Dual-Duel and the Common Good

Before the beginning, Charlie Seurat Nomen Silene, Cis for short, was no thing. After the beginning, Cis existed. At the end, – well there were many ends and that was both the challenge and the hope.

“That Cis, she’s really something!,” people would say. When Cis was born, her mother nearly died. Cis grew and flowered, and became a right little animal. beautiful and temperamental and unmanageable. The problem was how to teach her to manage herself.

Her mother was exhausted and could only cope by strapping Cis into the stroller and waiting for the screams to stop. As she grew up, Cis learned to take her tantrums into her bedroom voluntarily, and would stay there wailing until she fell asleep curled like a foetus on her little bed. Her grandmama thought a leash would be a good idea so the toddler could run but not far and explore with subtle supervision. Dogs were taken on leashes and given limited freedom to explore their independent choice of stimuli – surely parents could do at least that much for a child whose curiosity and love of life were like that of a dog, the nonverbal taking in and processing of stimuli being a vital part of exploration and growth.

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Before the beginning, number did not exist. Once one precipitated out of nothing which is all potential, there was some thing. Once there was something, there was that which was not that something. There was duality. When there was duality, there was number, for between two things is the space between and around them and that makes three.  Australian Aborigine’s used this numerical system: “one two three, small mob, big mob”, when they talked about sheep or cattle to the manager of the estate.
Chimps in a research institute were given pellets of food at the push of a lever. The Chimps were taught to count. Then the researchers had to count the pellets as they put them in the feeder, because the chimps were now fighting over who got the most.
Words create identity. Numbers are words. This, not this; this and that; one two three many.  Identity creates possession – mine  and yours supersede a wordless ours.
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“What do you think of global warming… these chunks of the ice cap as big as Delaware falling off into the sea…? ”
“ My friend who is a scientist says it is a natural phenomenon….”
Siouxie and Felina exchanged inconspicuous looks of disbelief on hearing this opinion from their good friend, whom they had included in their yoga circle some years ago.
“… but it is terrible the way man doesn’t respect nature; the forest where I grew up has been completely destroyed for housing,” opined Anika.
“Let’s not argue about the percentage of influence humanity is having on climate change,” said Siouxie – looking for constructive  synthesis – “ if we can view the evidence, we can support the actions taken to ameliorate the harms.”
Democrat, Republican – we can find a common good, and cut deconstructive arguing.
Climate change deniers and god deniers – we can focus on the evidence and leave interpretation to each for themself. Can a thing be named if it doesn’t exist? All things are “thinks” . Something must be thought of before it can exist. Naming it separates it from the flux. The namer and the named co-exist. That which is denied is still that which is named and therefore has existence of some sort – even if just a vision in someone’s head. The stories we tell ourselves create our world. The square root of minus one is an absolutely fictional number, and yet fictional numbers enable calculations which create bombs and MRI’s, World Wide Web and Fit Bits.
No Thing became  everything, and change is inevitable. We can learn to ride the change or be swept away by it. We can be the Meme or the meme rider. We can harness the horses of paranoia or succumb to negativity. We can know ourselves as CSNS. (see next)

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Consciousness, that which is No thing, can be mythologised as the Cosmic Egg of All Potential.  Consciousness, will be hereinafter known by the tetragrammaton  CSNS, the four letters of the name of Consciousness.
CSNS became and is becoming and is now and ever shall be, for Now includes the past and the future which are now No Thing.

Siouxie thought of her mother, who was nothing again, dematerialised.  How is it to know oneself as No Thing while still Something? It can only be done in the mind that is present. The love is, was, and always was a part of her. Apart – not her, as well as a part of her.

dre Combinant

A swathe of realistic butcher’s grass (the synthetic type) cushioned her feet as she wandered ‘neath the lantern hung trees to the perfect circular day bed – facing the moon which delighted the dark sky above the courtyard green.

They stayed in their own spaces – his trim beard clear in silhouette above the ipad; she doing her yoga – torso, then feet, arms, head visible beyond the wicker sides of the round, cushioned platform. As though co-ordinated, they  moved to leave at the same instant.

He smiled. She thought to speak, but crushed the words inside herself – she would have to write seeing she had spared him her story.
She  was envisioning a bomb destroying the set piece she saw before her – the various couples, strolling by, the music so cool, the occasional family, people arriving at night with their bags, crossing the lawn to their room for the first time, seeing the trees and the lights and the people. The older woman lounging alone and gazing at the moon, the young man studying his ipad at the table next to her.

