Enlightenment Pt 4: Yellow

As the flaming dawn softens through the morning into cheerful sunlight and the brilliance of noon mellows into afternoon gold, the sun blazes through the yellow hues of the spectrum.  Yellow is the color of the third chakra, located at the solar plexus, ruled by the element of fire and the sense of sight.  Where the orange saffron robes of yogis signified renunciation, the yellow saffron robes of Buddhists signify wisdom.  They symbolize a distillation of clarity, a transformation of appetite into intelligence in the crucible of the will.

It is the element of fire that acts on the eyes to provide sight.   Sunlight, firelight, incandescent light, the distant twinkle of stars, the flickering glow of florescent gases, all trigger our eyes to map an image of an external world.  Once able to determine what is surrounding us, combined with perception of distance and depth, we can move the sensation of desire into the realm of action.  A growing infant doesn't begin to reach for objects until he is able to focus his eyes, and, given a number of objects within range, will select those objects that have the greatest visual appeal in terms of line and contrast.  It is by a process of object recognition, selection, and acquisition that infants extend themselves into locomotion.  Desire motivates the creation of strategies to attain its objects, and the more complicated the desire, the more clever one has to be to achieve it.

At the solar plexus is the neural nexus for the body's digestive system.  This is the furnace of the body, where the metabolism of food generates heat and provides the energy to power action.  The digestive organs, through the autonomic nervous system, are wired to react to the stress level of the environment.  In the presence of high stress, the motility of the large intestine decreases, the stomach contracts, and peristalsis in the esophagus increases, which creates that sick stomach sensation.  In the absence of stress, the heart relaxes and the digestive organs rev up.  Through the course of life, we lay down memories of a variety of events with the visceral states they engender.  This mental activity creates what we understand as emotions and gut reactions to situations.  Our thinking patterns can also create stress, because any thought or memory associated with the sensations of stress work on the sympathetic nervous system in the same way that external stimuli do.  When our digestive organs are stressed severely enough, they contract violently and we vomit.  Even after the stomach is fully emptied, we can continue to vomit bile and digestive juices.  As anyone knows who has ever been through that discomfort, those juices are unquestionably yellow.

It is no coincidence that the iconic happy face is also yellow.  The sensation of happiness is relaxed, warm, full, viscerally active, and as comfortable as a cat sleeping in a pool of sunlight.  The morning sun streaming in the window is enough to bring on a smile with its promise of a good day.  Yellow is a bright, cheerful color, full of the benevolence of a life-supporting sun.  Even in its darker hues, its golden gleams ignite a special greed, and a shiny yellow metal wields extraordinary power in human culture.

When emotion and desire combine with memory of successful achievements, intelligence begins to take form.  Humans have a highly developed ability to learn, hypothesize, experiment, associate, strategize, imagine, think and create.  While all that takes place in the brain, not even the most abstract conceptualization occurs without a visceral component.  There is no I to think or be without a body map to sustain it.  

As the colors shift through the spectrum with the increased frequency of lightwaves,  the kundalini moves through the chakras and increasingly rarified elements.  The compact solidity of earth gives way to the fluidity of water which in turn thins to the insubstantial dance of flame.  The experience of each chakra rises too from the base needs of survival to the light of intelligence and the acquisition of knowledge.  While history may consider reason and enlightenment as interchangeable names for the same era, human enlightenment does not culminate with the tricks of the mind, the glitter of matter, or even the comfortable happiness of cheerful warmth.  Never the less, as the afternoon sun gilds the day, and full stomachs rest to digest, it is pleasant to let the mind wander along a yellow brick road through the Oz of its fascinations.

Snow

It starts out of a grey sky as a half seen notion, just winking on the periphery.  A flake, and then another, tiny crystals dusting the dark wool of my coat.  Softly floating, gentle pricks on my exposed cheeks kiss me with cold excitement.  The piling darkness of the sky gives breath to beauty in little bursts, now swirling in white array around me.  I look up as it falls to catch a point of origin in view, but there is only motion, a rush from everywhere and nowhere in particular.   The stars shed their distant coldness which this way falls in miniature perfection on the earth, a blanket of cold light solidified on the ground.  

To me the snow is romance, grace, an ethereal delight given to transform the landscape into brilliant purity.  Its sparkling silence whispers to me in memory, an image of another time, another life.  The inconveniences of iced over windshields, sodden boots, grimy slush, coarse salt rime, unplowed streets and poorly shoveled sidewalks have long since faded into forgotten distance.  What's left are flurries, the small white clumps softly dancing in the air, the light and lightness, the melting wet on face and tongue, the embracing whiteness, a slip and glide under my skis, a frigid blessedness drifting across the moon.  Living in a snowless land is a choice that leaves me no regrets, just reminiscence, and a mysterious thrill at the chill frill distilled in the clarity of a snowy night.

The Premise

Start with a premise:

Two dice rolled,

The number on the first die

added to an infinite arithmetic

sequence of the second number.

Which combinations will produce 

a perfect square somewhere

in the resulting sequence?

It is a debate for mathletes

and siblings around a  table,

the laptop called into play whose

trial and result program makes

an aggravating background beep

like a dripping faucet

churning out numbers

in stream with the voices'

rising falling currents. 

Any two, when added to 

infinitely again the same

moment by moment

do not always achieve perfection.

Another two, added alike,

will produce each perfected gem

upon its turn.

One plus one is obvious,

but five plus three

takes much more figuring.

When random dice threw us together

I did not know what perfect squares

we could add around our table

we just kept adding up the moments

letting the sequence run on 

in an accumulation of identity

rooted in the place and time we met.

I am no laptop to calculate

yet I discern a function 

in the easy laughter.  

This investigation probes

for theoretic values,

where absolute value lies. 

These squares of you and me,

the geometrically sound

sequence of our effort,

give meaning to our premise

and prove the sum of

all our parts. 

QED.

