Language of Paper

"Neither the scientifically nor the artistically expressed reality is the most real reality.  The 'real' reality is a meaningless particularity, a total incoherence, a ubiquitous isolation, a universal disconnection.  It is a sheet of blank paper; we do not call the drawing or equations we make on the paper the paper.  Our interpretations of reality are not 'the' reality, any more than the blankness of the paper is the drawing.  Our drawings, our equations, are ultimately pseudo-realities, but those are the only realities that concern us because they are the only realities that can concern us."  John Fowles, The Aristos, 154.

This perfectly expresses the blindness of our civilization to "paper" i.e. the material substrate of all consciousness.  Paper is a good metaphor for this material substrate:  dead trees ground into 'meaningless particularities' out of sight somewhere, where these kinds of things are done.  When we look at only the human art and science and not the "paper" we are refusing to see all of the biological and industrial processes that go into making that blank page: the supposed unconsciousness of trees; the dumb labor of lumberjacks and factory workers, neither scientific nor artistic; the invisible support of wives and mothers; the nameless waters in which paper pulp is suspended before it can become paper. All of this comes before science, art, or any such anthropocentric endeavor.

There is another reality that must concern us, a third discipline that does not take the blank page to be meaningless, but glimpses that the paper is a body that has something to say, some remnant of the language of trees perhaps, if we would learn to hear it and heed it.  A discipline that does not presume that paper is dead matter, voiceless.  If we were to understand, truly understand, that without the paper there is no consciousness and therefore no science and no art, then there would be no science and art that did not understand itself as the voice of trees.   If we could understand this we might not continue on our blind, deaf path to the place where there is no more paper, and therefore no more art and no more science.  Or business. Or trees, possibly, for that matter.

Our culture gives us the options of science, art, or business.  None of these are coherent in the face of our  first responsibilities as living bodies within a field of other living bodies.  Only secondarily  can we be transcendent scientific or artistic minds or units of consumption, or systems designers. Without a theory of reason which is conscious of its biophysical origin and dependence, all of our efforts will lead us to disaster and insanity.

(Actually, we think we have gone beyond paper, and only need screens anymore, which is compounding our foolishness.)

The language of paper, by which I mean the language of living as a body within a field of bodies, is still waiting to be discovered. As yet we only perceive sound shadows echoing off the back of the cave, only incoherent fragments of the living language of the field into which we are born.
 

The wilderness is just next door, still.  When I was a child of two or three our family lived in a place called Kapua where my father worked as a foreman tending a macadamia orchard of several thousand acres that had been carved out of the native forest.  We lived in a house on the edge of orchard, just two houses together, ours and the manager’s.  Across the lane that led to the two houses there was a little stand of ohi`a, the predominant native tree of that forest.  My father would tie the Shetland pony that he’d bought for me to graze under those trees.  Ohi`a are majestic and mysterious trees, whose small, stiff grey-green leaves are homes to many insects and whose orange, red, or yellow flowers are the source of nectar for many species of native birds.  Those trees, as I remember them, were decked in jewels and would sing to me sometimes when I went out to see my pony, who was a bad-tempered beast that bucked me off more than once and generally seemed to hate his lot in life, but that I loved anyway.  Because he lived under the trees in the wilderness across the road, my Hundred-acre Wood of less than an acre, and because it is in my blood, on both sides, to have an unreasonable affection for horses. 

We may think, having grown-up, that we forever exiled from such places but it is not so.  It is only fear and shame and forgetfulness that keeps us away.  The training that begins at four or five, that makes us managers and mechanics, scholars and salespeople tears us away from such places of wilderness.  But there is a childish wisdom in being able to find glory in a few trees and a bit of grass.  There is no fabulous wealth or power on earth that can buy or compel the song of the trees, or the experience of their unveiled beauty.  They are not so far away, those places.

3 a.m.

If you are so lucky
you have a world and a life
made up of bodies -
by which I mean flesh:
pulsating, ravenous, timid, beloved -
which you are constantly
tempted
to betray
in the name of
the big time,
the big game, the big boys,
the big dream,
the ticket out.
But then
haven't we all
already
disappeared into
screen or plane?
This is us,
We are not here.

