuable to its members as well as the full range of actions prioritized by the culture. It is to integrate all differentiation into a single expression over time. It is to craft a shared reality, and to use a shared reality as a vessel for a meaningful life.

Through a mutual reinforcement of the concept of this shared reality, it is reified for the individuals. The ground of our individual ignorance gains substance. The existence of actuality is delivered via revelation of the other. The world is where self and other meet to become one. The “world” in this case, is the iD.OS, which has become a novel surface in the environment. It is a created thing which, ironically, is both non-physical as well as the greatest point of contact between all members of the culture. It is the standardization of identity, crafted by the members to fit them as well as crafting the members to fit it.

The acronym for iD.OS is:

“i” is for infinite, to indicate the boundless nature of this relationship. It can be extended as far as there are individuals who can or will learn the LAA of the LAN for a given culture. It is trans-generational and can extend as far as there are generations who can or will carry it forward.

“D” is for dialogical, in that it exists not only as an integrated set of languages but as an active expression of them across culture and through time.

with “O” and “S” carrying the same meaning as before.

iD.OS: infinite dialogical operating system.

An iDOS has two operating systems: the personal which is the iDOS and the social which is the iD.OS. These are in a constant state of dialogue. A cultural operating system.

History of the Term

When coming to understand the nature of this term, it is important to understand the antecedent terms which constitute its perspective. All of the conceptual inputs are their own subject, complete unto themselves. They are not being taken whole cloth, as there are many specificities which comprise their unique nature that are not wholly relevant to understanding the nature of an iDOS. This article could not hope to address every part that is being brought into this new conception or every part which is being left behind. The goal of the article is merely to draw the eye to the relative influences, and to then seek a through line of connectivity from which this new concept is conceived.

There are three primary influences for the term. Eidos (plato), eidos (Gregory Bateson) and DOS (Computer science). As mentioned early, there are aspects being drawn from each of the sources which are instrumental in imaging the concept. There will be many aspects which are left behind. Most of the parts used in the term will be from the general architectures of their subjects, seeking to leave behind the specifics of their infrastructure. This is for many reasons, most of which will be explored later. For now, given the claim that this pattern is universal, the more salient of the reasons is that it is important for the parts to be substrate independent and not rely upon the specific grounding of their sources.

These sources will be listed in the order of their emergence throughout history.

The first source is from the ancient Greek philosopher Plato and lays the foundation for the form of the new term and provisions the most abstract layer of the concept. The term is “Eidos” and is the core of his theory of Forms. It is an “essential form” or purified pattern of abstraction which is the “perfect”, categorical version of its physical counterparts. In this view, a “chair” has many physical manifestations it takes, each unique unto itself as itself. It also has a non-physical form which is the idealized abstraction of it, which provides the general architecture for any physical form which follows. These forms can be abstracted but not represented as any representation of them is in physical form and is thus imperfect. The concept of the iDOS is agnostic as to whether or not there is a realm of pure forms which are extruding into our lived reality. The certainty of these conclusions are being left behind. However, there do appear to be categories which exist both in the world and in the psyche and that their essential forms appear to be withdrawn from perfect representation. In either framework, we have a single exemplar (Eidos) and we have a plurality of approximations (physical manifestations).

The second source is from anthropologist and system theorist Gregory Bateson, which extends the context of the original term, while providing a more practical layer for the terms context.

Some further reasoning on distancing the term of iDOS from the terms Eidos, eidos and DOS, is that the term iDOS is a standalone concept, it’s a seed for cultural conception. It is also a mental object. It is an imaginal event. It transposes the naked patterns from other concepts so as to compose its own structured representation. k

Abraxas and the Pleroma, eidos and khora

Egregores and Collective Unity

An egregore, in this context, is an iD.OS which has been characterized by the primary surface in the set.

iD-OS-Entity...identity. id-entity. Archetype.

The Transformation of Culture

The Sovereignty of the Dividual

iD.OS is more essential than iDOS. More powerful. Extended. It cannot be the first input.

iDOS is more fundamental than iD.OS. More important. Foundational. It cannot be the final output.

A LAA is a local area architecture, or the conceptual image of an environment seen as a set of discernably distinct surfaces as well as the set of affordances each surface allows or can be conformed to allow. This will be unique to every environment and its relation with each organism which is active within it.

Embodied Meta-physics

Opening the Art: a contemplative piece

There’s something up with reality. With embodied reality. With being a body and having an experience. It’s something weird. Have you ever felt this way? Turned inward (or outward, for that matter) to “look in the mirror” at one’s own existence in response to feeling a certain kind of way, and then think,

“this s*!t’s weird. Here I am, a mind. An awareness of my own phenomenon. I appear to also be a body. It’s kind of hard to tell the difference between being a mind and being a body. Is there a difference? At times there appears to be, but upon scrutiny they appear to be pretty well embedded into each other. Body has brain, brain orchestrates the experience, which is apprehended by the mind...wait, so what differentiates mind from experience?

Then there’s this whole environment thing. What’s up with that? What’s this ‘outside’ thing that my body is distinct from? There’s some pretty clear differences between my body, my mind and the environment. Yet, upon scrutiny, it seems to be pretty well embedded into this whole existence mess as well. I appear to be as inseparable from the environment as I am from my body and my mind. These things seem to exist, distinct while also intrinsically unified.

And never mind this whole ‘I’ thing! Where to even start? I also appear to be an observer, a separate unit who can view the differences between things. Who can observe them “from the outside”, even if they are aspects of my own mind or parts of my own body. I appear to be an other to all the facets that seem to make up my existence.

And what about these observation things? What is observance? My body seems to be sensing the world around it by sampling bits of the world in the form of light through eyes or on skin, vibrations in the air for the ears, somatic nerve response throughout the central nervous system, ingestion of chemical compounds through olfaction or taste. Apparently, the brain translates this sense data into perceptions and renders them as experience. Perceptions are translations. Everything I experience is generated by the brain. What is even real? Is the environment real? Is the body real? Is the brain real? Is the mind real? And how would I know?”

Have you ever felt that way? A sort of existential dread blossoming into overwhelming ambiguity, followed by a turning away from the object of scrutiny? Have you ever thought similar thoughts in accompaniment to that feeling? Maybe not that exact litany, or using the same language, perhaps more in the spirit of the thought? Something that rhymed? Some glimpse into the uncertain ambiguity of existence? Some confrontation with the question, “what the F#*K is going on here?!” Maybe not in the same tone, perhaps the same spirit of thought.