Enlightenment Pt 3: Orange

Rising through the spectrum from the reds at the base, orange next comes into view.  It is the color of the second chakra, located at the genitals, which surges with the life-giving drive for bodily pleasure.  It is the pleasures of the flesh, on the lips and tongue as well as on the genitals, that relates the second chakra to the sense of taste and the element of water.  A newborn child, emerging from the waters of the womb, comes equipped with a desire for sweetness.  We are creatures of the ocean, salt water held in by the membranes of our cells, and our chemistry demands aqueous solution to perform every bodily function.  We taste and reproduce with the juices of life, saliva, mucus, semen, and the pervasive intercellular liquids that allow ion channels to transmit sensation into the oh-so-receptive pleasure palaces of our brains.

In the sensory-motor cortex of the brain, the area dedicated to the mouth, lips, and tongue is second only to the hands for size and number of sensory cells involved.  If you add in the genitals, there is no comparison for density of sensation concentrated in these special orifices.  We are also equipped with a limbic system that binds sensation to memory with the various hues of our emotions, deepening and saturating our memories according to the pleasure we experience.  We are wired for appetite, to crave pleasures, to seek out the tastes that cascade orgasmic delight throughout our bodies and minds.  

There are numerous species of plants that take advantage of our pleasure-seeking to further their own reproduction.  One way they advertise their desirably sweet nutritiousness is with beta carotene, the bright, bold, orange pre-cursor to vitamin A.  Carrots, papayas, yams, squashes, oranges, mangoes, persimmons, apricots, so many delectable fruits and vegetables clearly proclaim themselves as eminently edible with their eye-catching orange color.  In a green, leafy world, the earliest simians had no difficulty discovering these delicious treasures.  As our species evolved to become cultivators of the land, we assisted natural selection to breed tastier and more colorful varieties for the further pleasure of our palettes.

With our bellies full, we can turn our attention to reproduction.  Appetite for sex and appetite for food are so well intertwined that romance is iconically defined by a dinner date.  On the flip side, many compulsive overeaters will admit their appetite for food is an effort to suppress their emotional and sexual frustrations.  Well-fed populations are populations that breed, whether humans or rodents or anything else.  In the beauty of order emerging  from chaos, life organizes simpler organisms into more specialized creatures through an ongoing process of eating and screwing.  The wondrous complexity of it all shows up in who eats what and whom, and you don't have to be a dedicated sybarite to notice that the oral-genital connection is a viable avenue to mind-blowing climax.

In mythology, the goddess of dawn was associated with rapacious female desire and all-important fecundity.  She rose from the sea, the horizon at first as red as her menses, then glowing orange until the day grew bright with the fire of the sun.  It was in her honor that the saffron plant was cultivated as a dye for clothing and a seasoning for food.  Native to Crete, saffron spread throughout the ancient world,  helped as much by its power as an aphrodisiac among the Persians as by its other uses.  The association between saffron's color, which ranges from almost red to pale yellow, and the life-giving force of sexual appetite was so strong in India at the time of the Buddha that his followers chose saffron to color their robes as a symbol for what they were sacrificing with their monastic celibacy.  The wandering ascetics in India as well have worn that color for millennia to announce their renunciation of household life.  It is as if by wrapping themselves in the color of life they show the struggle to sublimate the urges of the body into the quest of the spirit.  Even politically, India has chosen a deep saffron orange for its flag to symbolize struggle and sacrifice.

When the kundalini serpent awakens the second chakra, the senses ignite.  Whether in the molten glory of orgasm or the breaking water of childbirth, we swim here in the ocean of life.  We surge with the pull of its tides, called by the juices in us to mingle with another of our kind in an intimate embrace of kiss and caress, desire and creativity, and the ecstatic sweetness of physical passion ensures the generation of generations to come.  For many creatures that is the be-all and end-all of their existence, a lifelong cycle of feeding and fucking, with contentment and satiety lasting only as long as it takes to sleep off a meal.  There is more to being human, and the kundalini serpent must slither further up the chakras if one is to avoid the rut of mindless bestiality.  However, the journey of enlightenment deliberately navigates the oceanic vitality of our sensual appetites to swell our experiences with the joys of palate and passion.  Bobbing on the crests and furrows of pleasure's waves, we can drift in delight and deliciousness, discovering in this way the hydroelectric dynamo whose essential power fuels all life.

Obscurity

It was night. Isn't it always, in a film noir cliche kind of way, always night when anything of note happens? Only this wasn't much to note, unless, like her, you have to notice every chance encounter in order to see that one night is different from the next. It had to be night, because for her there was only night after the time change. She emerged into night from days that oscillated in florescent brightness from numbness to boredom and back, days that were a demand on her patience more than on her ability, days measured by a ticktock of fingers on a keyboard clicked around the clock with a second hand's regularity. Stepping out onto the rain-blackened sidewalk into the covering shadow, she closed the door on that false constancy of forced brightness and opened her eyes again.

Light pooled and splashed in gutter puddles, coursed by with the slow searching beams of passing cars, bled from windows and porches of the houses that lined the streets. Rain fell softly in a drizzly mist that hadn't quite decided whether to pour or to leave off. She turned her collar up and hunched under her umbrella, but the rain caught up to her and carried in on its wet breath a moment of indecision. That was all it took. She turned her steps left, not right towards home, and let them carry her instead into the warm, familiar busyness of her favorite bakery cafe.

She sat down with her coffee and should-have-been birthday cake at a small table near the door, the only one empty, where the night gushed in with a chill burst every time the door opened. "I need this," she thought to herself as she sipped the hot, fragrant brew. She slowly slid the tines of her fork through the cake's thick chocolate. "I need this," she affirmed as she held that rich intensity on her tongue until its bittersweetness melted into a shimmer of memory. It hadn't bothered her that her birthday had come and gone without regard over a week ago. She had seen too many to care much for them, and had no desire to be humiliated by a forest of candles, but she had missed this ritual sensuality, this dark perfection unfolding in her mouth as celebration not of age but of still living.

She was in the midst of this reverie when the door opened to spill the contents of the night into the room. This time it was a solitary young man who stood dripping beside her table for several moments as if to adjust his eyes to the difference in light. She saw him first in the soft focus of her half-lidded inward eyes, and the light of the room eddied around him like a glowing halo. He wore an old black trench coat open over black jeans and a once white cable-knit sweater. His wet black hair stood in spikes where he ran his fingers through it. He moved as if underwater, slowly and deliberately, as he ordered his coffee and looked around for a place to sit down. The empty chair at her table mocked her solitude with silent irony, and it was inevitable that he would sit down there.

