TUSCARORA MOUNTAIN MILESTONES ...

EACH LITTLE STEP in our marriage-long Tuscarora Mountain saga on this patch of upstate New York land has been treated like a milestone, beginning with a ride here almost 24 years ago on a motorcycle to camp out a few often rainy days in a small tent.

Our current visit adds a few more little milestones - precious to us as this land is, a land we respect not because we have “title” to it, but because it is part of earth’s formation, and humankind’s history, whose inhabitants, including the Tuscarora Indians, etched it in their own ways.

We know it was logged. We know rural folks cut slabs of bluestone shale from it to eke out a living. The scars and mining formations are evident, even if covered with new growth. There are mounds too that will not be disturbed; let our imaginations play with the mystery they represent.

Even today, when I started to piece together a kitchen sink and countertop from scratch, marked a milestone, the first real kitchen sink for us here in all these years. And Eileen’s painting a new shade of color on our old 24’ x 12’ cabin fashioned from an Amish shed we bought 11 years ago after dwelling on our visits in old basically immobile campers in middle stages of dilapidation, that eventually had to be towed away as junk.

And then the 16’ x 16’ cabin extension with a sleeping loft that we had a contractor build two years ago that provided us with bathroom and kitchen space and - behold - indoor plumbing, with an indoor shower, and the commode and bathroom sink I installed last year, more little milestones.

History with family and friends too and their milestones, some passing from life itself, like we will eventually.

All of this is temporal, which makes it even more precious, as we fashion our story and this part of our lives here, and as it sustains ours and our four rescued pets’ during our time here, as well as our continuing dreams as a creative, mindful, socially and eco-conscious couple.

Milestones, to us, of deepest value.

23 June 2013

FIRST YEAR OF SHORT STORY AND POETRY WRITING ...

From The Faircloth Review and The Rusty Nail

Amazed at this:

I’ve published two poems, and four short stories have been accepted for publication since I started writing fiction and poetry in March last year.

The short stories:

“Scooter” in eFiction Magazine’s issue July 2012

“Halloween Eve 1945” in the Faircloth Review in October 2012

“Pickpocket” upcoming in the Sugar Mule Literary Magazine

“Tina’s Story of Death and Survival in Nicaragua,” upcoming in Black Earth Institute’s About Place Journal. (nonfiction)

The two poems - “Alien Bones” and “Tick Tock” -- appeared in July 2012 issue of The Rusty Nail.

There were rejections, too, especially with poetry.

Issues of eFiction Magazine and The Rusty Nail are available at Amazon.com

ACCEPTED: "TINA'S STORY OF DEATH AND SURVIVAL IN NICARAGUA"

An honor! … My non-fiction short story “Tina's Story of Death and Survival in Nicaragua” has been accepted for publication in the “Earth, Spirit and Society” issue of the About Place Journal published quarterly by the Black Earth Institute.

WILD AUTHOR/PHILOSOPHER FORMULA ...

Versatility + ADD + ENFP + curiosity + rebelliousness = unruly discipline.

So that’s it …

Tested in the context of experience and reality ...

I AS OTHER AND THE NOVELTY OF DERIVING CONCEPTS

I as other and the novelty of deriving concepts

Recouped Gilles Deleuze’s slim but packed “Kant’s Critical Philosophy” from an unruly bookshelf amid basement clutter - and then Eileen found her copy of his and Félix Guattari’s “Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.” Between Deleuze, Whitehead, metaphysics and writing, I’m lost in Rimbaud’s: “I is another” - (cited by Deleuze in “Kant”) - wondering which Other the Other is.

Other hand, it doesn’t matter.

“Each reading of a philosopher, an artist, a writer should be undertaken, [Gilles] Deleuze tells us, in order to provide an impetus for creating new concepts that do not pre-exist (DR vii).... new concepts are derived from others’ works, or old ones are recreated or ‘awakened’, and put to a new service”

“...from Difference and Repetition (1968 DR) trans. Paul Patton (1994: Colombia University Press, New York)”

-- On Gilles Deleuze, in the International Encyclopedia of Philosophy

In Brain Pickings Weekly, Annie Dillard is quoted in “The Writing Life” as supporting and adhering to a regular routine for writing, as are others …

I don’t have that discipline neither for reading nor writing -- I’m all over the place, writing bits here, reading snatches there … her book a favorite ...

