SubscribeAugust 7th, 2011
primordial experience and poetry
This is a follow-up to yesterday’s post.
In Hirshfield’s chapter called “The Myriad Leaves of Words”:
Primordial experience is nameless and without form; still, we find our way into the life of expressive language by means of an inner attention tuned to the outer world’s voice. Images, metaphors, similes and stories are sliding doors, places of opening through which subjective and objective may penetrate and become each other.
She’s been talking about Tsurayuki and his idea that
A nightingale singing among the blossoms, the vice of a pond-dwelling frog—listening to these, what living being would not respond with his own poem? It is poetry that effortlessly moves the heavens and the earth, awakens the world of invisible spirits to deep feeling, softens the realtionship between men and women, and consoles the hearts of fierce warriors.
The idea is that by connecting the idea of what it means to be human and the idea of what it means to be the natural world a gateway in primordial feeling is opened for our words to enter and link.
Aaaaaaaaaargh!
It’s one thing for a 10th century poet to make the leap a between a shift in human attention and feeling to this shift being causally related to the awakening of “invisible spirits to deep feeling”. It’s quite another for a person today, with all we know about the mind and our propensity to anthropomorphize quite without any respect to the vast non-human world of action and being. Drives me crazy.
(I just went off on a rant, wrote a bunch of stuff then drank a coffee to chill, and hit delete.)
Try again.
I value Hirshfield, her experience and capacity with poetry but I find it oddly hilarious that reading her requires a constant act of translation. I mean she’s well educated and clearly in love with the power of language and for her to fall into that same mistake, that very human error — it’s the same thing as the soul argument I talked about in yesterday’s post.
So why write about this one too?
We have this idea that there is a world of primordial experience that is something more true than the world of mundane experience. We also have this idea that words can get us through the gateway between these distinct realities – and therefore, we have the idea that primordial and mundane experience are separate realms.
This is another manifestation of Descarte’s error, of the erroneous line between reason and feeling. There is no gateway because all primordial feeling amounts to is the body and its below-awareness working attached to a specific set of feelings.
Sure, the body is hard to hear, and that is largely because most of its workings/feelings need to stay below the level of awareness so that we can keep living. Imagine, for example, if you had to think every time you took a breath or exhaled.
Still, meditation works, as does poetry, to shift awareness and generate wonder, awe, and other feelings. If we don’t use the metaphor of gateways because it requires a bifurcated self, then what?
One alternative is to think of a microscope and its ability to focus on the universe of the minuscule and make of that tiny drop of world the universe. As a kid I’m sure you had the experience of seeing a drop of pond water and looking at it, realizing that this tiny life took up your entire field of vision, you got temporarily enthralled. And the lab, the lab and the outer world disappeared.
Attention riveted on the mundane does that and paramecium are about as mundane (and awe inspiring) as the world gets. Primordial experience is really the set of awe-feelings that mark an experience as something other than mundane, which is why paramecium (and mountains) are both mundane and awe-inspiring. That can be true of any experience, hence finding the mountain within the mountain of Tsurayuki. A microscope allows us to attend to a world normally invisible and in that attention, respectfully given, a world of feeling is generated that amounts to primordial experience.
Poetry is our microscope; words, grammar, rhetoric, rhythm etc are our focus knobs, our slide clips, our slide stage.
Isn’t this just another way of saying a gateway? No. For Hirshfield (and other similar thinkers) the primordial is “nameless and without form”. This kind of idea is an inheritance from the bifurcated reality that is foundational to such a way of thinking. Nameless perhaps, as such pre-aware feelings are also pre-linguistic, but certainly not without form. Primordial experience is about as formless as pond water is lifeless. You just need augmented “eyes” to see.
The reason this drives me crazy: the forms that do exist are critical in the successful translation of pre-linguistic experience and awe-feeling structured experiences into liguistic modalities. We give up our ability to understand those when we stick to a false but common understanding of reality as split down the middle. We can and do stumble on those forms by accident, but it would be so much better for us if we tried to understand our own mechanics behind the curtain of awareness rather than continually propping up the story of the grand wizard.