He did not look at her as he wrapped both hands around his steaming cup, gathering the heat into his palms. He brought the coffee to his mouth with the same slow concentration that he did everything and held it there as if it were to become part of his face. There was something in his studied indifference that allowed her to look at him directly, to see the curve of his cheekbone blend into the hard line of his jaw and the ebony sheen of his eyes contrast with the pallor of his skin. He reached into his pocket and brought out a few items that he laid carefully on the table in front of them. A cheap black plastic Casio watch. A medium-sized cowrie shell. A battered black wooden domino. He spread them as if at a flea market, his wares for sale, worth a few cents more if displayed well to catch the light. Then he picked up each, like a reluctant customer judging the usefulness or sense in it.

By now, she was watching curiously, her cake almost forgotten. He drew her in with his silence, until even by speaking, he could not lose her. "What is the thread that binds these bits?" he asked in the tone of one picking up a conversation where it left off. "The connection, you know. There has to be one." When he looked at her, she knew his inquiry was genuine. His finger stroked along the polished curve of the cowrie shell in his hand and then back up along the dark line of the infolding edges. She shivered slightly. "I see one connection," she said, forgetting herself along with the cake. "Money. Time is money. Cowries were used as money. Dominoes can be played for money." He looked up at her sharply, his eyes direct into hers. "Yeah. Yeah, thanks. Alright!" was all he said before he became a flurry of activity.

He gulped down the rest of his coffee, stood and pulled out his wallet. He dropped a five dollar bill down on the table and in the same motion, scooped up his trinkets. "What....?" she started to say, but he cut her off. "That's for the tip. Thanks!" With that as parting shot, he was out the door into the night. She looked at Abraham Lincoln's face staring up at her. He didn't seem to know any better than she did what that was all about, but she decided to keep him, for he was, after all, a sort of birthday present and tribute to the pervasive obscurity of night.

Discrimination

Discrimination is making choices.  That is not an evil in itself, though it can be very difficult.  In common parlance, it has come to mean giving preference to one group of people over another group in a way that allows the preferred group more privilege.  That sort of discrimination leads to injustice and deserves the negative connotations.   However, every day we are faced with a myriad of choices and it is in the choosing that we create our lives.  

Making art is a process of deliberation and decision.  Even the most instinctual, stream of consciousness Zen art requires that attention and focus to keep an open mind.  Often decisions are greatly affected by environmental factors the artist can't control, as well as limitations in skill or materials.  The image in the mind's eye doesn't always translate to expression in an exact way, and the feedback of results from the attempt changes the mental image as well.

These three photos began with an open inquiry into whatever caught my eye as I walked through Golden Gate Park.  I found a hollow in a tree small enough to cover with my hand.  I didn't have any image in mind as I brought my camera closer and closer into the hole.  I was shooting in black and white at the time with the camera set on manual aperture adjustment.  I was surprised to see this creepy, crouching tree gollum emerge in the view finder.  I tried a variety of settings to see how contrast, depth of field, and color affected the image.  Of the many shots I took, these are the three that I liked.

Each of these photos has a distinct feel.  I don't have a "favorite" between them, as they all speak to me strongly.  However, I didn't want to post all three to my flickr photostream because I think redundancy would dilute whatever power there is in that image.  For art to be an act of self-expression, I had to align myself with a particular feeling one of those pictures held and choose to share that.  The color photo on the left appeals to my curiosity, my quizzical, rational desire to know what that is clearly and accurately.  The color photo on the right appeals to my senses most powerfully.  The reds are hellish, the shadows dark and impenetrable, and the overall sensation is nightmarish and foreboding.  

The picture I did choose to present is the one on top.  It is most revealing of my state of mind at the time and in reflection.  I see it as mysterious, strange, evocative, and eerie, but not in a directly menacing way.  Because it is in black and white, it shows what my initial curiosity had been, and the high contrast provides a dark creepiness.  It reminds me more of old horror movies than anything I might actually encounter.  Monochrome has that distancing effect on me, as if whatever I am seeing is already in the past or from an alternate world bereft of color.

When I look through the camera, I don't just ask "What do I see?".  I also ask "What can I see?".  I can adjust the focus, the amount of light, the color, the framing, all sorts of things that teach me other possible ways to see.  If it weren't so frustratingly difficult (as a novice) to take professional quality photos, I would feel tremendously powerful by this ability to capture and manipulate vision.  As it is, I simply become more and more self-aware.  I notice my choices in what I see, what I choose to show, and what I want to return to in another light to try for what I missed the first time.

Tonight my writing choice was expository.  I think the image I found inside that tree deserves more.  It is something I want to return to again, to discover the story I see lurking there, to delve into its mysteries, and thus to go into my own Twilight Zone.  Stay tuned.

Nora & Olivier

Nora & Olivier

Originally uploaded by idilyK

He said: What do you think?
She said: Wouldn't you like to know?
He said: I think I do.
She said: You think so?
He said: Of course. I am French and you are a woman.
She said: Then why do you ask?
He said: I like to hear you say it.
She said: I think there is more to you than meets the eye.
He said: For your eyes, ma cherie, I will offer more. Just say the word and I will reveal myself to you.
She said: What, here on the street?
He said: You are risque today, no?
She said: Is it easier to bare your body or your soul?
He said: In the bedroom, the body. On the street, the soul.
She said: What if I want to see both?
He said: Ahhh, women. So demanding!

Enlightenment Pt 2: Red

Red, the lowest frequency of visual light, rolls in on long, penetrating waves to alert the senses with unmistakeable demand. It is the color of the first chakra, at the base of the spine, where the coiled serpent of kundalini energy originates its cycle through the chakras. This is the root chakra, closest to the support of the earth, occupied with the business of survival, elimination, and stability. The element associated with this chakra is earth, and its controlling sense is smell.