On the contrary, have you ever found a piece, a niche, a perspective, a revelatory insight and thought,

“Aha! so THAT’s what’s going on here! Oh wow, if that’s what's going on, then that means this other bit which I had always looked at this particular way...I’ve been seeing it all wrong! There’s this further depth, this greater nuance, this expansive novelty!

With this new understanding, I can feel my uncertainty ebb. I can feel the ambiguity wane. The horizon unfolds to encompass greater possibilities. I am now connected to my world, homed in my world, in an unprecedented way. Through this unprecedented connection, I am enlivened to higher inquiry. With THIS answer, I now have a vantage point to see THOSE questions. What are THOSE questions?! I didn’t even know those sort of questions existed.

For instance, does this just keep going?! With each deep answer do I find higher questions? For that matter, what about lower questions?!

I can’t wait to find out. Or even, I’ll still be elated even if I never do.”

For me, the feeling that accompanies this is often one of spaciousness, of freedom, of graceful motion in synchronized concert between self and world. Not always to that degree. Maybe a trickle, a quick flare of inspired thought. Maybe a brief burst of activity, tracking the connections. Maybe the onset of a magnum opus of artistic endeavor. In all instances, the feeling of coming togetherness, of immanence, encroachment.

I’m guessing some of you have felt that way a time or two, at least. Right? I have. Oh boy (or girl or other), have I. At times, my life feels like a dialogue between these two feelings and my experience is the language. I’ll be in a state of existential shock, staggered by the clash of monolithic unknowns within the caverns of my psyche; emitting sparks, little bright points of attentive study which stick in my mind and stick to each other, until constellated patterns of relation and relevance abound and cascade and coruscate and clear the veils, clear the veils, clear the veils...revealing a state of experiential catalysis and the bliss it subsists on. Existence said a thing to experience, is what it feels like. It also hurt to get here, but now that I’m here it’s pretty cool. The thing with language, though, and dialogue, is that it takes at least two to tango. For each call, there is a response. For each elevation into a heaven state, there is a corresponding fall into its counter part. For each plummet into existential dread, there is a corresponding excitation of potentiality arising into a visionary lens. This is perhaps a more common feeling. The sense of being the dialogue between existence and experience, holding space for the hurts and the joys that accompany the process.

I’m confident many of you are familiar with the feeling of knowing what you are doing. This is the response from experience to existence. Maybe it feels something like confidence, or security, or maybe not even a particular feeling at all. Just doing the thing without really paying attention. This isn’t to say that feelings aren’t happening, just that they’re not coming from the interaction with the thing that it is known how to do. It also opens room up to feel other feelings and think other thoughts. Or even to not. The feeling of knowing what one is doing is often no specific feeling at all. Many times it is simple, mundane; something like,

“I’ve learned a lesson, I know how to proceed. I see the way. All I need to do is just DO and not think about it anymore. This is reality. I know why I get out of bed. I know where to find breakfast food. I know when to go to work. I know how to drive the car there. I know what to do when I arrive. I know who I am.”

Another common variation is of the dissociative sort,

“I have no idea what I’m doing in life, but I do know how to get out of bed. I do know when I’m supposed to eat. I do know where I should be driving. I do know what basic options are available to me in a more immediate sense. I know that a ‘why?’ is often important, but is also unnecessary to do these things I know how to do.”

Yeah, this is a fun one. I know these feelings. The surety of footing that precedes a fall, whether I’m paying attention to where I’m going or sort of mindlessly walking through the steps of routine. Then the realization that there is something fundamentally wrong with my relationship to the ground. The twisting and contorting of the body as it reacts to the sudden lack of support. The jarring impact, the pain of injury. The shock of it all. Having been so confident the ground would be under foot, to discover the abyss of uncertainty and the pain of correction. To know what one is doing is to expect the environment to continue cooperating with whatever one is doing. To confidently move is to expect the body and the ground to work together, it is based on a trust. To begin walking in a direction, confident that I will arrive at my eventual destination is to know what I am doing. To announce my plans and to move about as if they will happen is to know what I am doing. To mistake my experience for existence. Perhaps mistake is a harsh word. To know in one’s being and to move by the knowledge is to respond to inspiration which has arisen through the pain of learning. It is something earned. It has substance, it has value.

I’ve had many journeys arrive at intended destinations. I’ve had many plans which came to fruition at least roughly as intended. I will see this come true in daily life, moving to and fro amongst my various responsibilities and interests. The patterns which stick out more clearly in my long term memory are the jarring circumstances when it was suddenly revealed that the journey was diverted, arrival was no longer an option. Or that the plan hadn’t accounted for these variety of variables which just so happened to be what occurred. Or that the plan was merely a hope-with-some-scaffolding to begin with, and that the outcome which it had intended was now hopeless. Was lost. Maybe could never have been. For me, knowing what I’m doing has been useful for getting things done. It has also, almost always been a duration of grounded experience which precedes a fall of some sort. I guess that’s the feeling I’ve been looking for. Knowing what one is doing feels like balance and security, in which one can anticipate a deeply impactful realization which will dramatically reorient the priorities of the intention. Often in wildly surprising ways. Anybody have any experiences such as that? Perhaps I should dispense with the rhetoric. I’ve seen enough falls to think I’m in good company.

There’s this other feeling which has been coming up for me more often lately. It’s an interesting one. Perhaps the most interesting of the ones for me, currently. I’d be very in interested in your thoughts on this one. To highlight it, I should recap the space I’ve explored so far.

I’ve been talking about feelings, offering gestures at common ground as I go. Landmarks in the mental landscape of experience, and of the relationship between experience and existence. Sometimes I will have a dialogical relationship between two states which I have conflated with these concepts. Through the fact of my body and my growing awareness, I encounter the unknown; an occluded space where withdrawn structures both loom in the distance while pressing up into a crushing closeness. This can be a terrifying and painful place, yet from it there arise sparks of awareness which stick together into constellated patterns of meaningfulness. Existence said a thing to experience. Experience responds through knowing and doing. Making plans. Having intention. Experiencing meaningfulness...until encountering mistakes, injury or loss, age or grief. This is existence beginning its response. The meaningfulness and knowledge that arise from the consequence of existence are the message, the intentions and plans that are enacted by experience are its response, until resistance and shock...Back and forth. An exchange, a dialogue through time. Sometimes close and loud, sometimes distant and lulling. The uncertainty of existence and the intention of experience. Not really knowing anything and knowing what I’m doing. Here’s the context for the final feeling I wanted to highlight in this writing. The feeling that I find when I’m:

Doing what I know.

