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retracingpoliphilo · 7 years

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Building In Time

Beloved Reader:

I first drafted this Oct. 27, 2012, revisited Oct.12, 2013, Oct. 30, 2015, Jan. 12, 2016. Since drafting my thought has evolved on time and dimensionality quite a bit, much of it culminating recently. I did not revise any of the below to reflect that yet, as 1 - it hasn’t synthesized for me yet, 2 - My reason for posting this has more to do at the moment with the dynamics of living and working together as humans in our larger world, ideas and directions on where we perhaps should be moving towards in terms of resources, value, supporting one another in generative abundance, doing civilization, etc ... So, aside from enjoying, do me a solid and suspend on the time/dimensionality a bit - maybe turn it around in your head and let me know your perspectives? Temporality is a fascinating beast of startling beauty ... Also: I love you, what stories we weave together. Collectively Stewarding Abundance Enjoy, with love

<3Karja Cygnus -----

See, the thing you have to understand about the fourth dimension", she begins to explain, "is that its much more than just time - in fact, time is to the fourth dimension as movement is to the third - its simple the visible interaction within its fabric. The fourth is the dimension of cause and effect, action and reaction, push and pull, give and take. Time is the surface upon which this is visible to us. Therefore, time is manipulable, there is no such thing as a paradox in time travel - if you change something, it simply nudges the decision branch you're part of in a slightly different direction than the one you came from, as you move in time, you move along potentialities/probabiliies/realities - The question is not paradox, the question is - can you return to your own line of potentiality? …"

At some point her fascinating rambling begins to register less to me, as I register more of her smell, the movement of her hair, the way she uses her entire upper body in her conversational gesturing. I'm hooked. The girl is definitely out of her gourd, but its my type of squash.

"Aaand I've lost you." She laughs. “Where? Please do interrupt - I really get going on some subjects."

"No, its ok - thats why we're here, so you can tell me more about this. But, do you mind if we walk and talk? I'm getting a bit fidgety sitting still, and its so nice out."

She grins. "Of course! Thats perfect actually, I was hoping you might have that inclination. There’s a storm front blowing in, so I need to go and check up on my building sites anyhow, and I can show you a more practical view of the fourth dimension that way."

So I clear and scrape the dishes and she settles up the bill. I'm setting the dishes onto the washrack when the chef taps me on the shoulder as he opens the cooler. "Learn well, she knows her stuff." and there he pauses, digging through the shelf looking for something that is not a carrot, leek or egg which are all that I can see him rummaging unsatisfiededly through. "But be careful - she's wild, breaks men more often than the other way around."

"Oh, thanks, but I'm just here about time-engineering …" I begin, and then stop as he smirks at me.

"uh-huh." He says disbelievingly. "Well, I've been her most common three-squares-and-coffee-a-day for some time now, so please excuse me if I feel I know the look on your face from experience. That may have been all you were after before, but not now. Just know, she's not very good at seeing it, or responding to it."

"Well, thank you for that. I'll keep it in mind." I say, and then hastily depart the kitchen. She is just gathering up her clutter of things from the table, so I join her, grabbing my jacket and leading the way out onto the street.

She stops for a moment, lost in thought, starts and glances around and then gestures me south. "We're going to visit my sites in order of progress. That way you can see the work progress along a trajectory. And, if we don't finish in the time we have, we can just start with the next house in order next time, and so on."

The grange we had met at was on a pedestrian street, with its wooden decking and slight sway of the supporting water below. We turned the corner onto a common traffic street - brick paved, the occasional bike passing through those on feet. Many food carts - I stop briefly at one selling mango.

"PreparadoVerdeSaltGracias." I strung my words together as I handed the coin to the old man and he handed back a small paper sack of green mango strips, dashing salt and giving a feeble squeeze to the half lime in is hand as he did. Walking away from the cart, we were both almost bowled over by three boys racing and chasing each other down the streets, worn canvas sacks of mangos bouncing against their hips. Looking back, I watched as my coin was mingled with others paid by the old man in exchange for the foraged mangos. Sacks emptied, the boys dashed off again to climb more trees with the inexhaustible energy of boyhood.

"So, what do you think of Veniqueno?" she asks, using the longer of the slang terms for Little, or Pequeno, Venice. Once, this area had been known as Little Havana, and before that LIttle River (what?) and before that, and before that … but, here I was, in my head again - instead of responding to the brilliant gorgeous woman at my side.

"It's impressive. I've visited so many of the historic American Cores - from those that failed to transition to those that transitioned fairly well - but ViQue, its thriving like only the better historic European Centers manage to." She gives me a surprisedly appreciative and assessing look.