Morris Berman and "Paradox"

As I mentioned earlier,  I just finished Morris Berman's Wandering God, where he argues for a distinct difference in the kind of consciousness that is encouraged by hunter/gatherer cultures and by civilization.  That of the former, which he terms "paradox" is a state of high alertness as to the present environment; the latter, which we are all very familiar with, is the conceptually complex, achievement-oriented, planning-obsessed, hierarchy-worshipping consciousness that keeps us all on the same civilizational page, working away diligently and  paying scant heed to non-human epiphenomena. 
Paradox is by its very nature non-conceptual and yet it helps to have a word/concept to point the way towards the non-verbal/non-conceptual.  It becomes a thing one can seem to talk about, although in actuality one can't or wouldn't really want to. 
Paradox pops up in "the literature" every now and then.  For instance, in a work of anthropology on the Siberian reindeer-herders.  In poetry, in Zhuangzi.  And in life, when you just get thwacked over the head by the mad, epic beauty of wherever you happen to be, and you just soak it all in until there is no little you-ego left, for a minute.  And for that minute, the world sings and shimmers. 
It's a kind of consciousness that is deeply repressed in our civilization, as in all others most probably, because it doesn't help to build anything impressive.  And it's not really something you can teach someone else to do; you can't provide step-by-step instructions.  So it's pretty useless, from the point of view of civilization, and what is more not conducive to profitability.
Nevertheless, Berman makes the point that we might want to re-balance our conventional goal-driven consciousness with an infusion of "paradoxical" awareness.  That'll be a long time coming, I fear, but in the meantime being able to talk about it a little bit is a big help.

Flu - More Reading

Nothing like airplanes and schools for disease vectors, so Ua and I got a strain of something back to back weekends and it was nasty enough to make me re-think my earlier incredulity about the millions that died in the 1918 influenza pandemic.  The world was a much scarier place before anti-biotics.  Every time I dragged my aching corpse out to do chores I broke into a cold sweat and retreated back under the covers asap, where I devoured some (more) books to keep my mind off the miserableness of it all.  They were some fine books that arrived just in time to save me from what would have been a sure case of Netflix poisoning:

 Wandering God - A study in nomadic spirituality/Morris Berman
I've been wanted to read this ever since I read Berman's Coming to our Senses, which was an electrifying book for me  Wandering God is as excellent, original, and fascinating as the earlier book.  Here Berman builds his case for the change in consciousness from a horizontal alertness associated with hunter-gatherer economies and cultures to a vertically oriented consciousness associated with agricultural economies and civilizations -what he calls the sacred authority complex. Berman is an immensely provocative thinker that will make you look at the world differently after reading him, which is a great gift that he gives the world.  Sometimes you have to give him the benefit of the doubt with some of his conceptual leaps, but I like him the better for not being a dry-as-dust, defend-yourself-from-all-directions academic.

The Scarlet Sisters/Myra McPherson -  The sisters being Victoria Woodhull and Tennesse Claflyn; these were some awe-inspiring Victorian-age gender-rebels, and all-time fearless women.  Victoria was the first woman to run for POTUS, with Frederick Douglas as her running mate, as well as the first woman to address a congressional committee.  Before that, the sisters opened a brokerage on Wall St. in 1872, and started a weekly newspaper where the The Communist Manifesto was published for the first time in the US.  They got called sluts and prostitutes a LOT, of course.  And maybe they were, but who isn't? 

Brown Dog/Jim Harrison - I would have laughed out loud a lot more reading this book if it didn't hurt so much to do so.  There was a lot of subsonic giggling going on.  Who knew there was a (much colder) cultural cousin of Ka'u up in the U.P. (upper peninsula) of Michigan?  A subsistence sort of place let's you see the idiocy of our overly-complex civilization much more clearly, and with a sense of humor because you're not right up entangled in it.  I usually circle most works of fiction sniffing warily, ready to pullback, because there is an awful lot of trashy fiction in the world, but after a few pages with Jim Harrison, I was just thanking and praising whatever for such a writer and beautiful human being.