The experience of red, as it surrounds in nature and design, is a highly individual event. If you try to think of what red smells like, assuming you aren't a synesthete, it may be like sun-warmed strawberries picked right off the plant or it may be like the Kool-Aid that washed down every meal you had at summer camp. That all depends on your personal memories. Culturally, red has a variety of associations far beyond the first chakra. It is the valentine color of love, the crimson dye of devotion, the lucky color of celebration throughout Asia, the sexy attention-grabbing hue of machismo and female availability, the ritual color of Neanderthal cave art, the alarming signal of emergency, the politically charged designation of conservatism, communism, nationalism, and plenty of other isms. When I make connections between colors, chakras, elements and senses, I do not mean to suggest that our nervous system is that simplistic. I am describing an overlaid pattern to the infinite combinations of stimulation and response that occur constantly within a conscious body and mind. Amid the chaos of sense awareness, these connections are the strange attractors, the emergent complexities arising from the turbulence.

Eye-catching and powerfully charged with symbolism, red begins the spectrum. I would like to say that the long waves are more easily processed than subtler waves at higher frequencies, but I don't know that as a fact. I did a little online reaction response test just now. (You can too at http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/java/backtime.html.) I was a tiny bit faster at responding to red the first time but not on all subsequent attempts. (I suspect the varied delay times also affect attention and reaction.) I think it more likely that we have evolved to respond quickly to shedding blood, a substance so high in oxygen-carrying iron molecules that it turns bright red on exposure to air. It is that primal alert that denotes survival, our basic need for safety and drive to live.

Linked closely to survival is the sense of smell. It is the primary sense of the reptilian brain which sits at the inner core of the human brain and presides over reflex and instinct. The amygdala, an important little hub in the limbic brain, evolved from more primitive olfactory bulbs. Smell is the sense that first directs us to food and away from danger. It is so basic that we don't even have to be awake for it to affect us, nor do we need to actively notice it for a whole cascade of physiological responses to kick in.

Of the elements, earth is at the densest end of the spectrum. In an inverse relation to lightwaves, the tighter packed the atoms are, the less the motion. It is this closeness of particles that gives rise to surface tensions and the sensation of solidity. As creatures that walk on two legs, an alternating balancing act, we rely heavily on the myriad proprioceptive nerves in our feet, knees, and hips that join in a nexus at the base of the spine. We are held up by the earth and maintain stability by this constant conversation at the root chakra.

Arousal to awareness begins here in the iron rich reds of earth and blood. When we sit to meditate, we can't avoid putting strong, direct pressure on the first chakra. Here, the serpent uncoils its energetic self to slither up the ladder of the spine and spark the other chakras alive with its motion. Then, once the day is through, the belly full and shelter found, it seeks to return here, in the red setting of the sun, to the lightless mercy of our nightly slumber.

Afternoon Still Life

The warm Indian summer sun poured into the courtyard, a welcome turn for a day that had begun crisp. It was almost visiting time as the orderly wheeled the chair into position under a flaming maple. The old woman remained hunched in her new spot, her white head bent down close to her chest, her wizened fingers picking at the blanket on her lap. From time to time she would sway her head from side to side, her eyes raking the space in front of her where crimson and burnished gold leaves lay in a jumble on the ground. It was her deep nasal inhalations that most showed her appreciation of the surroundings.

The afternoon scents hung heavy in the still air, an abundance of leafy dryness mixed with the late lavender and oregano in the nearby herb boxes. Closer to her clung the stale decay of her deterioration despite the scrubbed clean odor of institutional soap. What made her nostrils flare, though, was the potpourri pomander tied to her armrest for her afternoon aromatherapy session. It was a pungent blend of cinnamon, clove, orange peels, dried apples, and fragrant bark chips. With each inhale, a flood of sense pictures played through her consciousness. Her ravaged brain did not try to order or understand what unfolded there. She simply relived the images as they arose, overlapped, and as quickly faded.

A pile of leaves, dispersing in the wind, frustrating her raking. Burying underneath them, kicking and laughing. Squirrels scampering past, intent on winter stores. Watching her oxfords scuff through the piles while loitering on the way to school. Hearing the voices of her sisters calling her, urging her to hurry along. The leaves rustling in a satisfying way, and the driest brown ones crumbling easily when stomped. Bunches of Indian corn adorning the porches on her way, as do pumpkins in every size of blobby roundness, some carved, some not, some sagging with the soft rot of the long displayed jack-o-lantern.

A drift of golden yellow falling along the path between the dorms. Klaxon horns and excited shouts bursting from passing automobiles in an arm-waving frenzy of postgame high spirits. Hurrying her steps to catch up to the party. The first sight of him, tall and athletic, graceful in motion as he runs across the quad late for class. A kiss caught under a maple tree and another that lingers long enough for the whirligig seeds to helicopter to the ground. The funny Greek letters on his scratchy wool jacket where she lays her cheek between kisses and the sweet malty taste of beer on his breath. His hot panting and the race of her heart as his hands work under her sweater and skirt. An intoxication of fear and newfound lust exploding on her skin everywhere he touches, and the stretching surprise of his masculinity inside her.

The sweet warmth of hot cider, mulled with cinnamon and cloves. A caky doughnut dipped until about to disintegrate melting on her tongue. The frequent clamor of the doorbell and squealing "trick-or-treat"s that force her repeatedly to heave her ungainly girth from the too soft couch. The swollen protuberance of her belly, itself like a pumpkin hanging full in front of her, thumping with impatient life. The warm wet trickle down her thigh and the heavy ache starting to tighten across her back, early signs of a long night in labor. The streaked crimson purple sunsets seen through the window from the rocking chair, the beauty bringing her near tears, as she feels the tightness begin under her arms before the flow engorges her breasts. The soft purity of pudgy baby lips latched onto her fat nipple and the gurgling hiccups as the milk jets into that small suckling mouth.

A walk in the autumn woods, earth wet and loamy, leaves decaying in damp piles. A tiny hand clinging to hers as she measures her steps to the short paces. There is a fierce strength in that grip, despite the tenderness of the little fingers, and she feels whole by that connection. Climbing together into their tree with the wide, low hanging boughs to ride astride like crazy cowgirls, mother and daughter, inseparable companions.