DOWN THE METAPHYSICAL RABBIT HOLE ...

Thinking about surveying the difference between Whitehead’s and Deleuze’s metaphysics, but I should probably re-read “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” first …

… and replay “Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” ...

So ...

"Cheshire Puss,' ... 'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'

'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat. 'I don't much care where—' said Alice.

'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.

'—so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation. 'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.' Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question. 'What sort of people live about here?'

'In THAT direction,' the Cat said, waving its right paw round, 'lives a Hatter: and in THAT direction,' waving the other paw, 'lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad.'

'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.

'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'

'How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.

'You must be,' said the Cat, 'or you wouldn't have come here.'

And ..

'Take some more tea,' the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.

'I've had nothing yet,' Alice replied in an offended tone, 'so I can't take more.'

'You mean you can't take LESS,' said the Hatter: 'it's very easy to take MORE than nothing.'

METAPHYSICS AND THE PROBLEM OF SUBJECT-OBJECT DESCRIPTIONS

More on Metaphysics (the problem of the subject-object relationship):

A key problem to me is the “being-in-the-world” understanding (Heidegger’s “Dasein”) as a human, and the relationship with that which may be both of the world and not of it (e.g., God).

In this case, it seems to me to not be the subject-object relationship that Heidegger had a problem with (as I do, too), but a subject-subject one. That is, instead of “I have a relationship with God” (subject-object either way) one says “God and I and the cosmos and whatever is beyond are mutual.”

But even here linguistics constrains because “mutual” as a universal is the predicate of “God and I and the cosmos and whatever is beyond..”

Another way to look at this is what an anthropologist Eileen and I met with in Mexico City described as the linguistic difference displayed by the Cholojobal Mayan indians in Chiapas, Mexico, from the traditional language arrangement we’re accustomed with. To him (he and his wife lived with them for decades) this tribal group did NOT use the subject-cupola-object relationship (e.g. the fence is gray, or, he loves she) but instead uses a subject-subject linguistic in which the verb is dominant (love/he/she/shared). This is hard for us to wrap our minds around. And even now I have to use the subject/object linguistic to describe it.

Still, this latter way of speaking (linguistics) and knowing (epistemology) and being (ontology) is one thing I’m exploring in metaphysics, including how it impacts identity.

 

ROUGH NOTES - SOME METAPHYSIC CATEGORIES ...

From --Stephen Mumford -- “Metaphysics: A very short introduction”

Considerations:

-substances/substratum/ wholes vs aggregates sums/ reductionist (parts explain wholes)/ emergentism (more than sum of parts) holism/

-properties/qualities/re circle-wholly present, runs through the many/Plato’s forms (problem of Form and its relationship to the derivative form-resemblance[also a Form-infinite regress])/instantiating of/Aristotle’s immanent realism/

-particulars/ one and the same e.g./substratum view/bundle view (re properties)/united by degree of continuity/relational/ argument between everything is either properties (bundle e.g) or a particular-particulars/ complex particular (contra atomism)/ is wholly present (Aristotle) endurantism/ perdurantism-in itself no need of relation, succession of static properties/

-changes/ events-processes/ change or loss of property or within a property/ Aristotle- parts in space; parts in time/ (see endurantism-perdurantism in properties)

-causes/ most not all changes need causes (big-bang no)/ causal connection/ Hume-unobservable, part of a pattern/ other world/ Mill’s method of difference (actual/placebo control compare)/ singularism-regularity Hume/ general-particular mixup/

-relationships/relations (vav properties)/via Plato’s forms/

-possibilities/ all actual is possible (mere possibilities)/ shape interaction with world/ concrete possible worlds (like ours in some way) but abstract/ what one could have been/ recombinations/ fiction/ logically possible/ naturally possible/  