It’s a subtle distinction. It uses both uncertainty and surety. It anticipates falls and facilitates rises. It is inclusive of all parts of the pattern, of the dialogue, but it uses them in a special way. In seeing the dialogue, it realizes that there is more happening. The uncertainty is never mitigated. The awareness is. The attention is. The knowledge is not ever the plan. The knowledge is a vessel. A means for comport and navigation.

How to do what one knows when the first thing one knows is that knowledge is ephemeral and that meaning arises from this relationship? Knowledge isn’t a thing. It also collapses in on itself, in its self concept. Knowledge arises from existence into experience, and it provides secure footing until it loses meaningfulness by being shown to have not been true from the beginning. To know this about knowledge is to undermine the knowing and thus undermine the knowledge. Nevertheless, the knowing is a process which proves true until it is not. “I know nothing” takes on a new light.

So what do I know? I know that knowledge can have relevance in the moment, as a means of intimate connection with the environment. I know that knowledge is temporary, with the duration of its relevance to be determined over time. I know that knowledge delivers meaningfulness and results in being painfully wrong the more I commit to it. I know that I will soon know more or less than I currently do.

When doing what I know I come into deep relation with the limits of my embodied existence. I learn the nuance of boundary between what I can ascertain as being grounded, capable of supporting my weight, and what is ephemeral, capable of guiding my attention. With knowledge of HOW to ascertain, I can test this skill and I can experience the shock of being instructed by existence. Being instructed towards a sense of truth. This provides ground for discovering discernment and practicing decision making in the appropriate time and place for its enactment. Doing what I know and adapting my knowledge as I go.

None of this is the feeling I want to highlight. I’ve been describing the context, indicating the content. For me, it lays fertile ground for the discovery of relationship between context and content in the moment. The realization of relevance that exists beyond the dialogue. The feeling that is elicited in the moment of its actualization. This is a fleeting feeling. Something about it feels right.

It’s pretty intense. Allowing my awareness to acknowledge the proximity of uncertainty elicits the fear, my receptivity to learning attenuates the fear into a loose anxiety; an attentiveness to what is present in the moment. The knowledge I have currently is knowledge that has so far not led to a fall, or a crash, or a limit that stifles its hope. Therefore its resilient up to a point. I’ve learned some confidence with it. I’m also keenly aware that the more confident the move, the more potential for collapse if I trip over a step. There’s a hint of danger, of threat, that dances on the periphery. There’s a sense of rich meaningfulness that uplifts some vision of hopefulness. The fall will come, lets make the journey worth it. The danger is always there. That’s life. The fall will come, this is why I know the dialogue. Why I am the dialogue. Collapsing into existence, climbing into experience. The process is developmental. The knowledge lays the path. How true to life the path is will be determined by time, who tells all tales. There's an openness to the outcome that results from me being true to myself in the moment, making what changes I can when I deem appropriate and enduring the consequence of those decisions. With that openness the terror returns, in full force. This time it shares space with the hope, which is upheld by the intention. Which is maintained by the commitment, whose intensity amplifies potential for loss or injury. To lack commitment is also potentially more disastrous than contending with the potential disaster of being as true to myself as possible, as meaning arises from the knowledge in positive correlation to the commitment one holds to it without it collapsing. There’s a choice to be made. It just might really, really matter. The odds are so against it might not. Seeing the zone for meaningfulness and mattering that exists between. Seeing the pain of existence, seeing the meaning of experience. Embracing them both.

In this formula, is not the body itself serving the role of existence? The body is of the environment, the body houses the brain, the brain generates the experience, the mind apprehends the experience, and through apprehension acts to guide the body through the environment. Wait...where did this mind thing come into play? Is it a product of the brain generating the experience? Or is it THE product of the brain generating the experience? Does mind equal experience? The senses and the sense of the world they provide? The sense of selfness, of embodiment? Or is it the cognitive faculties? Language, reasoning and executive function? Memory encodement and retrieval? I’m not sure mind or experience can be reduced to thought, or imagination, or felt senses. Still, in some intrinsic manner, mind and experience seem linked. The relationship between body and mind can be seen as the medium of communication between existence and experience. The process of self-apprehension. It feels like fierce joy, my realization of doing what I know. I know myself. Being myself. Having MY experience, in relation to existence. Sharing an existence with YOU, who has their own personal language of being and experience of that existence. How to do it well? The Art of Self. Embodied Meta-physics. These are themes which will run throughout this sub stack, and will be explored further in context on the Liminal Commons (links provided below).

My personal model is that we all have our own thing, our own art or set of arts which co-arise through communal activity. I am opening the door into my own art so that I may gesture through my art towards a communal space, in which my own art would be but a facet of the community. If you’re sensing these words and meaning emerges, then you have a body and are embodied. If that meaning becomes a plan of response (whether to connect or to disregard), then you have a mind and use a meta-physics. If you feel called, come join us in the circle in a process of mutual discovery.

The Meta of Meta isn’t more Meta

It’s embodied meta

It’s physical meta

It’s embodied meta-physics

Things seem to form into bodies. It isn’t just anthropomorphization. For the human to look at the environment and see it in terms of human bodies is a misconflation. To look at the human body and see it as a form of environmental body is an appropriate conflation. Other organisms all have bodies. A rock has a body. Bodies of water. Interstellar bodies. For a thing to have form, it has a body. Information has a body as well. This is a more tricky body to tackle, however. We’ll return to this. Probably over and and over, chewing until it is digested. This writing is but a nibble amongst a banquet.

The beauty of the meta-game is that it is endless. It is infinite. So spacious, so free. So abundant with connection and possibility. It doesn’t deal with the same kind of constraints that the embodied-game does. There came a time when I realized though, that while the meta-game is infinite, the embodied game is not. I could only go so high in that tower of enlightenment before the ground began to move forward beneath me and the top of my tower lost sight of its own foundation. Falling, falling, falling. Lessons. My meta can’t lose sight of the ground. For that matter, why would I want it to?

Ok, make it simple. Keep it close to the ground. Make it tight, make it intact. Really ratchet down on the variables. I can just roll along the ground as it goes, with no worries of taking a tumble. All that is here is right now.

So there is a relationship between the form my meta takes in the moment and the conditions my body faces over time.

I will admittedly use common language towards my own end. I hope that others do, too. It makes so much more sense that way. It’s important to understand other’s uses of concepts. It’s more important to understand ones own. To this end, I’m using a very simplified definition of meta-physics and it is related to meta-cognition. It goes like this: metaphysics is any standardized language which enables a meta-cognitive awareness for its user. As all language provides a meta-cognitive awareness for its user, any standardized or formalized language acts as a metaphysics. In a sense, all language satisfies the condition of being metaphysical, with a fine distinction between that and being a metaphysics. It is the forming of the parts of the language into a coherent body, and to work with that body as one navigates their physical body through the environment. A metaphysics is a system of thought that a body uses to navigate, and manipulate, its own psyche.