Hands white with flour as she rolls out the pie crust, working fast to keep the dough light. Listening for the expected flurry of afterschool excitement, half in eager anticipation and half annoyance at the expected interruption of her baking. The wild hug engulfing her almost as soon as the door opens. "Pie! O Mommy, I love you, I love you, I love you!" An uninhibited joy soon distracted by milk and cinnamon toast and a musical stream of lilting childish chatter. A counter full of crumbs and dirty dishes and half-filled apple pies recalling her attention after that sparkling interlude, and the business of dinner taking over.

Firelit evenings in the post bedtime hush, his eyes intent and openly admiring. Pulled down on the carpet in the living room, giggling secretively, as his lips and fingers peel away her maternal camouflage and reveal the womanly passions that rock her unguarded moments. His strong solid flesh a bulwark for her needs that she washes against over and again, never eroding his intent to cherish and provide. His voice pervades her, a gravelly baritone giving easily into laughter, a constant conversation drawing her out, sharing each day.

The chill of frost. The crunch underfoot and the mist of blown breath. Trees' denuded branches scraping the pale sky as crow calls ring harsh in the cold air. The house full of asters and russet chrysanthemums. A devastating sense of loss choking her. She can't spill the hot tears that pound behind her eyes, her headache better than thought. A black coldness lurks under her sternum and sends its shooting pains to cripple her sleepless nights. She leans weakly into her daughter's embrace, and wonders how have those small arms grown into this strength?

The afternoon shadows lengthened in the courtyard and cast their shade over the bent old woman. She grew agitated and began to wring her hands repeatedly before they latched onto the solid metal of the ring on her left hand. Twisting it back and forth, she took comfort in that settling compulsion. As if by touching her ring, she determined that it was not lost, she was not lost, nothing was lost. She looked into the encroaching shade and heard again his voice within her mind. Her brain could no longer form an association between the ring and the man, but her fingers did, and their working it around her finger brought him back to her.

Just then her visitor arrived, a tall, stylish woman whose quick bright manners soon filled the courtyard with life. "Oh Mom! There you are! Why are you in the shade like this? Let's wheel you out here in the sun. There, now isn't that better? Look at that maple tree! Those colors are fabulous! It's just like the one we had in the backyard, with those deep reds and bright oranges. You like to look at that, don't you?" Her breathless chatter barely slowed. "There was a lot of traffic coming out here today, but I had to come. Today's my birthday, Mom. Our special day. I wanted to spend some time with you, and look! I brought you this picture of the woods by our old house. We can put it up on the wall in your room and you can see these flaming colors every day!"

The old woman peered up, lifting her head off her chest with notable effort. Her mouth worked noiselessly for almost a minute before a sound emerged. "BeeBee." One word, simple and clear. Her daughter sank down beside her and took both of her hands in her own. Tears glittered behind her eyelashes at the sound of that childhood nickname, so long unused she couldn't remember the last time she had heard it. "Yes, Mommy. It's BeeBee. I'm here with you. I love you, Mommy."

The old woman regarded the strange woman with the neat grey hair and warm, gently lined eyes. She felt the love pouring into her held hands and squeezed back, rhythmically, clinging to the soft warmth that flowed between them. This woman she knew would guide her through the confusion, part the shadows for her. She smelled of home. She would know how to bring her to the one whose voice called out from the vastness beyond the dark. She was the one to deliver her to that strong, abiding love. But not now. Not now. Now it was enough to sit together in the fading sunlight and hold her hand. There was still a glowing grace in the smoldering gold embers of this day, this year, this life.

Competency

I have discovered a new passion.  Or rather, I have discovered a desire to share a longtime passion in a new way.  I have always found comfort in the things that catch my eye, whether they are sweeping panoramas or intriguing little glimpses.  They have been my secret delights that kept me going through the day.  What is different now is that someone has put a camera in my hand.  A digital camera, no less!   Not only does this afford copious error and negate my parsimonious tendency to eke out film as if it were diamond dust, it also allows the immediate gratification of seeing, manipulating, and dispersing the images I catch.

It has been easy to fall into a habit of taking pictures as I walk home from work.  Then I post my daily favorites up on the web (www.flickr.com/photos/dkkinsf) and in the process get lost in the world of images other people have captured.  I am constantly inspired and humbled by this visual wealth and seductive artistry.  I am also frustrated by what seems to me to be a matter of competency.

My pictures often don't capture what I see.  I either can't get close enough, or focus sharply enough, or avoid extraneous powerlines, or have enough light to catch the picture I know is there.  I see very well in the dark, but my camera is pitiful in low light and a raging floodlight with a flash.  I could easily blame this on the camera and go out and spend a lot of money on fancy photographic equipment that I don't know how to use.  Or, I could if I were someone else.  As a beginner, I prefer to embrace my limitations and use them to teach me competence with the instrument that I have.

When I began to study dance again as an adult, after a ten year hiatus from dance lessons, I was often very judgmental with myself.  I wanted to dance as well as I could imagine, or at least as well as the best dancer in the class, and often found my skills lacking.  I didn't have a body honed by meticulous technique classes.  My timing and execution faltered, and I couldn't hold extensions or move with with the kind of articulate clarity that I admired in others.  My biggest hurdle, though, was my terrible impatience with my own mediocrity.

Of course, there are many ways to surmount this hurdle, and the most obvious one was to study widely, practice diligently, stretch daily, and breathe deeply.  I did that for years, and as the injuries mounted (especially after turning 40), it became just as obvious that there was only so much I could reasonably expect out of the body I had.   What pulled me out of the mire of my self-defeating frustrations wasn't the requirement to let go of excellence as the goal.  Letting go of excellence leaves a remarkable void, and I had to have a powerful replacement if I was even  going to attempt anything so rash.  Fortunately, thanks to Carolyn Stuart of Touch Monkey, I was persuaded that curiosity, which I had in abundance, was more interesting than excellence and that all I had to do to become competent was give myself permission to explore what my own body allows.