I’m moving along through my evening yesterday and got stopped by this bit from a novel that postulates experience (the capacity to have them, to remember them, to combine them with other experiences) as one of the primary things of value in the human species. And then I started reading Rilke’s modernist novel and BLAM to two bits collided in my head.
And I couldn’t, for the life of me, find a definition of modernism no matter how much I rummaged through my head. I couldn’t think what the hell modernism is supposed to actually be. Now I could identify modernist artists of various sorts, painters, writers, poets, musicians, but could I put a coherent sentence together capturing their similarities? Nope.
So I spent several hours browsing books and the internet. It reminded me of all those hours in one or another degree program trying to figure out the same thing. Am I any closer? Not really.
I’m struggling with this because somehow it is clear that what experience is in human life somehow connects with what Rilke’s character is trying to discover. I’m only a few pages in but I’m simultaneously loving it and feeling irritated. Partly I suppose it’s just that I don’t have much patience for metaphysical angst. But boy can Rilke write! There’s no chance at all that I won’t finish the novel, and no chance that I’ll regret doing so.
I do think Malte will give me a better sense of modernism than most. I feel like I’m in the presence of a person who can only see one color and is trying to understand a vast field of many-coloured flowers. That’s how modernism feels to me, but it doesn’t explain what it is.
And as for experience – my question: is seeing a flower an experience?
Is seeing alone even possible? Yesterday when I was looking at the lupin growing at the nature center, I was also smelling, sensing movement, my own stillness, and readiness to move simultaneously. I was focused on what my eyes saw, but all the other stuff was also there. Is that focus part of the experience? Is all that what I mean when I say I saw a lupin?
I can see why Malte got overwhelmed by his learning to see project. A bit like learning to shoot by focusing on the bullet and forgetting the gun.
BTW, I discovered Malte through litlove’s blog. She is not responsible for my weird-ass philosophical musings; she is only responsible for introducing me to yet another wonderful book.
December 28th, 2010
social pressure, the brain, and change
I rather like this. Never heard of the guy before but will now listen to more of his videos over on youtube. I do especially like the bit near the end where he emphasizes the need for behavioural change to go along with developing knowledge and awareness. That and the emphasis on peer-reviewed studies.
via wimp
December 23rd, 2010
feeling odd today
I had another whopper of a dream last night. Not scary or disturbing exactly but intense and apparently transformative in some way. The reason I think this is how I feel. I’ve given birth three times and each time, near the end of the process when the contractions were completely overwhelming, there was always a brief space when the last one had quieted and before the next swell began. In that space I unfolded into the universe.
Now I know that sounds really odd and very unlikely but it is the case I’m afraid. Or at least, my body was sure that what was happening and my mind, being overwhelmed by the process of living those moments just went along with the body. It’s your show, my mind would stutter before it just shut up and curled in a ball under the somatic rug.
Anyway, I am past childbearing now but apparently my body still knows how to unfold. It’s exactly how I feel right now, like there are infinite strings in the universe and this small knot of them is just the part of me that I call Mary. The rest of them, well they are you and all the rest of what is—and I can feel them just in the same way I can feel my stomach turn over when I am nervous, or feel the heat radiate from my solar plexus when I breathe deeply and evenly for more than a few minutes.
The feeling is neither pleasant nor unpleasant, but just there. There is, though, a small (very small) knot of the threads that wonders if this is a prelude to a “contraction.” I suppose that very small knot is my mind hiding under the rug. And, no, I don’t drink and I don’t drug. It’s just my form of an odd cerebral set up.
Why am I telling you this? Well, it’s in part because I am reading Chas Clifton’s her hidden children and it seems to be related to the process and to the dream last night. I am not sure how yet, but as I keep reading maybe it will become clear. If it’s not too boring I’ll tell you about it here.
December 13th, 2010
why read such an illogical thing as alchemy?
Someone inquired of me, if I know that most alchemy (and other assorted) texts have an “abysmally poor logic” underpinning the thought system, why do I bother with them?
Here’s my reply:
Apart from the sheer enjoyment of another mind there is the issue of the difference between reason and efficacy. Imagine you are visiting with a friend in her kitchen. You complain of a headache and she gives you a cup of tea to drink. The tea is bitter but you trust your friend and so drink the tea. You carry on a slow but pleasant conversation and after about 30 minutes you notice that your headache is much less severe and after a further 20 minutes or so of more animated conversation you realize your headache is gone.