Many others would understand metaphysics to be a branch of philosophy and would relegate it to a special context. It has been said that metaphysics is a deep inquiry into the fundamental nature of being, into a truth which is at least partially withdrawn from us. It has been said to be the study of that from which all other philosophical, conceptual or cognitive inquiries arise. In this sense, my simple definition is intended to be inclusive of all other systems of thought. A metaphysics is a system of thought from which arise other systems of thought which are specially suited to specific tasks that exist between a body and its environment. It accounts for the generalities of what the body considers to be true and assumes as substantial when it makes moves and decides action. It is the system of relevance by which the body weighs new information against and the web of meaning through which interpretation occurs.

Self-ology

META: The examination of various metaphysical branches from the lens of the embodied self.

The degree of meta-cognition being described isn’t needed to lead an authentic life. Some meta-cognition is, though this degree is hyperbolic. This degree of meta-cognition isn’t something to be wanted. It is neither idle nor harmless. It needs to be desired in order for it to be worth it, and even then it’s a gamble.

The Creative Problem

Part 1

Artistic Freedoms

This is art. It's important that this be emphasized. I'm playing a Creativity Game(which will have its own article). Some years back, I formulated an intentional problem whose complexity is too sheer to ever solve, though through playing the game I generate novel and useful outcomes. Since there's no real way to "win" besides the joys of novel discovery and creation, the support and access effective tools might deliver, or the connection and camaraderie you might find among friends, lovers and family, then there's no real rush to get it done. These things happen organically and over time, which means they eventually end anyway. The winning is in between. This is where the game lives.

I'm also using language and concepts as the means for initially formulating the game, and for qualifying its play. It is crucial that the rules of the game be as clear as possible, simple and accessible. As this game is, in essence, a one-player game which many people could play at once, it is important that I work with common language, while taking certain liberties of play with the definition of the concepts I am employing. Concepts such as "problem," "game," and "creativity." These have been defined many times, from many angles. One of my first moves in the game was to set about arriving at definitions that would work in any context, from any angle—at least in such a way that was suited to my purpose. The reader may see me reinvent the wheel a few times over the course of rolling out my body of work, with the outcome of a potentially unique and authentically creative embodied concept.

Besides the freedoms of removing the overarching time constraint and the definitional constraint, there is also a freedom of boundary, or locality. This game can be played in any situation or context and towards any end. It can also be played between localities and contexts, crossing any barrier that it encounters. There are many instances of it, and more details to it, which will be explored later. The pertinent bit for this writing is that there's one particular thread of the game I want to explore. This thread turns to look upon itself.

What even is a problem?

Is the term "problem" even adequate to convey the essential nature of this concept? Problem denotes a discrete instance. It's an object. It can be pointed at. The occurrence of a problem is the same as any other occurrence—it exists in process. It is embodied in the now. The now is extended into the past and extruded into the future (and the past can distend into the now while the future can intrude). By making this statement, I am not claiming that the past or future "exist" as some definitive aspect of what we refer to as empirical reality. I am observing that there appears to have been a time before this moment and there appears to be a time after, and that there appears to be a through-line of continuity. I respond to the appearances in the moment; they influence my actions. They might not actually exist, yet they still influence the now and how I interact in it. It is a map of the phenomenon—a Map of the Now (this will have its own article).

Using this map as a lens, a problem would extend into the past and extrude into the future. A problem would exist as a convergence of many causal threads, arriving at the moment the problem announces itself to the observer. The problem would represent a fundamental obstacle to some intention, extruding into the potential of future paths and disabling options. Filling space with the problem and its consequence.

In this picture, the problem exists as conditions that come into the awareness of an observer with an intention, embedded into a space which is itself extended and extruded. “Problem-space” is the more useful term, for my purposes.

This term already exists. Fortunately, its uses are relevant to my intentions. Coming from cognitive science, artificial intelligence and problem theory:

A problem space is the entire set of possible states, actions, and paths involved in solving a problem.

It includes:

Initial state – where the problem begins

Goal state – the desired outcome or solution

Possible states – all configurations between the start and goal

Operators – actions or steps that transition from one state to another

Constraints – rules or limitations on what transitions are allowed

With this framework in mind, we can see a problem space as possessing not only the states, actions and paths which lead to its resolution, but also the ones where resolution is not found. Knowing a problem space doesn't always entail a path to resolution. Sometimes the resolution is resignation, which is a useful act in the appropriate context. This will be explored in the second piece of this series. In this case, we are looking at what drives the Creativity Game. It's simple really. It goes like this...

What are my creative limits?

It's as simple as asking that question with intention. The intention bit is key. To ask the question with intention is to open a space for inquiry—something to be explored, with a commitment to resolution. To ask a question with intent is to establish a problem space in which the question posed infers the range of its own potential end states, which provides a framework for the intervening space of states, steps and paths. It provides a metric by which to have some sense of measure by which to know whether or not I am accessing useful answers to the question. I asked this question because I wanted to become a more creative person. I reasoned that through a deep commitment to answering this question, I would discover within me the creativity that was latent in my being, as a human.

To do this, I needed to establish a goalpost—something to work towards. With a caveat: it was important this be a goalpost with a catch. The catch being that I couldn't actually catch the goalpost, while keeping the goalpost technically catchable. The catchability of the goalpost being more a factor of my own personal limitations than an attribute of the goalpost itself. When encountering limits, the goalpost automatically is positioned in the state that exists one step past what it required to transcend the limitation. After all, this is a game whose purpose is to lead me to the transcending of my creative limits. Here’s how the catch often plays out.

My inquiry opens the general problem-space, from which arise specific problem spaces. Each problem space is its own creative limitation I discover. The game drives me to reach the goal post: resolution of the problem space with a single step. If my intentions require I move past the limitation, then I play the Creativity Game until I reach some point of satisfaction in regards to the problem and find a means by which to transcend the limitation. Upon arrival into a position of resolution, my creative limitations have now been pushed back to include the position I have arrived in. I have a new limit. The goalpost is positioned on the other side. The goalpost is always past the boundary.

Let's take a moment to consider the nature of creativity itself. What is creativity?

For the purposes of my work, creativity is an act which results in a novel and useful outcome.

Or, that's the simplest way I have of saying it at the moment. Simplest isn't always the most fit. There will be several articles on this subject alone.