I am now more than competent as a dancer, and may even, in an unguarded moment, claim flashes of brilliance.  I still can't dance as well as I visualize possible.  (There is this little detail called gravity that tends to impede my best ideas.)  What I can do now, even with all my physical limitations, that I couldn't before, is stay present and attentive through the lulls, find opportunities to surprise myself, and dance for the pure, uninhibited joy of motion.  My own personal spark infuses my dancing and offers support and inspiration to a number of other dancers I have the privilege to dance with.  Also, I am still dancing, strong and beautiful at twice weekly jams, while many of the best dancers in class have disappeared from the scene.

Thus, when I turn to photography and find myself frustrated by my lack of skill, I know better than to expect different equipment to capture my visions.  I'm sure study and experience will help me improve, and certainly new, more capable cameras are easier to come by than a new, more capable body.  However, I believe what will serve me best as a beginner is to discover how it is possible, with the camera I have, to show what has my attention.  My story will unfold over time, over multiple images, and will have interest for others whose senses are attuned in ways similar  to mine.

I want to thank Bruce Grant as well, for providing the same permissions that Carolyn Stuart did.  His flickr.com profile includes the following quotes:

"Eventually I discovered for myself the utterly simple prescription for creativity; be intensely yourself. Don’t try to be outstanding; don’t try to be a success; don’t try to do pictures for others to look at — just please yourself." 
— Ralph Steiner

"I say play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. Play what you want and let the public pick up on what you are doing, even if it takes them fifteen or twenty years." 
— Thelonious Monk

"The thing that’s important to know is that you never know. You’re always sort of feeling your way."
— Diane Arbus

"I photograph continuously, often without a good idea or strong feelings. During this time the photos are nearly all poor, but I believe they develop my seeing and help later on in other photos. I do believe strongly in photography and hope by following it intuitively that when the photographs are looked at they will touch the spirit in people." 

— Harry Callahan

(There's more on his site, plus all his vibrant photographs:  http://www.flickr.com/people/grantbw)

Enlightenment Pt 1

I am enlightened every time the sun shines down on this poor earth and pulls her out of the night of her forgetfulness.  I am enlightened by the glimmer in the dark of streetlights and distant stars.  I am enlightened by an endless stream of photon waves in the visual spectrum.  I do not have to seek enlightenment, since I have been bathed in light since that moment my eyes first flickered open and I yelled at the world in astonishment.  What I do seek is understanding.  I want to understand enlightenment in the way I want to understand my experience inside a human body.

I have a pet theory, based on what I have cobbled together from secondhand hand yogic philosophy and firsthand empirical evidence.  It is a comprehensive theory of everything, minus the equations, that exists only to delight me with the wonder of complex properties emerging from the chaos of constant sensual bombardment.  It is a theory of light and emotion, sense and feeling.  It is a theory of qualia in it's broadest definitions, with an intrinsic physicality of perception, which categorizes experience by connections between seven chakras, seven colors, five elements and five senses.  This is not to say that I am a pure physicalist, who would reduce the entire universe to material properties.  Instead I subscribe to a kind of neutral monism that reduces both mental and physical processes to a third universal substance, conveniently referred to as "energy" by secular New Agers and "God" by devout religionists.

I'm guessing that some of the people reading this are nodding their heads, thinking "Yes, now what is your theory already?" and the rest, if you are still reading, are thinking "What the hell are you talking about?" or even "Is this some kind of New Age bullshit wrapped in a veneer of only partially understood philosophy and neuroscience?"  The answer to that last question is a resounding, "Yes!  You should have figured that out at the beginning when I mentioned secondhand yogic philosophy.  Just remember, if you will, bullshit is the primary fuel resource for rural India and has been a valuable commodity for thousands of years.  Spreading it increases the yield of any garden plot.  I am just doing my bit here for the fecundity of thought."

Now that you are on the edge of your seats, I will tell you:  perception is a prismatic process that differentiates the pure motion of energy into a spectrum of mental imagery.  Wavelengths of light correlate to a constellation of associations that stimulate specific neural clusters within the body.  Those clusters in turn relay impulses throughout the body which then returns physical, visceral, and sensory responses to the brain to excite or inhibit particular mental states.  There is a similar correlation between the activity in other sense organs and the appreciation of the experience.  All this activity takes the form of electrochemical pulses, waves, cascades of motion, electrons, photons, muons, bosons, and all those other ons that split the quantum universe into measurable fragments.  The mind in its infinite complexity integrates this stream of information into a constantly renewed, self-referential, recognition pattern we call consciousness.

I intend, in subsequent posts, to take you on a journey through the chakras, the senses, the elements and the colors, building my case for their intricate interrelations.  It is a kind of alchemy to play within that network, as a shift of hue can be all it takes to alter an experience, and to be master of one's senses is to master the universe.

Princesses

Princesses.  They reign as the epitome of fantasy for four year old girls in a world where monarchies are few and Disney defines their glamor.  Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Snow White are gal-pals with Ariel and Jasmine, each with her own pastel palette and distinctive hair accessories.  Unlike the superhero alter-egos of boys that age, princesses don't have to do anything to keep their hold on little girls' imagination.  They exist to be beautiful, feminine, and ultimately successful in love.  They express their personal power in their ability to charm, to persuade, and fortunately, these days, to show a mind of their own.

The old school princesses, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Snow White, call up a darker and more challenging archetype than the modern princesses.  They enact the latency of girls' sexuality, as it is poisoned by the jealousy of bitter older women and held in paralysis until awakened by contact with overwhelming virility.  They have a passive role in their stories, and as object of a quest requiring rescue, their only duty is to make patience look virtuous.  They are the ultimate submissives, Cinderella a slave, and the other two the lust objects of necrophiliac princes.  Their behavior couldn't be any more innocent of the sexual yearning they spend their waking moments singing about:  "Someday, my prince will cum...."  What could be a better fantasy to circumvent any and all guilt associated with early sexual feelings?

The modern princesses, Ariel, Belle, and even Jasmine to some extent, take charge of their lives.  They are seeking adventure and excitement, and if a man is part of that, then so much the better.  They take an active role in changing their own lives and rescue not just themselves but their princes too.  Plus, they can get away with sounding bossy and demanding.  You'd think that would be immensely appealing to little girls, and it is, but not as appealing as it is to their mothers.