She saw the bomber, for whom a hotel with a pool was not remotely in the probabilities.
She could feel  that the bomber was right to see her as a wastrel taking privilege while so many had nothing, and his family history was full of sorrow.

She knew it is the way of the world to blame those within sight, for that which is stolen by players in a different game altogether, in which we are pawns.

She recalled living with a rasta man in Jamaica and getting a new room put on the one room dwelling in which he lived with his three children. She talked of glass window panes and he said, “Nah, dem people who na have so much, dey go bruk ya glass”. He told her of folk who had just scraped up enough to buy a second hand car, and found the window broken overnight – by those who had less who did not know how to get just a little bit more. For it was hard times in Jamdown too. Manley had been replaced by CIAga. The economy had gone bust when Manley nationalised their aluminium and USA refused to buy the product any more, or some such deal. Look it up – late 70’s.

She walked to her room, subdued light revealing leaf shape and color of tropical plants lining the realistic looking lawn, Moon at full outshining the hanging lanterns.

Her dreams revealed themselves, like grapes left on a vine after harvest which sweeten and shrivel. The sweetness of Life Force will come to be, ‘ere the body disassembles. Life Force, uniquely sweet in each individual, collective in the  unseeded egg of potential, individual here, and recombinant on the other side, which has been brought to this side in genetically modified DNA e.g. rBGH. Are we dissolute, recombinant, or drunk with pride?

She snored gently, a pillow over her head as well as one under. The typewriter l a i d o w n s y m b o l a f t e r s i g n w o r d a n d t h e n w o r l d i t w a s w i t n e s s t o i t s e l f a s e a c h l e t t e r e a c h c o m b o h a v i n g i t s o w n e x i s t e n c e t h e  t  a l w a y s s y m b o l i s i n g t h e c r o s s w h a t e v e r t h a t m e a n t – s o m e t h i n g d i f f e r e n t t o e v e r y o n e  g o i n g b y h e r s e l f a  n d s o  m e t h i n g t h e s a m e a l s o t o e v e r y o n e w h o c a r e d a b o u t i t.

Everyone has their own story of love. This is what makes us human.

images not of my work in this post..

Surviving in Community.

silk

Painting auction as fundraiser. This painting is one of my favorites because of the endearing and lively bird characters, and because of its meaning:
Puffin’ Blue Cardinal offers an olive branch to Red Jay.
Evolution creates new forms.
The rules are on the table but not they are not like they used to be. We are waking in a new era.
In the brave new world we make peace with our projections and our transferences.
Certainties have become mutable.
Complications are inevitable if the rules are off the table.

The evolved human is here in us. We are individual and collective. We strive to live without harming, without waste, with respect. We might as well look for evidence of that as it is concurrent with its opposite, which is bound for extinction.

If you would like to help me help a human family in need, send this info to someone with funky art tastes and a certain expendable budget, (in the Tampa area as shipping is prohibitive). The medium is lustrous 100% silk. It is  by famous silk artist me. Dimensions 32”x44”, including the plain redwood frame. The painting is valued at $1300. I will give 80% of an acceptable offer to the fund for Sarah, Bryan and Kaya.

https://www.gofundme.com/help-sara-bryan-in-a-time-of-need

About me : http://www.elizabethmitchellstudio.com

A wry smile.

“ Exxon has 60% of its land leases  to develop for petroleum extraction in RUSSIA!!!!! Tillerson, nominated for Secretary of State, said he didn’t know about Saudi Arabia’s record, or Russia’s human rights abuses.. he’s chief exec of Exxon – or was until he resigned – but he’ll go right back and he’ll get paid beaucoup for his work …” , her words gushed out in a litany of horror and shocked disbelief.

Ginger and Siouxie  walked at a brisk pace around the park. Tiny birds flitted in the oak trees, spring buds were already forming on bare, deciduous branches, Cypress had dropped their rusty skirts. Mud flats glistened beside the river.

“Faint not, nor fear”, Siouxie encouraged, “ spirit is HERE. When it gets too much for me, knowing that, with all that fossil fuel extraction we are surely doomed, I remind myself – we are consciousness, here now as us. Life Force has been here before, at the edge of extinction of an ecological niche. We are dying and that’s how it is. Something new will emerge whose form is unknown to us – because it is new.”

Ginger’s mind wandered, she thought of the day ahead and that she would head home after this circuit.

“You know we are part of a web of being of course, the question is do you think it is conscious? Can you experience the consciousness of the whole aware of itself through you and in you?”

“Well, I don’t know about that. I just feel worried about the consciousness of people – like this guy who lives on my street – we were chatting – he’s a bit right wing, you know, but we talk – he said “I’ll be glad when they repeal Obama care. I’ll be all right cos I’ve got ACA’. When I told him they were the same thing, he didn’t believe me and said he was going to look it up.”