A limitation on creativity would be some circumstance where I was unable to enact a novel or useful output. This could be a situation where I needed a skill I didn't have, or there was a frame of mind which didn't allow for engagement, or there was an environmental factor which inhibited creative engagement, or there was a resource I lacked access to.

With an eye towards this definition of creativity and these examples of creative limitations, I'd like to take a deeper look. Open the hood.

Margaret Boden is a clinical researcher on, and philosopher of, human creativity. She has a model which I am a fan of. While I will be using her model as intact (for the most part), I will be creatively additive to it. It goes as such:

Creativity, as a phenomenon, occurs in two domains: the psychological and the historical. Psychological creativity is what occurs when the creative output is novel and useful to the individual generating it. Historical creativity is when this occurs on the social record.

Creativity, when it occurs, has three primary expressions. These are combinatorial, exploratory and transformational. Combinatorial occurs when an individual intentionally combines two or more pre-existing elements into a new form. Exploratory occurs when an individual is exploring the novel nuances of a conceptual space. Transformational occurs when an individual makes a creative move which results in a reconfiguration of the space that allows for new forms of creativity which were previously inaccessible.

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We will end this piece here, with a recap of the thoughts so far:

I am playing a Creativity Game

It is comprised of an unsolvable creative problem which I am motivated to solve

whose goalpost is uncatchable

and is always placed past the point of resolving my actual intention

It is framed by the intentional question of, "what are my creative limits?"

This highlights the problem space of resolution, which operates in two domains: the personal and the social (historical)

There are three primary vehicles for creativity: combinatorial, exploratory and transformational

If it interests you, return for the second part of this writing, in which I synthesize these elements into the Creative Problem—the problem space whose resolution could transform the entire world. The Creativity Game is the formulation and resolution, in perpetuity, of this Creative Problem.

Join us at the Liminal Commons (linked below) for explorations on the practical implementation of these themes, and many others.

Part 2

This piece is a continuance in a short series. In the previous writing, there are parts which were given in context which will not be directly reviewed for the purposes of brevity. For the purposes of coherence, the backstory is

here⁠

In short, I wanted a tool which was capable of deepening my relationship with my own creative intelligence. Towards that end, I crafted a Creativity Game which I could play anywhere, at any time. To give it substance, I focused the game on the creative resolution of problems.

The Problem of Creativity

I’m emerging into this piece with some elements at play. We have the elements of problem-space and of creativity, and the intentional question of what are the limits of my creativity? What is the problem-space of my creativity?

I have a working definition for creativity. An act which results in a novel and useful outcome. It has personal (psychological) and social (historical) aspects , and has combinatorial, exploratory and transformational expressions. I’ve also mapped both a problem and creativity to a Map of the Now, establishing them both as events which have prior conditions, an epicenter, consequential conditions and a through-line of continuity. They exist in process. Our traditional maps for them are static. There’s some potential problems with that. Let’s take a look.

The first problem with creativity is how to discern when it begins and when it ends.

Where is the boundary of the event? Just like with problems, creativity is an event whose origins extend into the past and extrude into the future. If we chase the cause of a creative act back to its root, it quickly becomes evident that the true source of events eludes our ability to grasp at this time. Not only are there many short and midterm causes, all of those causes seem to converge upon a single point at the beginning of time. The same could be said of problems and their source as well. We can trace conditions and their causes only so far. It is much the same when it comes to the effects of creativity.

If the chain of events that led to a creative act can be said to span the lifecycle of the universe, then who is really the source of creativity in the moment? Is it even creativity of a personal nature at all? Or is my art merely ripples in response to some incomprehensibly distant initiating event? In this context, is it even creativity at all? If determinancy is to be taken at its essence, the effect was co-conceived with the cause. At best, there would have been one creative act and all of the universe is its determined consequence. This is the problem of determinacy. Let’s set this problemaside for the moment.

The second problem with creativity is how to determine what constitutes novelty.

What makes something novel? It’s newness? It’s lack of referential comparison? I see plenty of new things that strongly resemble old things. Babies have been around for a long time. It seems as if everywhere I look there is a new thing that resembles an old thing. Does the pretty rock on my desk have the exact same constitution it had the last time I looked at it? Molecular science suggests not. Physics would say no. My experience has also told me that things change. They grow, they break down. Would this not make every event novel in some essential way? Let’s say I broke the rock on my desk into two parts. Would not the fact I now have two rocks constituted of the same material be a newness which resembles an oldness?

There are also many, many things which I see for the first time. Are these things new? Or do they pre-exist my witnessing of them? In that case, is not my perception itself and ensuing conception of phenomena something which is new? To perceive is to engage in newness. To breathe is to engage in newness. To walk is to engage in newness. To care is to engage in newness. To be is to engage in newness. This is the problem of originality. We can set this problem aside as well.

The third problem with creativity is how to gauge usefulness.

Who determines the utility of a new thing? Or of anything at all? How to even know the utility of a new thing, in order to grant it the status of creativity? Through its novelty, it is largely unknown. Its usefulness emerges through engagement and familiarity. Is it possible to engage with something which is useless? Is it possible to act with intention without there being some element of value associated? Is it possible it exist, as a being, and be useless? I suppose in the case of there being no life left in the universe, even that is debatable. Gravity is still useful to solar systems being themselves. As it is, I could lay down right now and declare, “I have no use for this life”, then die in some fashion or another. I will have used executive functions to perform this act. I will have used my body to lay down. I will have used the ground as something be laid upon. Then, when I have died, I will be useful to bacteria and bugs as an energy source. I will be useful to the soil as organic material. I’m not sure its possible to exist without being useful in some way.

As well, what of the accidental emergence of utility? Alexander Fleming and the famous case of penicillin comes to mind. Through some minor oversights and an incidental intuitive leap, the field of medicine was transformed due to the incredible utility of penicillin. How many moments of transformational innovation were cases of serendipity? On the other hand, must I even be aware of a thing for that thing to be useful? I am sitting in a house. There are structural elements of this house embedded into the framework which I can only infer as being there without actually seeing them. These are regularly useful to me, given the roof over my head. I rarely acknowledge their presence. There could be a “weed” growing in my garden which I intend to rip out until it catches my eye in the right light and it pleases me. I find it useful, so it stays. Eventually it obscures the vegetables that I had planted and they begin to suffer, because it is taking nutrients and sunlight for its own use. Now there’s a competition for space and its many uses. Which outcome is most useful? This is the problem of purpose. Now, we can bring our other problems back into the conversation.