According to all the little girls I talk to about princesses, and believe me they are many, the only one of the modern princesses that is frequently counted as a favorite is Ariel.  Because she is a mermaid.  You can't get anymore latent than having a fish tail when swimming around half naked.  (Jasmine, also skimpily clad, comes in as a distant second, and that is by vote of dark skinned girls happy to have a princess who looks like them.)   Ariel is also darkly and personally cursed, her voice stripped away by a power hungry hag, in the manner of the old school princesses.  She puts a new spin on the archetype though, by choosing submission as a means to her ends and staying conscious throughout the ordeal.  Her prince still has to rescue her, to prove himself worthy if for no other reason, but she is the one who does the chasing.

This Halloween, look around among the spooks and spiders, witches and goblins.  I predict a predominance of Spidermen and Batmen and a horde of princesses.  Super-masculinity and ultra-femininity give clarity to sexual roles as they are emerging in young children's identities.  Look around at adult Halloween parties too.  The woman in leather with a whip probably dressed as a witch in her younger days.  The baby doll/schoolgirl?  She was Sleeping Beauty.  My advice to you guys, if you want to get laid by someone who isn't too plastered to notice what she is doing, is to chat up the mermaid.  However, if you are really lucky, and don't go to that party after all but chase after the moon of your own fascinations, you will run into Belle, with her nose in a book.  With one look, she will pierce through to your core, dance elegantly through your days,  and then howl with you all through the night.

Hamlet and puppies

I'm waiting for you, watching down the corridors of time for your shadow to fill the empty spaces.  Doors and mirrors open to reflect passing images of momentary thought.  The light plays tricks on my eyes, a dazzling beguilement, persuading me that what I see is there.  I walk forward with the confidence of the sighted, Newtonian footsteps in a quantum world.  I need your shadow to return my blindness, to break my faith in a natural order, to stretch my senses into the unknown.  How foolish it is to watch with eyes for that which leaves no trace on the retina.  I must change my stride, trip and tumble, search in vestibular disorientation for a sign of another awareness, become clairsensual in the blur of motion.  

I want to freefall into your darkness, fly on the wings of not-knowing, burst the macrame strings of this theoretic universe, drown in your chaotic omniscience.  Lord of darkness, Puppeteer of light, you steal into my consciousness with twilight inklings but hold back your velvety blackness from my straining mind.  Is this life, this sanity, really so precious that I should be denied?

Ummmm.....

Well, yes it is.  I saw some wolf pups on tv just now.  Too cute to miss.  This kaleidoscope of life is fascinating, when you get down to it.  I guess I'll put off the death wish another day.

Only the lonely.....

I read today about a study of the chemical changes in the brains of prairie voles on separation from their mates.  Apparently they became lethargic and unmotivated, and the emotional centers of their brains were riddled with CRF (corticotropin releasing factor), similarly to human suicide victims' brains.   A little googling tells me that CRF is important to metabolism, thermogenesis, circadian rhythms and stress response.    An antibody that blocks reception of that chemical is being tested for treatment of general anxiety disorder, gastric ulcers and alcoholism.  

No one is suggesting that because lonely prairie voles don't flail when dangled by their tails they are depressed.  It is hard to determine if a prairie vole is caught up in a cycle of self-defeating thoughts that make the contemplation of suicide seem like an acceptable alternative to the fatigue of making it through colorless days into sleepless nights.  When they float when dropped into a tank of water, instead of swimming madly to the edge, one doesn't immediately assume they have decided to end it all.  It seems to me simply that they have lost the impulse to do anything for themselves.

At first look, this appears as a kind of altruism on the cellular level.  A mate gives a reason to do whatever it is one does.  In evolutionary terms, they offer a potential future in following generations, and we behave as we do to attract and sustain productive relationships.  As mammals, we depend on limbic resonance with others to regulate our metabolism, immune response, sleep rhythms, hormonal levels, heart and breathing rates, and other physiological events.  What is interesting in this study is that the voles separated from their siblings were not affected the way those removed from their mates were.  It wasn't just the lack of limbic regulation that made the voles unresponsive.  It was the loss of the quality and intensity of interaction that only a mate provides.  Or a prairie vole's mate, at least.

Prairie voles, like humans, pair bond and raise their offspring together.  Most rodents don't, and it's hard to imagine a mouse hanging limp by its tail just because it was removed from another mouse for a few days.  Nor are prairie voles any more sexually monogamous than other rodents, given the right opportunities.  They don't mope because they aren't getting any.  How useless is that?  Better to wiggle harder to get away and find another likely piece of vole ass.  No, prairie voles have opiate receptors that fire madly in the presence of their particular mate, the one they bonded with during their first mating session.  BECAUSE THAT SEX SESSION LASTED 24 HOURS!!!   How's that for a honeymoon?

In neurochemical terms, though, bereavement is a drug withdrawal response.  Pair-bonding animals, humans included, have a ridiculous concentration of oxytocin receptors in their nucleus accumbens (aka pleasure center), an important little nub in the brain right next to the olfactory tubercle.  A whiff of romance is what it takes to remember that one special mate and go wild.  No one else quite measures up for the poor little vole.  Nor do the regular activities of eating, sleeping, and swimming to safety.

This study didn't address how long the effect lasted.  Nor does it say how long they left the waterlogged voles in the tank.  Did they wait for them to sink?  Did the voles eventually drift to the shallow end?  Or, after 20 minutes or so, did the voles decide to pull their soggy butts out?  Is this the forerunner to hydrotherapy for the bereaved?  Now we get close to something truly important to me, besides being immersed in water.  I am curious about inspiration, those sparks of arousal that motivate activity and creativity.  What is the chemical signature of beauty?  What will bring a vole, or a human, back to life from a period of depression?  On a smaller, personal scale, what brings a day to life after a night of forgetfulness (or worse)?

Today it is prairie voles.  

aging

Lines.

Spaces.

Infinite traces

of what replaces

impossible stasis.