Siouxie sighed, and then laughed. “It’s beyond us to change this trajectory, we can only keep manifesting consciousness. Good on you for trying – I wonder what source he will get his fact checking from…”

They continued to walk and talk, delighting in the cool weather, blue skies and the blessed, blessed park, slowly eroding into the river, as maintenance could no longer be afforded, and the for hire companies the Park Dept. used, simply sprayed the river banks with weed killer increasing the erosion.

Siouxie identified with the deteriorating of the large mammals’ ecological niche, she knew she was like a tree whose roots were being undermined and whose future was limited, she and the trees choked on the poisons in the ground and in the air; her heart sang like the little birds when she remembered to be alive, like a tree she allowed her consciousness to be aware, without fear of tomorrow. She knew that Life Force consciousness was evolutionary.

The day and its demands absorbed them. Sleep and dreams awaited, and the same bullshit, the same delight on a different day would repeat until Humankind became something new as a whole species – Siouxie was rooting for Persona Universalis – a species who lived in cooperation like birds or ants – individual and collective flourishing within a larger web.

The Area Rug – the pattern, the material, and the whole.

The Area Rug

Dad and mum had pulled the chairs back and moved the table aside before he set out for their first big purchase – an area rug – leaving her to mind the babies.

He dumped the rug off his shoulder onto the floor and asked an equally excited Mum to bring some scissors to cut the string.
“I just made a pot of tea; let me pour us a cup so we can sit and admire it.”
“What’s up?” He stomped crossly into the kitchen, where mum was getting the final touches of milk jug and fresh baked tea cake together with the scissors on the tray. She had made his favorite and had been anticipating the pleasure of sitting together to admire his choice. She had allowed the children to play with the precious old Noah’s Ark so they would be quietly amused for at least a while.

He was grumpy, she was hurt, she admired the rug but it wasn’t quite the fanfare
expected, the children broke the giraffe’s neck. And the rug became a piece of family history and a treasure, like a one-eyed teddy, that followed Siouxie around from student digs to her kids playroom floor, to mats for the dog’s house. She had just thrown out the second last piece today.

Ancient Greeks praised the value of a marriage with someone opposite from yourself, in order that you both might grow within its supportive structure, but those early wounds can sting. Compromise results in buried resentment. Accommodation is a more equal path.

Siouxie’s father had told her this story to illustrate how different temperaments have different priorities – “I wanted the immediate pleasure, I couldn’t understand your mum not wanting to see it immediately and then sit and have tea and enjoy admiring it some more – it wasn’t going away!”
Siouxie knew the part of her, that wanted immediate gratification – regardless of the wish of another whose fulfillment required her to lay aside her pleasure.
As for example, part of her that wanted immediate gratification ruled her sleeping hours and refused to release her into material life, where the cold outside the blankets and the decisive action required would keep her from the pleasure of annihilation of the daily ego self and its demands.
An internalised father characteristic which lead to joy and delight, as well as impatience and self defeating gratification. Her mother – her Self – played the part of her that felt unfulfilled – what was she here for???  POETRY:

death breath birth dearth
skim milk of human kindness
brim mink over my cup floweth
nonsense thus i breathe death where is thy stink?
Flies did cluster ‘bout my nostrils – myself dead on the battlefield;
and here I Am breathing and writing, writhing on my bed of sorrow,
orgasmic without pleasure. Is it rape or is it tomorrow?  Yes.
Singularity exploded brain imploded human no more shut the FONT DO.
My mind is its OWN treasure. My mind can find its way home if given enough rope to hang itself.

Marriage of Dualities requires Accommodation, from the microcosm  of the human to the macrocosm of relationship. Between humans and species. Between animal kingdom and vegetable – we are parts of one structure, and contribute to the whole.  Compromise demands too much. Accommodation is evolutionary.

Guilt and Freedom

“I don’t tell you what to do and I’d appreciate it if you’d return the favor”. His eyes flashed with a repressed fury I had never witnessed before. We were sitting in the porch swing on an evening in the first months of our married life. My gentle comment suggesting that smoking less would be good for his health, drew forth this honest and true response. It has been a corner stone of our marriage ever since.

Recently, he and a friend were struggling mightily to replace a defunct washing machine. Moving the waterlogged thing was not easy. My normal instinct would be to hover in the back ground waiting to be called upon, or to be hard at work in equivalence with their hard work. I cannot rest if someone else is working or there is work to be done. No slacking! This does not mean I work efficiently – it means I have a constant feeling of guilt especially if someone else is working.

