Yesterday’s marathon of a day left
me feeling drained, physically, but also a bit giddy and I had much to
say when I spoke first with Kelly and then later with my ‘band mates’ the trio
of colleagues that with me is forming, finally, what I have been announcing for
the past two years as the new classic quartet: Tyson Lewis, Troy Richardson,
and Sam Rocha.
And now, in the evening, as I
prepare to revisit the writing from this day, I re-read my account of
travelling late last night, of being enframed in what Bob Marley called the
‘concrete jungle’, and I am struck by the details of the phenomenological
description. It seems to me a matter
of being ‘ready-to-hand’, which is the Heideggerian term for the fundamental
attitude towards things that present themselves for practical use. On my take, maintaining the modality of ‘ready-to-hand’ enables us to maintain the
readiness for phenomenology, and resisting the desire for the (vertical)
transcendence into what Heidegger calls the attitude of ‘present-at-hand’,
which is the manner of relating to things via perception. The latter is the move into theory, and into
metaphysics insofar as metaphysics is the leap beyond the physical, in the sense of the unmediated effacement with
things. But the attitude is not
enough, of course. We need tools and the
technology, the know how, to respond to the world when it is disclosing itself
to us ‘ready-to-hand’. We need the tools
for our techne, to bring forth the techne physis: things we make. The techne
onto are the more fundamental things of nature, and it is from this that we
become attuned to the original or natural attitude, what we might call the
practical orientation. Our
sensibilities, which we might describe in terms of our embodied perception –
although ‘perception’ already sets us a kind of divide that removes us from the
immediacy of experience that is anticipated with the ‘ready-to-hand’ attitude
-- become sharpened and more acute when
we are moving in close proximity to what is raw and unprocessed. Walking in the wilderness we experience the
education disclosed in the relation of Being and learning, a general
categorization for the event of appropriation and the attunement that occurs
with that event. I would contend that
when we are experiencing the pedagogy of the forest we needn’t carry any tools,
for the phenomenology that is happening is the existential ‘description’ of us
that Thoreau described as a ‘translation’.
When we are worked on by the forest we are experiencing a kind of formation,
and we are being cultivated. Here is the
reversal of the relationship whereby humans attempt to exercise a domination
over the natural world, with the result being the hyper processing of all that
is offered by the ground and the displacement of said ground by a concrete
jungle made up of the materials made in that hyper processing. If we are worked on by the forest, we are
formed and cultivated and become cultured, which, from our usual ways of
understanding those terms, only means that we are prepared to build and to
make, and before we do that, perceive with a heightened sensibility to craft
something beautiful from what we have gathered.
The writing of the legend of
Zarathustra continued on this day ten years ago…after a few days in Scotland,
and the composition of an arrangement of a scene from Plato’s Symposium…
“A great cloud of misty air rolled
down the western side of the range, covering rock, tree and all living beings
like a damp blanket. Zarathustra
shivered, but did not awake. ‘Sing
songs, make music, and rise with me, brother.
I am the ‘poet of space’ the child of ‘Sky and Earth, these two who are
good for everyone, and hold Order.’ You remain silent, like the broken gong
that once rang with pride and confidence.
While you sleep, your companions, your shadows climb…”
As I was just now re-typing this I
stopped..Wait, I thought to myself, I feel like I’ve typed this already. So I checked, and, sure enough, I re-typed
that entire section of the legend on Monday when I was at the Drew
library! Something about this week, the second week of
September…I get all mixed up, or so it seems.
I’m sure it has a lot to do with the beginning of the academic year, and
the transition from the modalities of the summer!
I’m grateful to have discovered that
‘mistake’ after I’d done some
reflections on the writing of phenomenology.
And I find it somewhat coincidental that on two consecutive days I have
been confronted with my mistakes, misreadings that have propelled a writing
that is coming from a natural attitude, and offering the descriptions of
everyday life, the practical. This
seems to be where the philosophy is happening for me, where the Contact! is occurring and the common
ground is being experienced. The
question is whether or not this common ground is also the primal ground?
3.0 (Thursday, Bar Harbor/Acadia, ME). I need to give myself a pat on the back for the rides I have completed this week on the Acadia NP carriage roads (thanks Mr. Rockefeller), the longest being the 17.8 miler I completed on Tuesday. Yesterday was Around the Mt, another longish ride, and easily the most picturesque with stunning views of Northeast Harbor and the small islands off MDI. The riding has been a great balance to the academic work. Yesterday, the reading of Part 2 Writing produced mixed results. July was a bit of a challenging month at home, so I'm not surprised that Part 2 turned out to be a bit choppy. But I was surprised that at a certain...tightness that resonated from the writing. I'll need to massage the material, among other edits. There was also the inclusion of previously written stuff that will need to be chopped down, and some material that will end up in part 1 Reading. So while I was feeling high after reading part 1, I was brought down to earth yesterday. Today, final day of reading, part 3 Discussion. I have a feeling this material will be mostly good! And I'll work from Patty's place. I went to Forage in Portland a few times, but that is a familiar place. Choco-Latte cafe is mostly tourists, and kind of distracting.
ReplyDeleteIs the common ground also the primal ground? NO! Here's why. Arendt distinguishes between the world and nature, between what is made by human hands, and what made by natural processes. The carriage roads are a great example of the world: they are shared in common with others, and they were designed to bring folks out into nature, and also to have them share the experience together. Hence they are part of the common ground that is the foundation of the world. And importantly they are public and available to all. Arendt emphasizes the public/private distinction, and while the world includes whatever is made by human hands, it only ever is common when it is part of the public realm. The primal ground, however, is what is even more fundamental, more essential, existentially and ontological speaking. It exists before and persists after the construction and destruction and reconstruction of the world. It is what offers us up the possibility of making our worlds, but does not exclude us from destroying them. The primal ground is the neutral ontological foundation of life itself, all life.