Life interlaces

erodes not erases

implacable places.

There is no oasis

from time on our faces.

It's living that graces

as wisdom embraces

the lines.

Hypno-anchor Trigger

Hypno-anchor trigger.  I love it when phrases like that come up naturally in conversation.  The discussion was about Alexander technique, and teaching dance, while this term is more closely associated with NLP and hypnotherapy.  The idea is that emotive states can be anchored in mind by particular associations and triggered later by recreating those stimuli.  In a way that speaks to the very heart of semiotics, in which signs refer to a complex meaning, and to the experience of art.

As a contact improv dancer, I have had countless experiences of gesture or touch triggering my emotions.  When my head is cradled, I surrender to childlike trust.  When my sternum is poked with an index finger, I shove it out in defiance.  An arm draped over my shoulder establishes camaraderie, while an arm around my waist invites closer intimacy.  I probably spent my first five years as a CI dancer, maybe longer, desensitizing myself to the hundreds of triggers my body has collected so that I could discover movement more complex than the emotionally obvious.

Today's conversation, though, was specifically about language as a trigger.  By speaking about the qualities of the movement desired, the teacher can create the sensation of the movement in him/herself if not in the students as well.  There is a wonderful feedback loop as well.  As the body remembers its actions, the language comes more easily to describe it, and the enhanced language further spurs the recalled mobility.  I wonder if athletes do this along with their visualizations, activating their whole brains to project peak performances.

I love language.  I come alert with new words, or uses of words, and love to play with descriptive imagery.  I am curious about the layering of associations and the surprises that occur when words leapfrog about in homophonic disarray.  A pun is fun, but not just that, a once a pun is time so fine upon a pen, O pen, open now to me thy mystery.... and I am off. Fluidity of language is like fluidity of form.  Triggered together,  they accelerate a mobility of feeling, a cascade of sensation inspiration.  All hypno-anchored, of course.

What Price Glory?

Screaming in with a mounting, shuddering roar, they descend, split the sky, and shear off, their trail of sound and fury left for collection in the next pass.  It is a rite of passage into fall.  Every October the Blue Angels come to San Francisco to celebrate Fleet Week.  It is an anachronistic tradition in these days of closed naval bases, a reminder of a historic past as the port of embarkation for numerous Pacific wars.  (Don't you love that oxymoron?)  The display has been toned down over the years, due to the almost as raucous debate over the danger and disruption of ear-splitting military jets barnstorming a major urban area, but the shows draw large crowds every year.

Who here remembers the "Peace Dividend"?  Don't all raise your hands at once.  President George HW Bush (Pater), despite the action in the Gulf War, had the opportunity to turn swords into ploughshares at the close of the Cold War.  San Francisco got the Presidio National Recreation Area out of the deal, as well as a superfund site at Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard.  President George W Bush (Filius), in following his father's footsteps, trod merrily back to the Persian Gulf and squandered all but the irony of his father's peace dividend.  San Francisco is righteously outraged, and as ground zero for opposition politics is still a bastion for flower power activists. 

Why then do we flock to the edge of the bay to crane our necks in admiration at these war machines burning fossil fuels with alarming extravagance?  We are a compassionate city that publishes the pleas of immigrants from war-torn nations, Israelis, Bosnians, Vietnamese, PTSS suffering veterans, and decries the pomposity of military propaganda.  We cite the liability and never pristine safety record of mixing fighter jets with packed crowds.  We snub military recruiters, barely tolerate JROTC in schools, and reject the symbolism of military might as a palliative in uncertain times.  We abhor grandstanding, "my country love it or leave it" unexamined patriotism, and we love a good show.

The Blue Angels do put on a good show.  They are a wonder of power and precision, barreling down on us with the sudden shrieking throb of impending cataclysm.  They are glory lifted up to the skies to own the impossible, to magnify man's technological aspirations, to soar with speed and coordination through once unreachable heavens.   Their contrails make a distinct looping filigree in the sky before dissolving into a spectral mist.  They roar into our consciousness with primal urgency and clench our vitals with an instinctive adrenaline burst, thrilling or terrifying or both.  Then, just as quickly, they are gone, vanished into faraway specks, leaving only sound as a physical presence still vibrating the cups on the shelf.

The Blue Angels are majestic, and much as we can rebel against the authority they represent, it is hard not to look up as they pass.  They are just that cool.

In the beginning was the Word...

What the hell am I doing here?

There are blogs for everything under the sun, and for things way beyond reach of the sun, and probably scores of them for the sun itself.  Does the informosphere really need any more clutter?  Surely not.  I have been seduced again by the smooth blank purity of an empty page, a page spread before me longing to  be filled.  A page so indiscriminate it asks for nothing but words of  my own choosing.  It will elevate whatever thoughts I impose on it to a tangible status as part of  the web.  How can I, a woman once described as "fiercely articulate", resist that call?

Quite easily, as it turns out.  I have also resisted journaling.  Just thinking about what and how I can resist, and where that goes, and what seductions change my mind is another post that I will have attend to later if I don't want to get completely off topic.  Only in the anthropomorphic imagery of the innocent sheets waiting for my debauchery am I seduced by the act of writing.  In truth, I need an audience.  

Ay, there's the rub.  Or lack of it.  So this is an experiment.  Will this turn out to be the song of a tree frog who lustily trills his all to the summer night, one tiny voice among millions, undaunted by a destiny that allows either one glorious mating discharge or an ignominious demise in the jaws of a passing bat?  Or will this be the echolocation of the bat, marking her journey by the response to her voice?

And you, who have by sheer chance read this far, what have I to offer you?  What mad tediousness might you be in for here?  If you ask me a question, I will be oracle to you and pretend to wisdom.  If you ignore me, I will make up ways to plead the case of my existence. You will see how convincing I am by how often I choose this venue to spill my thoughts.

Besides, who knew how easy this is?  No new (to this Google user) account, no money down, no questions asked, no references required......  The pseudo-inclusivity is infectious.  Are you a member of the literate, computer-accessing elite?  There's a place for you here, but it's up to you to make it yours.  It's also up to you to make it mine.