At this point several more people show up and enter the kitchen. After introductions, conversation turns to the pot of tea on the table out of which you drank. Someone begins to pour a cup for themselves but your friend demurs saying that it is willow bark and she will make some plain black tea for everyone. As she begins this the group starts relating their various stories about why (and if) the willow bark tea cured your headache. Someone says that it is the spirit of the willow that takes the pain. Another person talks about poison in cells and the cleansing effect of natural remedies upon the body. A third speaks of acetylsalicylic acid and it’s naturally found variants. A fourth says it was the conversation that did it; a person says it was just coincidence – uttering the word “monad”. There are other stories involving djinns, angels, astrological alignments and heavy metals in our atmosphere.
Do any of these stories have anything to do with the relationship between your drinking the tea and your headache’s recession? That is, if you hadn’t heard all these stories would it have made any difference to the fact that your headache left?
Of course there are problems with many of the explanatory stories. One of those is that none of them will test well experimentally except for one. There’s another problem, too. Say on another occasion you have a headache again, you drink willow bark tea but in an hour you still have a headache. Does this mean the tea didn’t work the first time or that there’s another problem? The only way to know is through understanding and experimentation. At this point the stories and their reliability and testability does matter. But still, knowing the actual explanation for how something works does not change the fact that it works.
The real problem is if people come into things through the story rather than the efficacy (or lack thereof) of something. So if I started with the spirit story and doggedly stuck with it, I’d be propitiating willow tree spirits when my headache didn’t go away instead of experimenting with (say) meditation as a relaxation technique, or exercise, or eliminating getting drunk every night. I’d not take the time to figure out under what actual conditions the willow bark worked and when the different kinds of head pain required differing kinds of responses. This is what makes the acetylsalicylic acid story different from the rest. That story is founded first and foremost on testability and repeatability whereas the other stories are based on narrative delight. This means the acetylsalicyclic acid story will happily change itself to fit the facts whereas the other stories will expect the facts to fit the narrative.
Here’s the thing with alchemy and such like systems of explanation—you need to separate the story from the bits that have some effect in the world and go with the bits that work. Then you need to match them up with other bits that have come to your attention through completely different stories. If you do that then you can find great value in human narratives like alchemy without losing your analytical mind to the illogical abyss.
November 9th, 2010
sound and calm
I’ve been thinking about what constitutes “quiet” for me. It’s not the absence of sound certainly. For example, yesterday I was anxious, out of sorts, almost panicky in my need for this elusive “silence.” I thought at first just to stay home where it is, in fact, pretty quiet but the thought of that drove the panic into a little flurry. So I got dressed, grabbed my stuff and got in the car.
Driving out on the highway has a calming effect on me most of the time. City traffic cuts down on the sensation but once there is some speed, some space and an open window spilling life smells into my personal space, I almost always feel tension lifting. And of course, driving with one’s window open is not quiet at all.
It’s not even the absence of human sounds because I often come to this cafe where there are always people talking, music playing, the sounds of cars moving on the road: the chitter of civilization. But the sounds make sense. They have a kind of harmony once one is accustomed.
But yesterday even that seemed impossible so I found myself heading along the highway to a small marine park I know just over the U.S. border. I got there, through a patch of hail, to find a blue sky, sun filled afternoon with just a touch of cold breeze. I travel with blankets and a pillow at all times so I just set up a temporary camp in this driftwood enclosure. I took my shoes and socks off, curled up under the sleeping bag and turned my face to the sun.
As I breathed I could feel the calm spreading. Where the tension had left on the drive here, instead there was a spreading warmth, a kind of resilient looseness that I haven’t felt much of in these last years. That calm has something to do with the sound world. The waves were a small shush, the bird calls and pronouncements were pointed, like arpeggios in an otherwise stately piece. The wind had the quiet power of a viola, and the dogs and their people were like well placed percussion. I didn’t hear anything with specific meaning, that is, nothing was intelligible but somehow everything had meaning. I’m sure you know what I mean.
