July 2012

July 2012

	...and there live we as merry as the day is long.
7.1.2012

	Intersecting realities.
7.2.2012

	There is a particular point of view where intention and accident are indistinguishable.
7.3.2012

	The question is about the influence of outside things on the inner workings of the cycle.
7.4.2012

7.5.2012

	Considering the relationship of external temperature to color choice...
7.6.2012

	The oak trees are suffering from lack of rain.
7.7.2012

	Dehydrated cells. Grass crisp enough to crunch. It's easier to deny the drought than do a rain dance.
7.8.2012

	Opportunities piling up.
7.9.2012

When analyzing my own drawings, the drawings I make by improvisation in which I try never to know ahead of time what will appear on the page; I pay particular attention to the symbols that don't go away. The river form is especially persistent, but lately it has become embedded in this kind of layered stratigraphic column, a stack of folded phylogonic valleys, and I find myself drawing these tectonic impossibilities day after day. I have even made a few larger drawings of them which shows me the grip this form suddenly has on my subconscious tendencies.

7.10.2012

	This reminds me of where I grew up in Louisiana. I see flood plains evolving, step by step, through time. The river, crossing continuously between the layers, symbolizes the flow of being awake.
7.11.2012

	How beautifully can the river cross the plain? How many meanders, eddies, oxbows or sandbars will elaborate the path? Be certain the flow finds the quickest route and each drop will only pass by once.
7.12.2012

	Am I drawing stratigraphy because I studied geology or did I study geology because thinking stratigraphically turns me on?
7.13.2012

	Cascade.
7.14.2012

	The dam breaks and the drought is over.
7.15.2012

Reservoir recharged. If not full, then at least refreshed. Is it unusual to experience the world as cyclical; feeling reassured when similar moments predictably repeat? Jumping into a discussion of cycles, does each time through with my increased familiarity bring an opportunity of knowing the whole thing more deeply, experiencing with a broader mind and seeing more levels? After the storm there was a rainbow, then driving further west we returned headlong into the lightning, rain and traffic. An hour later it was sunny.

7.16.2012

	A picture frame folded in such a way that its content is itself.
7.17.2012

ALERT! Isolated severe thunderstorms! The sky is disquietingly dark before a flash of lightning triggers my silent counting. I inwardly recite the scientific prayer that calculates how far away the danger is. Pounding rain requires attention, creates tension. As the storm peaks, I reevaluate my safety. For those brief seconds, on a hot summer afternoon, I am pushed in contact with my mortality. Then, just as quickly, the rain ebbs and the storm passes.

7.18.2012

7.19.2012

7.20.2012

	Lately, in the moments when I find I can slow down enough to be calm and mindful, I pay attention to the forces exerted on me by the vortex. What I find is that the movement of the vortex only makes sense when I see no difference between the forces and myself.
7.21.2012

Last year I wrote about phylogons. Now the phylogons have reappeared in a more complicated and twisty form. It is as if the single phylogons I saw were isolated cases of moments in time. They appeared to be the reductionist atoms of consciousness. But in the context of our waking life, the phylogon is not so simple. Out in the field, the wild phylogon twists, turns, moves, spreads out, and creates vortices. A vortex is a persistent structure made of moving things; like water rushing through a whirlpool. The vortex is a good model for consciousness. The presence that we point to as our self persists in the mind as a stable structure formed by a flow of new thoughts.

7.22.2012

Just today, the day after I started writing out my ideas comparing vortices to consciousness, I am reading a book of vedanta stories and I come across this description, "...the ego, which goes round like a whirlwind...". Wouldn't you know it! As soon as I discover a geometry of consciousness that suits my experience, I find out that, not only is this vortex model not my idea, it's not mine by two thousand years.

7.23.2012

	Flow curls inward. The path, encountering itself, forms a vortex. Daily practice restores flow.
7.24.2012

	Earth visualized as matter vortex, moving continents, meandering rivers, and flow at all scales.
7.25.2012

7.26.2012

	Motion of the ocean.
7.27.2012

	He asked this morning, "Dad, where is the brain in a tree." I answered, "The whole tree is a brain."
7.28.2012

	Vortices, stable nodes in the flow, metaphors for existence. Fine, okay, got it. But when you get them vortexes unrolled, what's inside 'em?
7.29.2012

	Inseparable moments.
7.30.2012

	Vortices in resonance. Friends meet.
7.31.2012