-time/ (events/processes) background of/ flows/ in-itself also could mean stops-starts/ need metaphors for/ two methodologies/ spatial analogy: past, present, future properties/ presentism (how long does it last?) (absolute simultaneity vs relativity of position or viewpoint)/ subjective present/ past via present as part of its reality (properties of events?)/ sequence view - past-present in relation temporally/ big-bang chain of events - Aristotelian resemblance/ Platonist- what time did big-bang begin?/ eternalist: past,present, future all real/ now: what past and future don’t have, a POV/

-personal identity/ person: human and nonhuman (Locke)/ quality of/ has a memory/ beliefs that change (or not)/ Wittgenstein’s rope-stand analogy/ Descarte: body and mind parts; relation between spiritual (mind) and physical (body) substance; body as extension/ space occupied by what? impenatrability (solidity) body, spiritual no extension-penatrable/ dualism/ materialism-idealism/ causal interaction between spiritual-physical/ causality question/ a one-one/ memory faulty or delusional/ bodily continuity/

-nothingness/ is nothing something or not?/ absences part of reality/ univocal-it exists or doesn’t/ negative property calculations/ incompatabilities/ causation by absence (of water, say)/ reified absences re properties-particulars-existences/ nothing just a word - nothing in world makes it true/ Russell, negative facts (metaphysical concept of facts)/ everthing existing is positive fact/ assertion-denial/ “if”/ nothing-absence-lacks no part of existence/

-emergence/ particulars emerge at a higher level of reality/ qualities emerge/ how does mind emerge from bodily parts?/ life an emergent quality/ what possible is emergent?/

-Metaphysics/ concerned about nature of things in general terms/ understand fundamental nature of reality/ science truths general and concrete; metaphysical truths general and abstract/ science (physics) based on observable; metaphysics not necessarily so/ Hume dismissed metaphysics/ Kant metaphysics-description of our structure of thinking about the world/ what the world is like/ how concepts that describe world relate to each other/ scientific powers of observation exaggerated/ metaphysics at theoretical end/ what of counterintuitive or contradictory/ (me) observation limited by senses and cognitive powers/ theories based on reasoning alone insufficient/ how know anything is true/ theoretical virtues- gel with other theories, consistent.

ASSERTION AS DIGITAL JOURNALIST

Assertion as Digital journalist:

Because I write and have filmed nonfiction and documentary work I've decided to classify this part of what I do "digital journalism" to assert the protections allowed under shield laws, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the "reporter's privilege" aligned with the amendment. This includes what I may post from other media sources.

A helpful website in this regard:

http://www.rcfp.org/digital-journalists-legal-guide/sources-and-subpoenas-reporters-privilege

ADRIENNE RICH'S 'SCHOOL' SETS ME FREE

I am feeling so much freedom reading Adrienne Rich this time. What a stimulus to loving language (and thus to write).

Excerpt 1:

“... when fear vacuums out the streets

When the whole town flinches

blood on the undersole thickening to glass

Whoever crosses hunched knees bent

in a contested zone

knows why she does this suicidal thing …”

- Adrienne Rich, from the poem of the same name in “The School Among the Ruins”

Excerpt 2:

"... I need the border-crossing eye of a tornado

I need an ancestor fleeing into Canada
to rampage freedom there or keep on fleeing
to keep on fleeing or invent a genre
to distemper ideology."
-- from the poem “Variations on Lines from a Canadian Poet” in  “The School Among the Ruins”

SUGAR MULE LITERARY MAGAZINE TO PUBLISH "PICKPOCKET"

Sugar Mule Literary Magazine notified me that it will publish my short story “Pickpocket” in its upcoming themed edition “family secrets.” This is the third short fiction story accepted for publication since I started writing fiction last year. The other two: “Halloween Eve 1945” in October’s Faircloth Review and “Scooter” in July’s eFiction Magazine.

'YOUR KINGDOM COME ON EARTH AT IT IS IN HEAVEN..."