Incepting the Creative Problem

The problem with creativity is that its problem-space is too vague. Ambiguous. Working with the given definition, it appears as if everything could either never becreative or always be creative, and that there doesn’t appear to be a significant difference between the options. Everyday creative acts still happen in my life, which are clearly novel and useful. Writing this is a creative act which is discernibly different than waking up in the morning.

When taken from the perspective of psychological creativity, these things seem clear and obvious. This is because they are interacting with my memory system (which is constantly being reformulated to the context of its retrieval), my selective attention(which acts to highlight that which is important to me in the moment), my biases(which prioritize confirmation of their preferences), etc. The creativity is obvious to me because it is a product of my limited human perspective as well as many factors of autonomous biological and psychological processes.

It begins when I start doing it. It ends when I stop doing it. It’s novel because I can’t remember ever having seen it before. It’s useful because I found a use for it that aligns with some intention of mine, and am using it to engage value. The creativity is less obvious when considered from the historical lens. Through the lens of the definition, my personally creative acts are mundane, rote, routine. Old hat. Determined. Only incidentally creative, at best. It is the historical, transformational creativity that receives the recognition of even being potentially creative. It is the creative acts which are novel and useful for both the personal and the social aspects, in such a way that they transform the shared space.

The move of recognizing that from a personal lens creativity is clear and that from a definitional lens creativity is ambiguous demonstrates to me the presence of a limitation in my creativity. It adds definition to my problem-space, giving a deeper sense of the constraints.

In the next piece, I will begin the process of synthesizing the elements outlined so far into the framework which I refer to as the Perfect Problem. This framework provides the engine for my Creativity Game.

To review the elements laid out in this piece:

There is a problem with creativity, in three parts

the problem of determinacy, in which it is unclear how to discern the true scope of a creative event

the problem of originality, in which is it unclear how to determine the uniqueness of novelty

the problem of purpose, in which it is unclear how to gauge the value of utility

This results in an ambiguity of interpretation, in which anything might be considered creative (even nothing at all) when viewed through the lens the definition provided. This ambiguity resolves when viewed through the personal lens, with an eye towards collective transformation. I have found a creative limitation.

Follow up for the continuation of the series in the third part.

Part 3

This piece is exploring a later stage of a thought process i.e. the means by which I arrived at the position by which my body of work has been incepted. You can find the first two pieces

here⁠

and

here⁠

. This is a long one. This is always the stage where the combinatorial explosively kicks off. This is the juice, for me. The start of it.

To know this thought process is to know a thing about my work. A vital key to unpacking the content I have a hand in. This series began on an impulse. I meant it to be a single article. I quickly realized it would need to be a two-parter. Upon finishing the first, I knew it would take three. You can infer from the title where I’m currently at with it.

The end is coming. To this series. It’s not yet clear when exactly, but soon. I’ll know more when this piece is finished. When I started the series I thought I was providing an easy entry point into my simplest idea. I’ve realized midway that I’m revisiting my reconception. The moment of my second “birth”. The lane change in my life.

I’m reconnecting with the pre-conditions to Ein’Ra-Shah (my body of work). I’m revisiting the roots of the work, digging my hands into the soil. Finding the moisture, the softness. Kneading it between my fingers. Gauging the fertility of its admixture with an eye for a fresh round of planting. What might emerge when a hint of the elements penetrate the top layers to touch the seeds beneath; a little water, some warmth from the sun, and breathing room.

The Creative Elements

There’s a thing I’ve been doing. A pattern in how this series has unfolded. The time has come for the metacognitive move of pointing at that pattern. In the first piece, I began by talking about a Creativity Game and how it explored the relationship between problems and creativity. I provided context for what was meant by a problem (problem space) and what was meant by creativity (novel and useful). I introduced the question which had incepted this method, “what are my creative limits?” There were some aspects of creativity from the works of Margaret Boden. Namely, the creative domains of the psychological (personal) and the historical (social), as well the three expressions of creativity: the combinatorial, the exploratory and the transformational.

In the second piece I made a move of combinatorial creativity. I combined the concept of a problem space with my definition of creativity, “an act which results in a novel and useful outcome”. The problem space became the interpretation of the definition from a personal and social lens, contrasting the two in regards to their consistency. The initial state of the problem was my use of a Map of the Now as a means of giving me embodied access to these concepts. The result of this process is to see everything as being in process. Problems and creativity are events that unfold over time. The problem was that I couldn’t successfully map the given definition to the now. In seeing the problem space, I began to work through its states and steps. As I went, specific problems arose at every step of the interpretation. These were the problems of determinacy (act), originality (novelty) and purpose (useful). I concluded that the problem space was too vague, resigning myself to the understanding that resolution was not to be found along that path. The one exception to the ambiguity might be an expression of transformational creativity in both psychological and historical contexts. This was the Problem with Creativity.

In this piece I will be making a move of exploratory creativity, exploring the moves that are available to make in the conceptual space which was incepted through the combinatorial move. My first move was to combine a problem with creativity. To explore the space this move created, the most available move is to do the reverse order of the previous move. Complete the set. Apply creativity to a problem, the Problem of Creativity. How to creatively resolve the Problem of Creativity? Via the Creative Problem. Let’s sketch its frame. Let’s walk its steps, applying a creative touch to every piece and element used thus far.

Creative Problem Formulation

This initiating process doesn’t really solve problems. It creates them. Or more accurately, it creates the problem space in which creative problems are more likely to arise, providing opportunity for my personal arts to flourish. This is the game. This is also the point where my writings on the subject tend to run directly into a creative limit. It’s simply not possible to narrate this step in the thought process. Not in words on a page. It’s like narrating the inner workings of an inspired thought which had never occurred to oneself before. Something truly novel to the personal experience, something very useful. A transformational realization. How to capture the occurrence of such a thing? I’ll do my best to lay the conceptual groundwork and then invite the reader into an embodied exercise.

From a creative lens, the concept of a problem space looks as if it could use some more substance. Further elaboration. An invitation into the body. To take the concept as if it were literal. We experience “space” as having three primary dimensions. Width (X), Height (Y) and Depth (Z). To just sit and observe my experience is an easy way to interact with space. If I think to myself, this space is a problem then it’s a problem space. If I ask why it is a problem, or how, or even what exactly is the problem, then any answer would be a motion into conceptual space. If we peer closely, a problem arises. What differentiates problem space from conceptual space? Isn’t conceiving of space as a problem, or even space at all (or problems), a foray into conceptual space? Indeed, this is a feature when using a Map of the Now. Every concept you map to it is enmeshed into the other concepts which are aligned across its frame. This is the nature of conceptual space. It accounts for every feature of a problem space. It notices the patterns and then it represents them. One is in it when one is engaging with concepts.