A friend of mine going through an emotionally  demanding life transition came to visit. I sat with her on the porch and we chatted. I jumped to fulfill occasional requests from the workers – “ Libby, can you find me a long nail?” , “Libby,  do you know where the short level is?” Richard is not an enthusiastic handyman.

How glorious it was to know that Richard was not judging me for sitting around while he was working. To know that he was not critical of me not working at my “job”, my art work – while he was working on maintenance. How marvelous to know that he was not thinking I should be doing something else.

I  had to work to pacify the naggers in my head. I have known others who did not comprehend nor give the magnificent gift of freedom.

The picture shows a broken toy gun. A marvelous symbol of Peace on Earth. I live in a peaceful world and I give thanks. I “pray” that peace goes outward.

JOY. Theanthric joy.

Have you ever noticed how your spine can conform to the trunk of a tree; how you feel a great solidarity and unity when you lean into its life? A friend, diagnosed with cancer, found herself driving distraught on the highway and turned off into a forest park. The healing she experienced among the trees was at first a spiritual calm, it saw her though the process.  An Indian guru describes refusing to listen to Robert Frost’s poem because he thought “in a yellow wood” referred to a tree as “wood”  – a word with connotations of usage. Later, he made his followers sit in the sun as he spoke on and on, then finally let them get up and move into the shade of the nearby woods. They appreciated trees then in a whole new way.

A man sits cross legged on the dock by the river, clearly meditating. I wander among the trees and over the grass, my inner being singing “glo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ria, in excelsis deo…” as i look up into the glory of sun risen and clouds and blue.
I am the delight of humankind in its natural surroundings. The man is experiencing bliss without words, I experience bliss loaded with story. My story is my experience of  divinisation. I am my god concept. Imagine a consciousness that was only potential ( the cosmic egg) – once we all were this. Imagine this consciousness forms organs of sensation – foetuses reiterate the journey of life, starting as slime and evolving moveable parts and senses. Imagine this consciousness, now highly endowed with spider eyes and human eyes and skin and bark and scale, feather, fin, able to sense and move  in myriad ways – is aware in this moment. That is the case.
Imagine this consciousness is aware of itself as the universe; imagine this universe being aware of itself as a human being. That’s us !!

Imagine the cells of your body living and dying, coming and going, co-operating and creating and fulfilling their role in the greater whole. They do this. Imagine if humans comprehended that we too could live in co-operation as a larger whole. We would fly like birds and swim like fishes – all moving in ways that do not harm others, and yet create a collaborative dance – have you seen the murmuration of starlings? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eakKfY5aHmY its really worth checking this out.

We DO do this, our lives are co-ordinated largely and partially. Here we are. We are here to play – that is the emergent property of babies and baby humanity. Woop woop , rock on. Some tears, some stumbling. “People dying people crying. happy birthday” . May those in pain be comforted and those in need of help be helped. Our own conscience nags us to contribute if we listen to it. So much joy.

The photo above is an excellent artist recreation – the only still image I found. The artist, Alain Delorme says, “far away you imagine starlings flying at sunset, but if you got closer you would realize that I have actually digitally assembled thousands of plastic bags. These “Murmurations” suddenly become “Ephemeral Plastic Sculptures” and their beautiful, almost calligraphic shape, a threat, hiding our horizon… and polluting our dreams?”

Look into murmurations – scientists “cant imagine why ” – because we are not allowed to anthropomorphise. I divinise. I see JOY as the fundamental source of Life’s effusions.

Theanthric – my coinage. Humandivine.

 

uman divine.

Paradox. I AM/am not god: No thing – a think. Cogito ergo sum.

I AM /Am not God. Paradox, your time is Now.

Two sets of three plain brown leaf shapes twirl in different circles at the ends of a twig dangling from a trail of Spanish moss. Calder! I feel the inspiration that inspired Calder to make his mobiles. My mind delights in this.
I experience my human arm around  tree’s torso, its solid strength like a human being, I lay my head against it. We are one made of two. I am tree. I, tree, river see.
“I Am”, says the god concept which is a creation of the human mind, using human language. What is, can be called god. Why bother?  “There is no place God is not.” “God’s center is everywhere, circumference nowhere.” So what!
God is language – logos – “and the word ( Logos) was with God and the word was God.”
Humans are the ones who use language to describe their world. This is the divine activity of humans!
The world exists. What is, is.
We can stop arguing, the position needs no defense. The words are/ are not reality. Words create reality, by separating things. Every thing is first a “think” in a human mind. There is no separation but by naming, then identifying with the story. An essential and essentially misperceived activity.