I convened and guided the Seekers Class this Sunday morning in church around the day’s topic, the Lord’s Prayer, and challenged some common Christian interpretations as well as Marcus Borg’s more liberal ideological interpretations in his book “Speaking Christian,” the consensus text the group has been working through.

We covered this part of the prayer, presumably taught by Jesus: “Our Father who art in heaven hallowed by your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven …”

* Challenge One: The gender of the holy name - how is it that anyone can adduce from the mystery of a divine a gender and make that gender’s name holy. Christian differences are sharp on the gender question.

* Challenge Two: Why the necessity of “on earth as it is in heaven.” If heaven exists, why is not “earth” created as part of it.

Why the need, thus, to go through struggle at the human level? How could an omnipotent God devise such a cruel separation of two places, one a milieu of pain, violence and injustice contrasted to a place presumably of bliss and peace? Borg is silent on that question and insists “heaven” in the prayer is not about an “afterlife,” his interpretation, which is a speculation, just as conservatives speculate that it does address an “afterlife.” To him, it’s about working for the “kingdom” via justice-efforts for God’s vision and compassionate feeling toward the world.

Really? God’s vision and compassion? Again, what does this say about God.

One theological thought is that God is not omnipotent after all; another, that in order for there to be choice and free well, this was the only way creation could be devised. There are other rationales as well, including one that makes the divine egotistical -- God wants us to choose “him.”

* Challenge Three: “Your kingdom come …” Even if one takes a progressive peace-and-justice on earth understanding of a “coming” worked through by efforts here; or in contrast, one particular conservative understanding that speaks of the “coming” as a “second coming” that lifts humans out of suffering, the word “coming” is operative. Or a third, that speaks of the afterlife in its interpretation that “comes” when we die and will thus be free of misery.

But why a “coming” and the wait, and the necessity to toil as part of the “coming”? Did God choose this way for humanity? To suffer? Again, the question of divine power and intention.

* Challenge Four: Ideological differences among Christians -- how disparate are they when humans amidst these different understandings do similar work among suffering humans (in fact, it might be that conservative Christians do more “kingdom” work among the poor and the disenfranchised on person-to-person levels than liberals, and have a more cooperative communal way to operate and share despite Borg’s assertion that those of this ideology are prone to stress “individualistic” ways of living and understanding the teachings and its promises. I haven’t seen that individualistic stress so pronounced at the ground level where the word “sharing” is noted. Both liberals and conservatives, though, proclaim their ideological bent at times amidst this work, though. Really! Who’s more wrong in the efforts to persuade about an ideology?

* Finally, the person of Jesus as the Christ. What does (my term) “Jesusness” mean in the struggle and the work? If liberation theological Christians say “we are part of Christ and work to foster our liberation from oppression as part of the Christ of the Poor” on the one hand, and conservatives do similar work because they have “accepted Jesus as their Savior” who compels them to do this work, what does the presumed difference mean, or how different is it?

This is a short résumé about the morning hour’s conversation, which was more subtle that I’m able to summarize in this short space.

The Seekers meet Sunday mornings in the basement of St. Luke United Methodist Church in the Stuart Heights section of Chattanooga TN. I get a chance to guide it once in awhile.

FOREBODINGS ...

Going through the news and the lists of news and analyses that come via email and apps is a disheartening but necessary process. Such an intensity of war, violence, expropriation of land and people, violations of human rights, environmental depredation. And the constant propping up of the international economic structure so dependent on consumer behavior when consumer incomes are descending.

And what are so-called “developing world” populations called? -- Emerging markets … For who? For the global economic elite ...

Then, there’s the US war machine and now its government efforts to wedge US fossil fuels into the global market to create a dependency to help counteract its own international economic perils. Plus, the rampant tunnel vision of “first world” consumers even as they’re preyed on.

Forebodings …

Pyramid schemes abound ...

