OPM 191, August 24th Meditation (2004 & 2014)

When I returned from Sunday morning lacrosse I was looking forward to a ice cold smoothie featuring the kale and carrot I bought at the Portland farmer’s market yesterday, and also to relaxing and reading the Maine Sunday Telegram.  I mention this because I was mostly pleasantly surprised to see that top story to be a lengthy feature article on the latest wilderness project in Maine: the Katahdin Woods and Waters, a 150,000 acres area of forest, lakes and rivers adjacent to Baxter state park (home of Katahdin), which is destined to become a national park and national recreation area.  It’s the largest area of unforested land east of the Missisippi, and deservedly holds the mystique that is the Maine woods.   It is precisely through these woods that Thoreau travelled when he made his journey to Katahdin, a journey that captured my attention and philosophical imagination at the end of July and into August.  Over the next two days the paper will feature articles by reporter Tux Turkel and photographer Gregory Recas as the paddle the same East Branch of the Penobscot River that Thoreau went on during his trip to Katahdin.  Having found myself called to this part of the world for the mystique of Maine, this news of the latest initiative to conserve the wilderness is a confirmation of the faith I have that this call is akin to grace; and the naturalist turn is not a random decision on my part, but an example of the event of appropriation in the sense that my being here is what if often called ‘destiny’, or what I would call the moving present, where the ‘present’ is identified as my being in this place, Maine.   My being-here is an event because I understand this location to be the only place where I truly be.   The old language of ‘authenticity’ is tempting to roll out, but I’m not ready to do that yet.  Suffice it to say that there is a continuity between the first summer I spent in Maine in 1977 and this day 37 years later, an existential continuity, and perhaps I can use the world ‘self’ or ‘identity’ to describe it.  Another way of thinking about this is to say using the experiences of everyday life that there are times and places, moments and locations, when and were we really don’t show up.   Folks would say in those moments that we are ‘there’ or we aren’t present.  Of course, our bodies are present, and so to our consciousness, but there is no attunement to location and what is happening, and we will hardly recall any details of what has happened.   In this sense ‘identity’ or the ‘self’ is constituted by experiences, and experiences are precisely those significant events, the moments and locations, that stand out and come into presence in such a powerful way that we are gathered into the presencing with it.   And it is precisely this gathering that I describe as the coming together of a self.  In sum, if there is a specific place where we have consistently had experiences then that place can be described as a the place where we are ‘from’, which is to say, the place that has formed us into who we are. 

Now this talk of experience takes me to the writing from this day ten years ago, with the meditation that begins with a discussion of “an experiential philosophy”.  It continues: “we assign this practice ‘experiential’ to emphasize the ‘non-cognitive’, ‘non-speculative’ character of the philosophical endeavor.”(8/24/04)  If a place that consistently gives rise to experiences --  a ‘moving present’ --  and in doing so is described as ‘forming’ us, then an experiential philosophy is one that is a mimetic representation of that place based formation: it is a philosophy that expresses self-formation, but not in the sense of a self forming itself, or what Foucault calls ‘care of the self,’ but, rather, in the sense that the self arises dialogically, or ‘in concert’ with others.    If  learning is “an experiential philosophy” it happens as “the event in which a many are gathered together in a common project.”(8/24/04)

The meditation take off and focuses on the roots of ‘forge’ in the Latin fabrica.  “Fabrica,  which has been closely retained by the French fabrique, indicates why ‘forge’ is well suited to capture” the work of the learning community.  As a dialogic philosophy, “learning is the making of a common world, the weaving of the various threads of humanity into an ornate textile that tells the story of humanity…Learning is thus a telling of a story, the weaving together of a text from the texts of words of the plurality of ‘authors’ who participate in the community.  Text [Middle English and French texte], the ‘original words of an author, esp. as opp., to a translation, commentary, etc.;’ arises from the Latin textus, or style, and later a more venerable term to name the Scriptures.  Textus is thus importantly linked to Logos, the gathering directive.  Textus is the outcome of the weaving of the voices enjoined by collective heeding of the Word, the textile that is woven in the gathering that compels all to speak ‘beyond’ themselves to others.  Textus is rooted in the more originary texere, weaving, and in the same way the forging of poetic dwelling is always the originary modality of learning as an experiential philosophy, an enactment…the ongoing fabrication, the perpetual making of the fabrica, the incessant creation of the world as a weaving together of various ‘threads,’ the polyphonic arrangement of a plurality of voices.”(8/24/04)  Aside from an objection I have about the exclusion of commentary writing from the definition of a text, I share an extended citation of the abridged last section of the meditation from 8/24/04 because it is the first time in many weeks that I seem to have broken through to some fresh writing via some revealing etymology.