This ten year commemoration blog is evolving, as it should, and lately I feel compelled to not simply make some commentary on the meditation that is being read and commemorated, but, when I’m called to do it, to say something about the ‘location’ or ‘context’ where I find myself, and this means, necessarily, the ontological/existential place I’m in when I record the reading of an OPM. Today I was moved not only to write something about my location, but also to include to some images that ‘say’ more than I can with my words, and thus provide me with what I might want call ‘border’ or ‘threshold writing’ because it offers a most compelling demonstration of the signpost of the ineffable, which has been the concept moving the meditations for the past week since I’ve transitioned from an exclusive focus on Heraclitus. However, these images are compelling not simply because they offer a way of showing or pointing to ineffable, that is, disclosing the boundary where ‘ordinary’ language ends and an alternative form of ‘scribing’ enters the scene, but also ‘say’ something about the writing process I am commemorating this year, and which I have focused some attention on the past few days, at times
expressing my sense of dis-equilibrium with the repetition of the writing. And that brings me to the images, or, rather, what is said about them aka what they ‘are’ and what they represent.
Context: alongside the ten year commemoration I am engaged in the scholarship that has been initiated by my recently completed and presented Lapiz paper. Today, I took up two sources of inspiration and connection that are relevant to the past days’ meditations and commentaries.
The first source are Abenaki petroglyphs, documented in a short pamphlet “Picture Writing of the
American Indians in Maine,” by Garrick Mallery, from the tenth annual report of the Bureau of Ethnology 1888-1889, published in 1893 by the US Government Printing Office, and copied for the Maine State Library System on October 14, 1929. I requested the report and received it today at the USM Portland Glickman library. The report details petroglyphs at the mouth of Machias river, and offers the image below. What caught my attention is the report’s description of the process by
which the glyphs were [probably] made. Here is part of that description, which caught my attention because it resonated with the writing experiment I am commemorating: “The intaglio carving of all the figures was apparently made by repeated blows of a pointed instrument – doubtless hard stone; not held as a chisel, but working by repetition of hammerings or peekings.”(p. 82)
American Indians in Maine,” by Garrick Mallery, from the tenth annual report of the Bureau of Ethnology 1888-1889, published in 1893 by the US Government Printing Office, and copied for the Maine State Library System on October 14, 1929. I requested the report and received it today at the USM Portland Glickman library. The report details petroglyphs at the mouth of Machias river, and offers the image below. What caught my attention is the report’s description of the process by
which the glyphs were [probably] made. Here is part of that description, which caught my attention because it resonated with the writing experiment I am commemorating: “The intaglio carving of all the figures was apparently made by repeated blows of a pointed instrument – doubtless hard stone; not held as a chisel, but working by repetition of hammerings or peekings.”(p. 82)
The second source are Incan quipus, that offer a way of ‘accounting’ in the sense of offering a phenomenological documentation of what I want to call the location of people in a specific time and space, such that it offers a kind of existential archive and/or trail map. The form of the quipu is
especially inspiring, with its parallel cords that include a range of colors and knots all issuing forth from a shared chord. It is impossible to avoid perceiving the quipu a re-presentation of the sun and its rays. For me, however, the quipu is compelling and inspiring because, like the petroglyph, the
process of making it is one defined by repetition of the same with slight and subtle variation.
especially inspiring, with its parallel cords that include a range of colors and knots all issuing forth from a shared chord. It is impossible to avoid perceiving the quipu a re-presentation of the sun and its rays. For me, however, the quipu is compelling and inspiring because, like the petroglyph, the
process of making it is one defined by repetition of the same with slight and subtle variation.
Finally, an additional source, which brought these sources together with the project of Being and Learning, was the translator’s introduction by Maria Lugones and Joshua M. Price to
Rodolfo Kusch’s Indigenous and Popular Thinking in America, when they offer an introduction to ontological backdrop of Kusch’s project: “Though the cosmos is unstable, being pulled
towards extremes, the possibility of its internal equilibrium is both a communal affair and central to estar bien. While the internal balance depends on each person, each person is in relation to a habitat, a center, a community…The attempt to inhabit the intersubjective pull toward this center of equilibrium
guided the construction of Cuzco [Peru] in accordance with a theological architecture. From the center radiated lines (ceques) which were oriented to the four directions and in the care of different ayullas (communities). In each ceque were the shrines (guacas).”(p.lviii) This connects so well with Heraclitus, standing in his home, warming his hands by the fire: ‘for here too the gods are
present.’
