Seeing: In and Around

The fact of sight as a physical phenomenon is one thing, and how what is looked upon is seen is quite another. One individual looking at a certain spotted salamander sees a loathsome slimy crawly thing; another sees the beautiful living vestige of an entire eco-system. One is seeing around the thing; projecting imagination upon it as if covering it with paint. The other is seeing within the thing; imagination drawing up meaning like an old-fashioned hand pump draws water. Sight is a physical phenomenon, but seeing has a meaning component that is wholly dependent on how one looks at things. How one looks at things is wholly dependent on the training (or lack there of) of imagination.

Spring Talks on Spring Walks

With friends I walked an Ozark hollow

In the time of spring flowers 

Seeking a place to sit we had to laugh 

For there was none 

And scarce room for feet 

So luxuriously had the warm days awakened the earth to life 

Perched on a moss-covered limestone ledge we mused 

How odd Where one can’t find a place to sit 

Another will go with a bulldozer 

Consider the Lilies

If we accept the Bang as read and don’t worry too much about the other side of it, a rather beautiful picture emerges: primal matter coalescing into hydrogen atoms, hydrogen atoms pushed together by the shadowy call of forces yet unexplained, proximity and pressure giving life to massive glowing spheres in which hydrogen is squeezed together forming more massive atoms up to the weight of iron, stars explode with pressures creating even more massive elements and spewing them all into endless space where they coalesce into molecules and again into second order stars, some bits left behind forming little balls known as planets, on some planets temperate conditions permit the formation of exotic molecules making copies of themselves, a molecule exhibits the field phenomenon described as awareness, over a period of millennia awareness refines the nature of its wakened state by building ever more sophisticated stacks of molecules, and I sit here brooding on the beauty that surrounds me.

West Window Poem #3 

Sunset colors silence the imagination 

First quarter moon brilliant against the blue 

New leaves glow as if from inner light 

Circling our incandescent dot 

This ponderous bit of left behind sun 

Traverses the immense dark desert 

And here 

Every hot day is swelling life into spring 

Green Consciousness

The words consciousness and awareness are similar to the word energy, and unlike the word green. Green is the event made inevitable when electromagnetic energy of certain wavelengths hit the optic nerve. Consciousness, awareness, and energy are described in terms of their affects. And cannot be descirbed in terms of the nuts and bolts that are the substrate of manifestation for those nuts and bolt are a complete and utter mystery. Every life form without exception is a form of feeding. And what in every case is fed is awareness. The universe has mouths in variety that defy imagination, and in every case they feed the same cosmic principle.

Daddy Longlegs 

Little blind men tap their way across the forest floor

Bending to drink the dew that beads upon brown leaves 

In moments of power seize an injured moth 

In moments of terror flee the wood ants jaws 

They scuffle with each other 

Or they congregate in piles 

They tap their way across my table or my shoe 

I think what differs most between us 

Is that men 

Like gods 

Are subject to compassion 

While spiders 

Though endowed with similar appetites

See no further than the reach of their legs

Free Will

It seems to me utterly ridiculous that the question of “Free Will” is still batted about. Will always has an object. We don’t decide what is important to us: and what is important to us determines saints and sinners. Will always serves something and in best case desires dignity, not freedom. No one does anything of free will because there is no such thing. If nominally we wish to create such a category that’s fine, and we all know what we’re talking about. But those who commit heinous acts are those in whom will is the least free. The inability to exercise freedom with dignity justifies freedom being taken away. 

There is willing freely, but there is no free will: those in whom will has abandoned humanity have no right to the term.

Possessing the Will 

The painting is not in the brush 

Nor music in the lute 

Or books in the pen 

It is not the hand that builds 

Nor is it the mind that thinks 

 But that will is turned to these ends 

Impulse and Idea

One element common to animal life forms regardless of the topography of the nervous system is impulse. Behavior is a kinetic response to impulse, and every creature comes replete with a set of impulses suitable for the survival of its unique physical configuration. If we would dissolve away everything but impulse from a tiger and from a lamb we could still tell them apart, though we would find the same primary urges to feed, fight, and fuck. Impulse is the instinctual goad to behavior. Without impulse there is no behavior, but impulse in no way implies conscious awareness or thought. Creatures with no brain at all exhibit impulse, and in creatures with brains, impulse is in every case responsible for the kinetic activity of thought: conscious awareness is not necessary or implied. Impulse is specific, and idea emerges from impulse. Both are kinetic. Awareness is generic and emerges as a property of intelligence considered in the broadest possible manner. Awareness is a field phenomenon. The most striking difference between one human being and another is the point of impulse at which awareness is engaged.  

Choosing Choices

Cows choose grass 

Dogs choose bones

 

 People make all kinds of choices