"Most people don't see that of ViQ, (male name). But I agree. What shapes that opinion for you?"

"Oh, absolutely. Just … stop me if I get going. I have that same tendency with certain subjects as well." She smiles. Wonderful.

"Most places in America, focus, still, after everything we’ve come through, on the aggregate. I can guess at the reasons for that, but will not for the moment. What that seems to lead to is an ongoing struggle with moving beyond to a thriving local scale functionality." (….. continue) ---

Second day at post-wanderchat dinner she flirts casually and invites him up to her place. He begins to acquiesce and then thinks back to what the chef says, and stops.

"Hey. So, I like you. I like you in a serious way it seems and I don't want to get caught up and hopeful in a casual fling, I'd rather just keep it friendly if thats all you're offering. You don't have to answer now, or ever, but I think I'll pass on that coffee for tonight either way." He finishes with what he hopes is a warm smile.

She frowns momentarily and then looks at him with an appraising look on her face, one side of her mouth slightly scrunched up. "Okay." Her face relaxes back into its normal smile, and she tiptoes up to place a light kiss on his forehead before continuing with the half hug and a peck on each cheek which was custom here.

"Meet me at the 14th St ferry terminal for sunrise," she says, as she lets herself into the front gate of her building.

---

(Towards the end of the third visit) We're riding the ferry across the bay towards Miami proper, and she is seated next to me, face turned into the wind, watching the scene pass by. The sun is setting and the sky is glorious. Miami, from my short experience, has the most consistently beautiful skies Ive ever seen. Not necessarily the most spectacularly beautiful, that is saved for places above (pick an altitude) where the sky is more wide open and dominated by different cloud formations. But Miami, so far, has always delivered. Towering clouds which began their lives over the everglades are now marching stately out towards the ocean, lit from behind by the setting sun. The wind, which was pleasant in town, now carries with it a a damp chill which the ferry passengers are sluggishly responding to.

She pulls a light sweater out of her bag and over her head in one continuous action which I don't fully comprehend. Still staring out at the bay she edges into me, huddling against the growing wind. I can't help but heat slightly at her touch. It's been a good day, and I'm feeling hopeful for an answer that realistically may never come.

The ferry slows as the engine sounds and vibrations intensify. The boat is swinging in sideways, and people are gathering along the railing to debark. The lights of the city are just twinkling on as the sun makes its way completely below the horizon.

"I know a great place for fresh fish near here, you game?" she asks. Of course I am, and it has nothing to do with the fish. "Well, I've never really been a fish for fish' sake person - an occasional hankering for Sushi is usually the closest I come. But, if you help me order, I'm game." Is my best attempt at downplaying my willingness.

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retracingpoliphilo · 7 years

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Y'allbeauty💞

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retracingpoliphilo · 7 years

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#littlefreelibrary #littlefreelibrarypdx #littlefreelibrarymagic #magicpdx #pdx #cascadia #cascadiaproject #pilgrimmage #pilgrimmageoftheland #ofthelivingland #nativityofhumanity #wearestillwild #divinityofthewild

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retracingpoliphilo · 7 years

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retracingpoliphilo · 7 years

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Pilgrims

Love, I have been hesitant to share this - for the expansive open multi-personed love i reference, and fear of your reaction to it and its implications. Silly scared. Love is. This is my most cohered and articulated of my vision, and the run through the trees at the end is the core of the vision I have referred to wanting to share but been unable to find written, was sure I had written as part of this draft. There is more to it, but as I attempted to put words to in just now, it slowed and stalled in interpretation. This was drafted September 3, 2013. -----

Una inhaled deeply as the lander's hatch opened. The air of her birthworld was a scent unmatchable in its ability to put her at ease and restore her balance. But, for the first time, it carried with it also a hint of bitterness. This was her last obligatory yearly pilgrimage. Once she completed her apogica the rites of the pilgrimage would still be open to her, welcoming and indeed - hopeful to have her. But, she would no longer be required to take part but every 10 years. Well, so long as she succeeded in her apogica. The yearly pilgrimage was not a thing all, or even most, people ever passed beyond. It came as a reality as one advanced towards the core and heavier transaction costs in their value added commerce. To travel inter-system, or even communicate interplanet, levied a heavy fee. Releasing those who pursued …

Una arrives to ancestral home, greets family. Sits down to work on her (culmination), is approached by a younger sibling or niece/nephew/etc, asked about what she is doing.

(Explains:) I am composing a biography, in fact, of the great biographer. What have you learned about her?

