Thursday, October 30, 2008

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

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)

Monday, October 27, 2008

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.


Friday, October 24, 2008

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.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

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.


Thursday, October 16, 2008

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.  




Wednesday, October 15, 2008

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.









Sunday, October 12, 2008

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.















Friday, October 10, 2008

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.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

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.