Three dimensions were mentioned. Width, Height and Depth.

There are three expressions of creativity. Combinatorial, exploratoryand transformational.

There are three folds to the Problem with Creativity. Determinacy, originality and purpose.

These form the dimensions which frame the problem space of creativity.

These dimensions frame the problem space of my being.

Width describes the degree of separation, or differences, that exist between combinatorial elements. Coherency is afforded by combining psychological creativity with the problem space of determinacy. This is the intrapersonal dimension, which bridges the individual problems (personal) with the organizational problems (communal).

Height describes the degree of potentiality, or range of recombinations, that can be explored within a given conceptual space. Inclusivity is afforded through comprehensive exploratorymapping of the problem space of originality. This is the interpersonal dimension, which bridges the occupational problems (works) with the systemic problems (social).

Depth describes the degree of impact, or reconfiguration of the space, that can be enacted with a transformational move. Integrity is afforded through a concerted transformational movement through the problem space of purpose. This is the transpersonal dimension, which bridges the essential problem (self) with the perfect problem (other).

To me, this was a stunning realization. This entire series is to recount a single thought process. The realization that the environment could bear the load of my memory. Of my language. Of my cognition. As an operational system which I could pick up and set down at a whim, yet would also never leave my side. A co-creative game which I could either just be or intentionally do. And that there wasn’t really a big difference either way. That’s life, right? Seems pretty obvious, honestly. To write it out makes it sound pedantic, silly. This is supposed to be the stuff of transformational creativity?

If you feel called, please join me in a quick embodied exercise, as I seek to take this concept off of the page and return it to the space from which it was incepted.

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Being; the Creative Problem.

I am going to walk through some motions. After each motion, I am going to privately ponder the significance of the move. I will not write the details of this down, but it is part of the exercise. I will, however, note for the context in which the content arises. I invite the reader to follow along in their own fashion.

I hold an arm up pointing directly to the side which the arm is located on. Either one, doesn’t really matter. I turn my head to look along the length of the arm to the pointer finger to see whatever it is pointing in (every move from here on out, I turn my head and full attention to look where the hand is now pointing).

I think, “ this is the direction of individual problems.”

Now, holding the arm in place, I extend the other arm in the opposing direction and I think, “this is the direction of organizational problems.”

Then I return my attention to myself, holding space between personal and communal problem spaces. I examine my being, my biology, my social identity, my personal identity, my family and friends, my world. I see my creativity as occupying the median between the individual and the organization, inclusive of both. I Amthe intrapersonal dimension of the problem space. It feels like my arms are wide open for a big hug.

Next, I take the hand indicating individual problems and point strait down to the spot beneath my feet.

I think, “this is the direction of occupational problems.”

Now, taking the hand indicating organizational problems, I point straight up and think, “this is the direction of systemic problems.”

Returning attention to myself, holding space between personal works and social systems. I examine my languages, my beliefs, my relationships, the stories of my peers, the narratives of society, the eco-system of technologies which afford them, and my personal acts of service in relation to them all. I see my creativity as occupying the median between the occupational and the systemic. I Am the interpersonal dimension of the problem space. It feels like my feet are firmly planted and my spine is tall, elongated.

Next, I take the hand indicating occupational problems and I place it flat against my chest, over my heart. Softly, but firmly.

I think, “this is the direction of the essential problem.”

Now, I look straight forward and fixate my attention upon some detail which is immediately in front of me. I then move the hand indicating systemic problems to now point right at where my attention is focused and I think, “this is the direction of the perfect problem.”

Sensing into the locus of awareness, tentatively attentive, I turn to myself, holding space between self and other. The other-self between self and other. I examine the complementary and disparity that exists between things. I peer into the integration and coordination that exists within them. I trace the seamless congruence and concurrence of their synchronous expression. I teeter on the precipice of unraveling in my unknowing. I see my creativity as occupying the median between the essential and the ideal. I Am the transpersonal dimension of the problem space. It feels like I am nothing in particular, or everything all at once.

I Am: the Creative Problem. Everything mentioned heretofore is a constant aspect of my space.

I now repeat the whole process, switching hands from the start. What began as the hand pointing at individual problems now starts as pointing at organizational problems and vice versa. Then run through every step again. To cap it off, I break the mold. I do it one last time in an order I’ve never done before. Every time I do it, I follow this recipe.

Here’s the fun part.

I drop out of conceptual space. A moment ago, I was consigning concepts to my embodied presence in the now. To some degree, there was significance. Now there isn’t. There isn’t even thought. Just observance. I am in the problem space.

Oh, there’s a thought! Now I’m in conceptual space. Wait, the thought wasn’t about anything mentioned in this writing. Still in conceptual space. You reading this? In conceptual space. To be in problem space is to drop out of conception. To release the meta of the experience. To just be. Channel the silence. Let’s do that for awhile.

We back? There is a modal switch in the human cognition in which one can move from baseline experience into the conceptual representation of that experience. This is the transition between problem space and conceptual space. I’m doing it right now staring at this screen. Let’s just play with that switch for awhile before we turn our attention back to the creative inspiration that begat this writing:

that I can create conceptual spaces which give me a context for creativity in the now.

I can oscillate between being and thinking as if a switch, so too can I oscillate between being and Being; the Creative Problem.

This is an address within my imaginal landscape. A consistent address. It’s not the only one.

There’s a whole worlds worth.

If this has been novel or useful for you, I hope you will join me for further extensions of the series as I unpack the remainder of the thought. The next step is through the Creative Problem into the Creative Space. This content is being explored in theory and practice on the Liminal Commons, linked below (plus much more from other members) .

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Liminalcommons.com⁠

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Part 4

From the psychological lens,

In the problem space, a problem arises which calls for creative resolution. The contact between problem and intention is combinatorial in nature. What is created is what’s known as an attractor in the field of physics, which could be described as a state which a system is trending towards. I am that system. Through engaging with the problem space via an intentional act, I am now becoming a part of the problem space through the inception of a conceptual space.

In the conceptual space, concepts arise which map the creative process as it unfolds throughout the problem space. The mapping of the combinations available between intention and the many aspects of the problem space is exploratory in nature.

In the creative space, potential arises for the generation of artifacts which transform the initial problem space into a state of completion. The creative act which generates the conditions by which the conditions of the problem space satisfy the intention is transformational in nature.