(Child recites the basic backstory, replete with worshipful overtones). (Una responds:) Ah, yes. Thats very good, you're more intellectually advanced than most of your milieu (10 year generational cohort), yes? (Or have they accelerated the curriculum recently, she asked herself. There are the signs of it, in his tendency to worshipfulness in his recounting.)

And how about biography? What have you learned about the core of our culture? (again, the child responds with a childs version of the accord - that journalism is a public service of maintaining a transparent view and awareness of reality for the general populace and that biography is the paired calling - helping people to not only step outside of their own shaping experiences and opinions but also to step into those of another, thus truly gaining understanding and insight into the broader reality that surrounds us, not winding ourselves into dark, blind, dead end alleys with no means of escape and a couple of big guys with heavy sticks. Yeah, sure, side passages could open up before the guys with sticks, or they could not. And, if they did, they could lead to escape, or they could unleash a totally unexpected danger on us. Perspective is gained by reaching a vantage point. A vantage point is composed of multiple views and is not only achieved, but as we live in a fluid reality, something that must be maintained and grown and evolved alongside that which it observes.

The childs response was somewhat rote, but for such a complex concept, that was to be expected at this age, no matter their precociousness.

And how about the (profession encompassing both trades)'s principles? Do you know those yet?

And the child responds that they don't remember them all, but there is one, his favorite - because of the reality analysis exercises they do to teach it. It goes: Compassion is the core of culture and civilization, and is achieved through careful analysis and experience of reality. Accept and portray only reality, do not embellish it, do not apply insight or avenues to an experience that is beyond the years or experience of the subject being portrayed. This leads to false worship, unfair judgement, disconnection with reality and has the potential to stagnate a people, destroy a culture and decimate an ecology. In order to portray reality, one must have compassion, which is achieved only through continual work and engagement with the metier of one's subject matter. The ability to put oneself squarely in the mindset and context of another - to the extent of completely removing your own mindset and context but retaining your intellect and judgement in full operating order is hard fought, imprecise, and even harder maintained. It requires both a strong sense of self and an ability to be completely effacing as necessary, without distress, unbiased resentment or impossible expectations.

The child looked puzzled, and asked, "But, if adherence to reality is such an important thing, why is the great biographer also called the creator of culture? Culture is created by those living it.

Ahh, yes. and this was the tricky bit. Reality isn't simple, and there isn't just one - there are as many as there are sentiences in the infinite universe, which is to say infinity squared. This was one Una was currently banging her head up against in what appeared to be a somewhat altogether new way within her course of study. Of course, others had thoughts these thoughts before, and delved deeper into them, but more in the harder sciences, or the spiritual. Even the philosophical.

Anyhow, it was time for her to head to her first husbands home and help prepare the pilgrimage supplies and equipment. Her first son and daughter were probably there already, preparing their year-name wear.

As she opened the door her progeny both jumped her, reminding her of excited puppies. They both babbled incoherently at her in their excitement until all three split into grins and laughed. One last clasp and they released her. Aria automatically drifting towards the kitchen to bring refreshment, and Aidan settling back into his chair and picking up a book, Thoughtfully leaving space for mother and daughter to reconnect first, after the long months apart. Aidan had followed her into the inner systems for his trinary education - pursuing journeyman experience as a deepspace constructor and gaining access to the more esoteric materials and tools that could only exist in stable quantities away from the distortion of a planetary mass.

Aria had remained on the home world of her parents, pursuing a dizzyingly deep and broad wisdom of its ecology, and plying a myriad of artistic and creative trades through the seasons and her ranging studies. She sat down at the table next to her mother, depositing a tray of fresh and preserved snacks alongside two steaming mugs of spiced apple cider.

How is your (culmination) doing? she asked. Una loved her daughters simple undemanding straightforwardness. She had the makings of a planetary leader, the way she was able to cut through any amount of noise and go directly to the heart of something without ruffling even one feather in passing.

All in all, really well, Una responded. I tracked down a neglected set of journals and work from Eva's late twenties and am elevating a number of seemingly odd notes to a fairly startling place, that is requiring me to delve into a surprising number of hard sciences and philosophies. That is all taking really fantastic shape, but I'm struggling to capture her mind in all of this. There is very little record of her activities during this time period, or, really, from that time period in general. …. Knox arrived, and embraced her in a way that was both as familiar as if he'd just kissed her goodbye this morning instead of nearly a year ago, while also conveying every ounce of missing each other that had passed and every iota of excitement, pleasure and anticipation at seeing each other again. And then, at the light undemanding touch on her hip, Una turned and similarly embraced her husband's home-wife and ruffled the hair on the heads of their two young children, as they scampered by underfoot after one of the cats.