AN EASY SPOT TO SIT AND LET BE AMID THE WOODS AND DISARRAY

Back deck, swallows piecing together a nest in a roof overhang section, carpenter bees flitting and buzzing, squirrel on the bird feeder, Mercury aware and at the screen door, robins feeding on the ground, chickadees and cardinals zipping around, an occasional wasp -- the wasps haven’t stung in years so they must be non-stinging; slightly cool for me, somewhat overcast-sunny day on this half-acre site backing against woods and a power line cut; Spring, Eileen’s gardens sprouting, an easy spot to sit and let be.

Our Chattanooga house is a melange of worn carpeting, the former owners odd taste in wallpaper, Eileen’s paintings and others on the walls, my photographs, too; a mix of furniture styles, some cheap some costly; Eileen’s office (once a spare bedroom) and her studio (once the dining room) with things spread around on tables and floors, my create room (also a spare bedroom) also similarly endowed; a basement with a garage converted into a workshop, shed, bookshelves and storage space with piles of stuff on the concrete floor in disarray, with another bathroom with clothes washer and dryer and old rust-colored tile floor, and a large living space with exercise apparatus, futon, couch, more bookshelves, old computer on the old rug floor, old TV on an end table, my paintings and others on the walls.

Jillie, our other rescued dog, enters the back deck and Mercury, barking, now needs to chase the squirrel vertical and upside down on the bird feeder, both dogs rushing off the back deck. And here I write to the punctuations of a woodpecker, the sounds of bees, bird utterances and barking.

ON PUBLISHING ...

ON PUBLISHING: You write something, it makes the rounds, rejections are part of it. - I have mixed feelings about the process, but it's what there is. The danger is thinking that you have to write to be published rather than insist on being authentic - and I fall into that trap and then remind myself that in what I write I have to be true to the story as I see it and my sense of the craft, and if it never gets published, well so be it. I'll self-publish it.

I worked on it to be a good story.

Even what I’ve written that was accepted for publication ... I wonder who read it.

JOURNALIST ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA TARGETED PUTIN FOR CHECHEN'S "HORRORS"

More from assassinated Anna Politkovskaya’s dispatches from Chechnya in “Is Journalism Worth Dying For”  --

Focusing on Vladimir Putin and the Russian hierarchy regarding what she calls the “horror in Chechnya” and in border lands that Chechens faced:

From a diispatch dated Feb 16, 2003

“The co-called Renovation Board ... is chronically incapable of paying [laborers] for their work, but takes the ideological approach: ‘Build a settlement! Just do it! Putin has spoken!’

‘What work is that?’ I ask Supian Sambayev, who introduces himself as the site foreman. He and I walk over an area strewn with wooden structures and a defunct lattice of rusting pipes which is a battlefield for the image of the President as Architect for Peace in Chechnya.

‘For the houses,’ the foreman insists...

‘But what houses?’

Supian looks away ...”

From another dispatch, again focusing on Putin and the hierarchy -- dated July 5, 2005:

“First the profiles of the candidates for the War Prize, awarded for unleashing and fomenting the Chechen tragedy of 1994-2005. It has been founded by “Chechenskoye Obshchestvo,” unquestionably the best newspaper today published in Chechnya and Ingushetia, and the one most dynamically increasing its circulation ... The question, ‘Who bears the guilt for all this horror?’ is one the people ask themselves ...

But of course, who else could winners be if not Yeltsin and Dudavev? And who could be awarded the second prize, if not Yeltsin’s worthy successor, Putin; that No. 1 ideologist of blood-letting ...”

ASSASSINATED POLITKOVSKAYA'S DISPATCHES FROM CHECHNYA

Regarding the Chechnya connection for the two men associated with the Boston marathon deadly explosions, the assassinated journalist Anna Politkovskaya wrote dispatches from Chechnya that illuminate the fierce breakaway and resistance situation vis-a-vis Russia and of atrocities by Russian federal troops -- in her posthumously assembled book ironically titled “Is Journalism Worth Dying For? Final Dispatches”
Politkovskaya wrote graphically of the atrocities executed during the so-called Second Chechen War begun in 1999, one of the exposés that are said to have led to her assassination in Moscow. She also wrote “Putin’s Russia.”
She observed in the text:

“I hate battle-pieces. In paintings, as in life, detail is what matters most. It is the detail which gives the measure of our humanity. How we react to the tragedy of one small person reflects our attitude towards a whole nationality, and increasing the numbers doesn’t change things much.”

