Month: June 2015

Imagine the Limits of the Imagination (Part I)

negativegeography19 Comments
From Supernatural Magazine
From “Supernatural Magazine”, used without permission (please forgive)

I want to write simply, but the pathways of habit, belief and assumption that I’m trying to describe are entangled. I’m not interested in trying to dis-entangle each strand. I’ve never been able to untangle a hose let alone a mind. But there’s a difference between thinking your way out of a mental entanglement and letting the entanglement unravel of its own accord. I can’t think my way out of a wet paper bag. But it’s easy enough to fall out of one.

It’s a lazy man’s way of learning. Keep going along the usual twisted pathways, but be alert enough and precise enough in the description to at least “embarrass” the habits of thinking into “thinking twice.” This is a small part of what Jeppe means by “refiguring,” and an aspect of the plasticity that Tony refers to. And it’s a small part of what I tried to describe in the manifesto as “second sight.”Read More »

A Moment to Drift

negativegeography6 Comments

WhaleEye9-JeanLuc

One Last Preparatory Post

It’s been interesting to reflect on the change I’ve felt after posting that long introductory “manifesto.” I’m tremendously grateful to the people who read the thing closely. (Special thanks to Tony Dias, Jeppe Graugaard and Brian Shampnois). It feels like a great privilege to have found even one person, let alone a half-dozen, who rigorously engaged the piece. And I suspect that the ideal size of this pool of perceived readers corresponds to David Bohm’s ideal pool for dialogue – between 5 and 25. I can’t realistically picture more than that without the voice becoming vague and almost political in character (as if I were making a public speech).

I never used to think I needed anyone to read anything I wrote apart from the one person to whom I was writing. But that person’s attention has been wavering of late (it was my dog). And I know now that the quality of attention I’m able to put into this thing is dependent on the quality of attention of the reader. And this is a strange thing to realize: I can’t say certain things unless I know there’s someone there who understands what I mean.Read More »