I am the human mind of god:  From quantum wiggle to cosmic dance, and in the middle, our human circumstance. I exult in this!! I long for Peace.

Peace comes with acceptance of conflicting views. Both can co-exist. Common ground can be found.

I feel the joy of the jumping fish. The fish jumps to escape predators.
I see the face of the moon change communicatively as I observe it. The moon has craters – my eyes  deceive.
I see the traces of alien space ships in the strange burned holes in the pavement, which cluster at a certain part of the road. Natural explicable causes create these marks.
I feel the spirit space behind my eyeballs, behind your eyeballs, and surrounding this world manifested before my eyes. I know I am blood and bone, and beyond my vision the material, measurable world continues.

Spirit thinks in unified awareness. “God” describes the life force in matter which recognizes itself as me, without a care in the world. I, Lib have lots of cares in the world, but when they get overwhelming I can relax and know I am a temporary manifestation of the human condition. What is happening is happening and has happened and will happen to all of us. Extinction, change, rebirth as something new.

I, Lib, am one with the whole, as my finger is one with my body. Humanity as one conscious species has the potential to move as a flock of birds, or a school of fish – each individual entity part of a greater whole. Our egoic identification with our skin encased matter prevents us from feeling the bloody joy of being alive; we feel alive in those moments of freedom from ego concerns. In moments when we feel the pure emotions of love and joy, or are lost in creativity.  Anger, fear, and hatred come from ego’s selfishness, depression comes from I-Am-God’s frustrated longings. To bomb others is to bomb a part of ourself.

I hold to the story that the god mind knows itself to be everything, experiencing itself as everything, in potential, in realisation, in cessation. Matter is information. Information is smeared on the wall of the black hole, the cosmic egg of all potential,  ever breaking forth in big and little bangs, whirling, emerging in new formations, and ceasing – like breath. Awareness is all. This hugely divine awareness comes to earth in my/our experience of it. It cannot be removed from me. It is who I AM.

Prickles and Goo. I, spirit,  am a necessary corrective for linear prickles mind;  Linear focus is what I, gooey duck, need to thrive in a world which is material, anchored in the linear grid of spacetime.

“Ducks just let you be”. Quack quack quack. Quakers have a lot to offer in the experience of learning to listen.

Rocco!

“ If you pee yellow you are not drinking enough water.” My friend who spoke this aphorism, did not notice blood in his pee because it was diluted.
I drink at the public fountain, first sprinkling water to the four directions; Flint Michigan and lead-laced pipes of ancient Rome on my mind. I ask that the water which passes through me may be somehow connected through the consciousness of Water, in me, and in the earth. I see Him as taking poison out of the water and into Himself. “… drink, this is my blood” .

The rules of For Profit Healthcare, deprive him of needed care for one year. This amazing year of 2017. I recall the story of a Greek man, similarly stricken, who decided, after many medical trials and wasted time, to return to his Grecian Island and live the life he always longed for, getting up at an enjoyable pace, being outside in the fields, imbibing with friends in the evening, sleeping well and doing the same tomorrow. His tomorrows continued way past the medical cut-off date he had been given.

I recall the story of the Aborigine healer who said to a desperate and desperately ill person, “ You don’t drink, you don’t eat steak which you pine for, you don’t smoke, you eat food you dislike, you do nothing but focus on being sick – your body has no desire to live! Go and live.” The teller of the story lives to tell the tale, enjoying his pleasures.

Participating in work that kills the soul is possibly killing the body as well. Living each day “zif ’t were thy last” may be the way to live Forever in the moment Now.

Standing in the crook of a huge live oak, I unite its great trunks and feel united through it with earth, roots, and sky. I am Tree. “Rocco!” , my mind identifies the squirrel who looks at me as though to say, “You know me?” Walking on with spontaneous intention,  in a straight line crossing path and grass until I see another “Rocco!”, a fish ( instead)  jumps as though to say, “ You know me?”.  Intention satisfied.  As all squirrels are one to me,  I can see all  humans are “Rocco!” (or Adam/Eve,  Everyman)  to “Buddha mind” which does not make the ego distinctions commonly associated with our names. We are one species in our life experiences, variations on a theme. Loveable like squirrels to one not concerned with our fate. It will be what it is.

We represent the ecological niche of the large mammals. I suspect it is in its last years. “We all die. Not all men live.” Great extinctions are eventually followed by a flowering of the new – which can hardly be imagined. Our lives contribute to the trajectory. Carry on, mes amis.