Her details of the brutality of the incursion by Russian troops are graphic and unadulterated as I re-read them. They describe another episode in the long story of the terrible inhumanity of humans that continues to beget more inhumanity.

JEAN BAUDRILLARD'S MAP OF A DISAPPEARED REALITY

I love Baudrillard’s notion of “map.” Empire or theology crumbles, map remains. I imagine nostalgia, denial. 

Other side: Imagine a war map (precession of the simulacra), you end up with Iraq, Afghanistan.

Jean Braudrillard’s main notion here is “simulacra” -- Signs and symbols construct a perceived reality that ever changes or signifies only itself, cultural constructs become the reality, the reality itself disappears.

-First stage: The faithful copy -- it’s believed to show the real - “The Sacramental Order”

-Second stage: Hmm ... maybe not a faithful copy? Use it anyway. Hints the existence of obscured reality - “Order of Maleficence”

-Third stage: Masks the absence of reality, pretends to be faithful copy - “Order of Sorcery.”

-Fourth stage: Pure simulation/simulacra -- has no relationship to reality. Signs reflect other signs, they don’t have to reflect reality, the signs are accepted as reality - consumers lives, for example, are mainly artificial - “Order of Total Equivalency.”

Thanks to Wiki for refreshing this.

I think I’ve got it right.

THE SEEKERS PONDER FAITH MEANINGS IN A CHURCH BASEMENT

A group called The Seekers meets each Sunday aware of biblical contradictions and myths yet seeking meaning for faith by exploring those contradictions. They (we) also challenge the agist stereotypes. Among are two retired Hamilton County TN officials, a former professor, three who have Ph.D.s, and other smart active retirees. All have inquisitive and dynamic sensibilities, are technologically capable and have strong social-justice conscientiousness.

The intriguing question for me involves what brings us together in the basement of a small Chattanooga United Methodist church. The persistence of one woman might offer an answer, and except for me, I’m not indicating who any of us are. Social-conscientiousness might be another. So might the Big Question, what is the divine, how is it manifest, why does the sense of it persist, and what does one do with that? Another is the question of what the church is supposed to be. And finally, why us, at this time, this place? That last question is the most intriguing to me.

(So I’m up at this early hour pondering the meaning of that, thus the purpose and intention.)

REVERENCE FOR THE MYSTERY ...

I don’t try to give an identity to the spirit of life anymore. It seems beyond my senses and sensibility. Even though science seems to measure aspects of the universe’s creativity so acutely, it all falls still within the brain’s limits of perception and conceptualization. The religious wars are so insane. 

Yet something moves within. It remains a question, a mystery to explore and revere.

NUTRITION AND SOCIAL JUSTICE -- A WRITER'S DIALOGUE

I’ve been ranting about nutrition and health lately, right? [I've noticed]

And I’ve got a Ph.D. in philosophy in work that basically centers on social justice, true? [Indeed, Dr. Rehberg]

And there’s a relationship between nutrition and responsible public health ethics, wouldn’t you say? [I'd better say yes]

And also with the ethics of the medical community? [Should be, certainly]

And with disease. Including cancer.[Now you've made it a personal issue, too]

And I did teach of couple of medical ethics courses, plus have some background in health and wellness education. [It's on your transcripts, wherever they are]

So therefore I should explore the ethical dimensions in this area more thoroughly and maybe even write within this realm from a social justice point of view.  [That would be the Socratic way to put it. I noticed you've spent a lot of time lately looking into this.]

Hmmm ... [Hmmm ...]

PICKPOCKET A DREAM (a draft)

PICKPOCKET A DREAM (a draft)

It easily slides out of the pocket into my hands and I slip away.