Part 5

becoming obsessed with ideas you cannot create

The Trans-Form Artifact

Once you deliver it, the rest is free energy. The contract is complete. There is nothing I can do in life which will complete the contract, yet there is a deep belief that I can.

How to hold the attention on a signal for an appropriate duration, how to discern what signal to adhere the signal to

I’ m trying to follow what I perceive to be a baseline

If you see the opportunity to raise the bar, please do

The Ghost in the Membrane

I had an interesting conversation the other day. It was with a monk of a nameless African order which exists entirely as an oral tradition. I mean, how could that conversation not be interesting? All of our conversations have been so far and I suspect they will continue to be so. Their name is Fahiym and I’m sure they will be mentioned again in this blog at some point.

We were talking about cultural narratives and the concept of an egregore. In its most traditional sense, the term “egregore” refers to a story from the book of Enoch in which there is told of a class of angel called a “Watcher” who observed and intervened in human affairs. Throughout history, the concept was adapted by occult and esoteric cultures to refer to

The World-Cast

META: An analysis of what constitutes a “world-changing” act, a break down of the pattern into a roadmap of accomplishment. The presentation of the template.

Building a pocket for the new world

it begins as an intra-personal action, by running the iDOS program as a one player, until toggling the switch to the co-creative mode

Now, there is an alignment opportunity between individual iDOS, in which all participants respectively possess individual maps of unfoldment which all share the same dimensional framework

iD.OS emerges between individuals until groups form

The Trans-Form Artifact which can act to unify the cognitive functions of all humans on the globe: Spark

The iCON and the Art-iFact

META: Metaphormality and the use of symbols and poetics as a truth device. Art as language for the formless.

Dimensions and Angles, the Geometry of Design: Formlessness and Form

the process of becoming informed is to cease the internal war and to unite your internal geometry of dimensions, to provide angular relations to all dimensions of being (reduce free energy via applying it towards an ecological outcome. As a practice, this is done through an internal campaign of unification from bottom to top, resulting in the circle of circles, or council/host of angles (hyper object of a circle, or toroid).

What follows is the external campaign, aligning all external angles into the tesseract, or hyper cube. The hyper-dimension. The square of squares, or box/legion of dimensions. (Really this done as a single dialectical process. I’m only cataloguing the first steps)

The distinction between the host/legion and an angle/dimension being one a field to a particular.

Both sides possess both angles and dimensions, but the object/subject they form into takes on a particular essence when unified. At this layer, it appears as if heaven is within (after the unification campaign) and hell is without (after the unification campaign). Now we apply the lens of “Love + War=Art”.

Heaven is above, Hell is Below

Every thing is changing, all of the time. One is constantly rising and falling. Where is the baseline? Where is the checkpoint?

Elevated Heaven State. I'm already in it in the moment, after having undergone my campaign of realization. The question is, do I want to elevate it? How long do I want to elevate it? Where is my baseline? Do I want to elevate it? For how long?

To do so, I must elevate with my environment or risk early collapse. I must ensure my environment rises with me and if it cannot, I must ensure that I do not rise too far from its surface of affordances. What happens when surfaces suddenly shift? Collapse of structure.

META: The rush to create non-physical social technology which can provide by coherence to a personal body but also a social body, in synchronous activity. With a full range of degrees of freedom. To “dereligify”, stripping the narrative and leaving the architecture of enactment naked. With a pocket for creating the interface, or language/story, by which to deepen into the ecology of practice on a personal level. The discovery of genuine personal

Directed emergence as a third attractor between freedom and control

Liminal Commons Care-work: a contemplative piece

Quit trying to look good. Be beautiful.

“If I wasn’t born so beautiful I could have been a god”

That’s a lyric I once wrote. Self reference. A good start. What can I say? I like it. I like what it does by counterposing beauty and godhood, and then placing me situationally into the gradient between. Because I was born. In the framework laid out by this line, to be born is to be born beautiful. The song itself explores the nature of being a common template for a group in which each member is uniquely flawed while essentially the same, and of the mistakes we make as we grow into who we are. When writing it, one of the relationships I wanted to look at was between mistakes and growth.

The Life Cycle of Affordance

The Heist

How to craft a hyper-sigil from free energy in the field of now, and of history

Good artists steal, bad artists copy

stealing with integrity

To adopt it you m,ust adapt it

A Contemplative on Transformational Creativity

This will be a freeform and demonstrative walkthrough of a creative practice I do. I will explain the reasons why I do, what it is like to do it, the outcomes I’ve encountered so far and the potential outcomes down the road. I will also apply some of the concepts I've introduced on this Substack.

As has been mentioned previously, a problem space is the recognition that problems are relational to the space of their occurrence, and are thus relational to all other aspects of that space. This renders everything in the space as at least a potential problem. A problem space is the set of conditions from which a range of problems can and do emerge. Conceptual space, in this framing, is a comprehensive map of the conditions that comprise the space, the problems which emerge from the space and the moves which resolve the primary tension of each problem. Creative space is what occurs when one applies the map to the territory, the concept to the problem. Generating and resolving tension as one goes. Transformational space is what occurs when one resolves the primary tension of the entire space, thus rearranging the landscape of the problems which can and do occur within it.

It is my view that creative acts, in general, are aimed at transformational creativity. Not all creative acts necessarily SEEK to be the move which catalyzes transformation. Not in an explicit sense. It’s more that all creative acts either consciously or unconsciously contribute to the occurrence of the move when it comes.

I’ve started making content on Youtube and TikTok. I am doing this as an experiment on the practice of transformational creativity. Even if it’s only on a personal, psychological level. Historical transformation is its own story.

Commons Affordances

Weekly Invitation

Hello friends, There is a twist on this weeks invitation. It occurred to me that it might be fun and useful to pick up some of the administrative load by reaching out to Victor and asking if he wouldn’t mind me writing this weeks post.

ERS as a systemic process of perspectival adjustment in relation to the Canvas as a hyper-object. The rendered art of an individuals experience. It has focal elements across its entire surface. It also has boundaries which are very clearly delineated. It’s scope and scale will alter, as it has the entire time so far.

The practice is to create a gallery which offers the individual a perspective on the gestalt. It also allows them to identify the specific images which they have become fixated upon and to then tension them in relation to other instrumental aspects upon the canvas. To distinguish between a focal element and the gestalt.

This offers a modular interpretive surface by which to derive meaning about life, as well as to encode mental processes.

Was inspired by a substack piece about intrusive memories, and life transformations away from being a person who was negatively impacted by various traumas and became a shadow self. The shadow self still lingers in the memories

LAA’s being composed of 6 surfaces, 5 solid and one ephemeral/ethereal

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