"I ascribe space a certain significance with regard to death. It’s as if I’ve buried loved ones there. I can’t touch these stars but can they now? And somehow I understand that everyone is always ever together, because I don’t feel the distance that their deaths would imply. They are in me, and we are all ever in space. I am not the only person to experience the night sky in this way. We’ve all looked up and felt that sense of awe."
ecstatic to be the caretaker of one of these drawings, which i responded to viscerally on first sight. reading the later-released text illuminates an uncanny resonance, a previously hidden message landing perfectly.
soundtrack: roberto donnini, tunedless (1980) [youtube]
mold of unchecked humidity
clicking hard drive
forlorn jumper
music stored in an archaic file format
unattended barn blanket as nest material
alienated computer with outdated security libs
water damaged paper smell
obsoleted nonexistent power supply
eaten by mushrooms
sympoiesis - collectively-producing systems that do not have self-defined spatial or temporal boundaries. information and control are distributed among components. the systems are evolutionary and have the potential or surprising change.
autopoietic - self-producing autonomous units with self defined spatial or temporal boundaries that tend to be centrally controlled, homeostatic, and predictable.
(adapted from m. beth dempster's thesis on environmental studies (1998) via haraway)
"In the 1970’s and into the ’80s, he worked full time as environmental activist. But the time came when he felt compelled to dedicate himself entirely to music. He made this choice with the belief that, ultimately, music can do more than politics to change the world."
grey sky, diffused light, hidden sun, time unknowable
please stay
maybe it would be easier if we knew which gods to be upset with
the heron
and the deer
we all walk the same path
listen to
joy division
intently and
computers
cease to
exist
yesterday in the orchard
i was greeted by a snake
who stood up in the grass
so that we might see
one another
more clearly
while their toad friend
fled
new spell acquired:
go slow
saturday i will play for seven hours in the atrium, while visitors see art and architecture and plants. (so far i've practiced for about twenty minutes... a pretty astonishing preparation/performance ratio.)
we have created space for more stories to unfold: half hidden. [web]
the operative surprise was the call to disavow ourselves of hope.
both the monotheistic promise of heaven and techno-utopianist solutionism.
which are in so many ways the same.
(staying with the trouble is about reframing our relationship to the world by weaving new patterns and staying radically present.)
related:
"for most people optimism and hope become part of the toolkit through which they give themselves momentum. actually if you get those tools out of your kit, all of these other tools fall into place and become useful. all these things that those tools tell you you can't use. it's like if you have some universal screwdriver and it sortof works with most screws and when it doesn't you still kinda get it and use it anyway even though it isn't the right size. if you fucking throw away that universal screwdriver... positivity... and then look at what other tools you actually have and start using the right tools... you don't fucking need hope, you don't need promises of utopia, you don't need promises of heaven, you don't need promises of a next life... it's all fucking bullshit. if we're always running away from unhappiness with those promises of utopia and promises of heaven... that's just one more way of creating a kind of cultural paralysis and distance from personal engagement with your own material conditions. getting rid of dreams and hope is really freeing."
"Alone, in our separate kinds of expertise and experiences, we know both too much and too little, and so we succumb to despair or to hope, and neither is a sensible attitude."
ten beings
reach for the sky
as one
attempted a no-trim technique for our winter survival bunker (less tends to be harder than more)
local white pine, gapped tongue and groove, from local mill
approaching completion, feels warm already
while discussing the moderation of online communities a friend observed the similarities to video game mechanics, for example, the rush to defeat a whatever before it splits into two whatevers. (the analogy being, garbage attracts garbage.) but the second comparison transended the original topic: a frequent boss battle pattern is the slow/big/enduring whatever that rapidly and continuously generates smaller flimsy whatevers to occupy your attention, the challenge being that the situation will not end until the big whatever is gone.
considering the state of humankind. even though we may think we've identified a (or the) big whatever, we're perpetually overwhelmed by the small whatevers which on an individual scale appear quite large. and the big whatever is so huge it blocks out the sky: it's just the entire backdrop, so in a sense it becomes invisible.
declaratives
make me nervous
and i should probably chill out but
i really love herons
too
.... .. . . ... .
. . ..... .. . . . ...
.. . . . . . ... . . ... .
meaning is not intrinsic
... . .. . ... .. . . .. . .
it is created
know when to use precise language
know when to weave vague poetics
know when there is nothing to say
goth sunflower faces away from the sun
is there a spell or
plant medicine or
bit of code
to banish
automobiles and
cell phones
from my dreams
production time again. spent today preoccupied with the wastefulness, fragility, and excess of modern society's global supply chain.
humans aren't going to survive without shifting away from competition, towards collaboration. and re-acknowledge our being a part of nature.
saw three eagles today. it's not uncommon these days. that is nice.
tehn@nnnnnnnn.co