Periodically I would sit up, read a bit, write when phrases would pass through my head on their way from and to where ever. Then I would lay down again. Sometimes I turned so the sun warmed the back of my head, sometimes I would keep my eyes open so that I could watch the bald eagle sit at the end of the pier watching the ocean. Most of the time I had my eyes closed and just drifted on the harmony that I was perceiving as sound.
I spent several hours that way.
I think, just based on my own experience, that there are certain sound ‘scapes that are conducive to promoting this “calm.” Certain kinds of nature work best for me, although the coffee house works to release tension most days. I suspect that these ‘scapes are somehow simlilar to the pattern of organization that is present in me when that calm is working. Like a kind of mimesis, the pattern of the calm is an echo of the pattern of sound of that day at the marine park and so one can foster the other.
That make sense? I’m talking out of my hat here.
August 27th, 2010
Odd?
I slept in my car last night, the first few hours not far from the Columbia River, the next an hour or so west of Spokane. The air moving down from the Cascades brought some low clouds but far above them were the stretched gossamer of high plateau moisture. Jupiter hung sparkling below the barely waning moon, the sky was so bright it glowed a shadowed blue, and I missed being homeless.
March 21st, 2010
A Herzog film of splendour
I saw this film yesterday. Oh my. It was so glorious, so deeply moving, that I am still in the stage where I am checking to see if I can get tickets to McMurdo Station. Not that I would actually want to live there, but 6 months or so, yes I would want to do that. I can count penguins.
It’s the same thing as the cicada video I just posted. It’s so non-human that I feel as if I am just a part of things – a small, non-important part – and not the center of the universe. I find the switch from center to periphery deeply reassuring, a stunning pleasure.
This center of the universe thing: that’s the problem with cities, they lead you more deeply into the delusion that the universe is about being human, that our measure is also the measure of the rest of eternity, and of course it isn’t. The most horrible thing is that while the feeling of centrality persists, not only is it simply wrong, it is also deeply disruptive. I mean how can one actually attend to what is in fact the case when blinded by one’s own reflection? I mean it would be like assessing the possibilities of the world outside the home if all one’s widows were mirrors.
This film is a visual reminder of both our belonging and of the non-human nature of reality. I am deeply glad that Herzog was granted a pass to the base because, I suspect, this film is the closest that I will ever get to that booming silence.
March 21st, 2010
Absolutely amazing bug story
I find things like this stunning. It is both beautiful and so completely non-human that entering into the edges of their world dislodges, temporarily I admit, my reality from its human-centered tendency. I deeply appreciate that when it happens. That ability to include the reality of another completely non-human being makes me feel like we might have some redeeming value as a species.
via Wimp
November 15th, 2009
Dark days, the dark moon and dreams
The moon is dark today, as is the sky. It has been raining all day, so much so that even while it was light, going down the narrow walk between houses to get my laundry, I could have used a flashlight to avoid tripping over that *!*&#$ lip of concrete.
I’ve been in my head all day, writing a little essay on Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument and why it isn’t really a problem for physicalism. This may make absolutely no sense to you, but it is what I’ve been doing all day. Next it’s an edit on an essay on Greek god origin myths and their reference to specific body parts and what said references say about the polis-mind of the people. After that, if there is time before I need to sleep, a novel by Louis Owens called Nightland.
I went in to my office to get the first draft of the Jackson essay down. I’ve been struggling with it all week and found that all the home distractions (dishes to do, laundry, cats to pet, dogs to walk, plants to water and kitchen-floor-ground-in-dirt to eradicate by toothpick) irresistible in the face of Mary the supreme colour scientist. So I gathered my materials, drove downtown and sat in my empty office. It helped, because five hours later I had a draft.
It was really dark there. My office is high in a tower and we have acres of window glass but the world just didn’t light up today.
Part of my reaction to the day is because I know it is dark moon. There is something about that, especially now we are past Halloween, that makes me think of dark dreams I have had in the past, and once that happens the dreams are back, slipping under me like a sheet tumbled in a dryer with mugwort. There’s a sense of the dream as ever-there, even though you know it isn’t, or that’s is so long gone that it no longer signifies; nevertheless, it does linger, like it’s a vague smell, or an occasional prickle, like a tiny dried stem that pokes you in the waist when you turn to move your nose out of odor’s reach.