Maybe the pocket of that person hanging onto a subway strap, eyes meeting his own in his reflection in the train window, tunnel lights flashing by, stroboscopic. Or the three others crowded together near the pole by the door. All I know is the pocket I reached for, as if to move people aside so I could pass through, the pocket my prey.

So what do I have as the bunched few shove to exit through the train door as it stops, a rush of air from the subway station, its sounds now more apparent in my thoughts, invading my curiosity for what I garnered. Stole. New passengers take their place. Which one of those who left did I pickpocket? Does it matter? I’ll imagine it the man looking at his reflection.

The train lurches and I spin and face an elderly woman older than me, face lined, standing because no one would offer her a seat, then another lurch, a bump, and I almost knock her down. I grab the bar with one hand, her arm with the other, and she is stabilized but glaring. I shrug as if to say, what do you expect, it’s the subway, this is the city. Don’t let go, she seems to ask with her eyes. I nod my head toward an empty seat. Another man taps her back. Take the seat, he says. He escorts her. I watch and smile feebly. The man ignores me. The woman leaves the train at the next station and smiles at me. The man leaves, too.

Stations go by and the train is almost empty. I exit. I’m parked along the river. I need a drink and pass a neighborhood bar. Go in? No. Cross the river to head back north. Why did I park here? A whim. I went to the art museum, got bored, left, walked through midtown, thought about a movie, no not that either - my treasure in my pocket as I think about this. It feels like something folded, hard, cardboard. I can’t look. It will ruin the surprise. There will be no disappointment. I imagine I’m stealing a dream. I’ll make of it what I want.

(To be continued …)

© 2013 Wes Rehberg

"VISION" - WENDELL BERRY -- for a holy week

A good time for "Vision" -- even for this holy week, from Wendell Berry:

A Vision

If we will have the wisdom to survive,
to stand like slow-growing trees
on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it,
if we will make our seasons welcome here,
asking not too much of earth or heaven,
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live
here, their houses strongly placed
upon the valley sides, fields and gardens
rich in the windows.  The river will run
clear, as we will never know it,
and over it, birdsong like a canopy.
On the levels of the hills will be
green meadows, stock bells in noon shade.
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down
the old forest, and old forest will stand,
its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields.
In their voices they will hear a music
risen out of the ground.  They will take
nothing from the ground they will not return,
whatever the grief at parting.  Memory,
native to this valley, will spread over it
like a grove, and memory will grow
into legend, legend into song, song, into sacrament.
The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling,
light.  This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its possibility.

CARTOGRAPHY ... (A WRITER'S REFLECTION)

Cartography (a writer's reflection):
* A map is not the reality, it is a bounded representation, a simulation accepted as a reality.
- a mind map.
(Visit "simulacrum"}
* In 9/11 the mind map was moved to the territory of Iraq, away from the "territories" of its "truth," also maps in the minds of the perpetrators, thus the Iraq mind map preceded the war map and masked the maps underneath.
* When I read an assemblage of signs, say a report, the map it creates is a simulation that my mind map alters even further.
* We, no different from other animals, map our “territory.”
* Ergo ...

WHERE THE PROJECT NAME "WILD CLEARING" CAME FROM

How I formulated the project name “Wild Clearing”:
I opened to a page in my book “Political Grace: The Gift of Resistance” and found I wrote this:
“I am a resister of the oppressive and dominating political and economic order of the trilateral north, thus I call myself a resister and proclaim that. As a resister, I am insinuated to be a traitor to the dominating political and economic order, thus I am both a traitor and resister and accept that. As both traitor and resister, I am one who dwells in an uncertain space within the geographical limits of one of the prime movers of that order, the country that appropriates to itself the label that also denotes the hemisphere, ‘America,’ the United States … It is not a space I dwell in alone, others share it … The borders of this space are constituted by our capacity to articulate our resistance, and by the counter-resistance our resistance encounters.”
I then go on to call this space a “wild clearing.” the original genesis of the project name “Wild Clearing.”
Brave words in my Ph.D. dissertation of the same title and text as the book. How to keep up the energy to continue this …

The book's web page"
http://www.wildclearing.com/politicalgrace.html