Connecting to the theme of this blog entry, which is addressing the repetitive nature of the writing that is describing the limits of language in the face of an ineffable that is being disclosed: “Only through ritual can the tear in the cosmos be pulled toward germination. In the exercise of ritual knowledge, the subject enters within himself, inhabiting and contemplating the asi of the world, with its possibility of a turn in time that may spring germinative possibilities…The tearing which is fundamental to the cosmos is structured rhythmically at different levels…The one who knows (saber) is able to transcend beyond the visible, the nameable, the ‘here and now of existence’ (pacha), to an understanding of the structure of the cosmos, its rhythm, and the unnameableextremes.”(p. lix)Rodolfo Kusch’s Indigenous and Popular Thinking in America, when they offer an introduction to ontological backdrop of Kusch’s project: “Though the cosmos is unstable, being pulled
towards extremes, the possibility of its internal equilibrium is both a communal affair and central to estar bien. While the internal balance depends on each person, each person is in relation to a habitat, a center, a community…The attempt to inhabit the intersubjective pull toward this center of equilibrium
guided the construction of Cuzco [Peru] in accordance with a theological architecture. From the center radiated lines (ceques) which were oriented to the four directions and in the care of different ayullas (communities). In each ceque were the shrines (guacas).”(p.lviii) This connects so well with Heraclitus, standing in his home, warming his hands by the fire: ‘for here too the gods are
present.’
All this connects quite well with OPM 92, where I write: "To have leaped or crossed over into the company of the Sage is to take up poetic dwelling. This dwelling we now see as a making, a building, the creation of being together, the cultivation of community, the sowing of seeds of friendship and the reaping of the harvest of mindfulness as the thinking of the people who are enjoined in heeding the call of Being...[Painstaking listening] is thus the work of making an authentic community which is built upon the foundation of mindfulness, steadfast openness and readiness for the unforseen."
3.0 - The 2.0 commentary that happened 10 years ago this day is remembered vividly because it happened in the days just after the end of the semester when I'm still super focused but not distracted by all the various commitments on campus. I'm only partially there on this day 20 years after writing OPM 92, as I still have a stack of finals to grade and lingering committee work. Nevertheless I remember when I was writing up in the Glickman library, the same location where I wrote the 30k+ words last summer. As an example of a dwelling that is certainly a primary one for me. As I think back on this project that are only a handful of
ReplyDeleteplaces where I routinely wrote. Starting with the original project in 2004: the Better Bagel Cafe (Amityville) -- where so many OPMs were written, followed by discussions with a real deal yoga teacher who would enjoy his daily cup everyday at about the same time I was finishing up my writing; Cedar Point State Campground (East Hampton) -- I took my daughters Kat and Sofie camping there during the summer of 2004 no fewer than 3 weeks, and the writing that produced the tale of Zarathustra happened there. 2014 -- the videos and writing happened all over the place as it seems I was traveling quite a bit that year, especially in the late winter and spring, so there isn't one place, aside from the Glickman library, that I recall as one of those locations where the writing happened. Of course, after 2012 the place where I have been doing so of my best writing has been the commuter rails: NJT & LIRR!
Connecting these memories to OPM 92: if originary writing is a moment of poetic praxis, then it is related to those locations that are inspiring or better stated offering up the conditions for the possibility. These locations are those "poetic dwellings" where we make something new. The original writing emphasized the building of a learning community. Currently that moment is the third one in the dialectical process. The original project described an entirely dialogic situation. Being and learning emerged from the call to thinking together with others, the evocation of dialogue. My doctoral dissertation was entirely engaged with dialogue and communicative action, the performance of speaking and listening. I have transferred the dialogic to the situation of reading and writing, what we might call the preparatory work that is necessary before crossing over into the learning community. Reading is a dialogue, but so to writing. The dialogic relationship is dialectical: between two. At the risk of sound anachronistic, the dialogic is a dialectic between subject and object, with the caveat that the "object" has subjective qualities to it. Indeed, it is the "subjective" character of the "object" that resonates and thereby captivates. The aesthetic experience is possible because the "object" resonates or vibrates with the aura of singularity. The books speaks to the reader. And writing is a response the voice of the muse. Once the initial sentence has been written, a conversation unfolds. Writing is not the documentation of thinking. Writing is an actualization of thinking, a concrete realization of thought/feeling.
To have leaped or crossed over into the company of the Sage is to take up poetic dwelling. This dwelling we now see as a making, a building, the creation of being together, the cultivation of community