As she always did, she envied them good-naturedly their life, and appreciated her ability to be a part of it. Not all of those who moved beyond the orbits of their first marriages enjoyed such healthy relationships.

She said a solemn hello with Miriam's older son Devereaux, while exchanging a secret wink with his mother. Devereaux had, at 12, declared his intentions to become a monk, not surprising for one who had lost half of his family at the age of 7. Miriam's first husband and daughter had perished in a freak space travel incident, and too much time had passed before their retrieval. Their last recorded consciousnesses had been forwarded in the chain, but energy and matter being what they were, the outcomes were always unpredictable. … I've had a link about Ica, Miriam told her later, over their traditional wives meal, sampling the best new eatery in the small town Knox and Miriam called home side Una's last visit. Her eyes shone with joy as well as the barely repressed dampness of imminent tears.

My daughter has begun to re-emerge among a proto-herd of ilaxu and her parents have connected enough dots to realize what she was, thought it's not yet part of their repertoire, being a relatively new life form to (the cycle - give it a better name, mythologically related). As with all first children of first marriages, Ica was a new consciousness, and had only been forming itself for a scant 5 years when she perished with her father on a pilgrimage trip to his home world for her first formal rite of passage. Luckily it had been a long enough ship-board time voyage to require stasis, and the girls consciousness had been archived and copied through the parallels of (data backup term) for the first time since her birth.

Recording a consciousness is not a pleasant experience, and was not done without dire need before a child's fifth year, and preferably not until after their tenth.

Are you going to go visit? Una asked?

I'd like to, and the her parents seem not only willing, but as if they would be happy for it. I gather she is somewhat of a struggle, unsurprisingly. But, the ilaxu homeworld is not close, and the cost necessitates a longer visit than I can reasonably accommodate for.

Una clasped Miriam's hand, sharing her strength with the woman who not only shared her husbands heart, but also had a hold on her own. "Mir, don't even think about it. Plan the trip for after my (culmination). Take as along as you need, I will come home and step into your shoes. I'll be at loose ends anyways, and needing to take the time for reflection on my next move that this will allow me."

At that, Miriam's control over her budding tears was lost, and she lowered her head and allowed herself a few deep shudders and re-emerged with glints of refracted light off of the tears rolling down her cheeks. The words "Oh, I had so hoped you would," poured from her mouth as she fully relaxed and ordered another round of raki. Her grip on Una's hand eased into gentle sensuality. … "Tyler and her family will be joining us," Una announced the next morning as she, Miri and Knox chopped, cooked and bound the meals for the pilgrimage. "Oh?" He asked, minimal with worlds as ever.

"Yes, she's gravid with her first child." Una replied with some heaviness. Tyler was her mentor, the woman who had fostered Una's unusual talent and moved with her into the inner systems over the course of her education until Una entered her journeymanship. Tyler was an end cycle consciousness, completing her 23rd (number of chromosomes) form. She had begun her life in the central systems, and out migrated slowly over the years until she found a place to raise her final family on Earth, a backwater of the (culture) for sure, but also the home of its birth. She had been preparing for her second to last pregnancy when she encountered Una and took a detour to foster her spark. Now, She had embarked upon her final forming, nearly 5000 years after her first awakening to consciousness.

"Does she know where she is headed yet?" Knox asked? "No, she's hoping her path will be illuminated by this final forming. Which would be grand, but not expectable."

"Well, I'm glad she will be joining us for pilgrimage and birth. That is an auspicious conjunction, almost as if she'd planned it …" He trailed off. Tyler had a known penchant for structuring her world along major lines of larger meaning. Not just a 10 decade (yearly pilgrimage), also a centennial pilgrimage and won't that line up her final pregnancy to fall into the millennial pilgrimage? He shook his head in amusement. Tyler and he and an affectionate if occasionally strained relationship. Among other things, She had taken his first wife from him, if one chose to view it that way. Which he didn't, but also which he couldn't entirely avoid. … Una pulled her bowstring back and nocked an arrow, tracking the buck down the ravine. They had just made the third deposit of pilgrimage goods at their ancestral long home village and were now continuing their journey into the woods, subsiding on what they could forage in the autumn wilderness. She wanted to bring a deer heart back to camp for Tyler. Her patron was entering her final days of gravidity and the heart would prepare her and her child for the imminent birth.

Loosing the arrow as the deer lowered its head to nibble a blade of grass poking through the mat of leaves, her shaft hit home, stopping the deers heart even as it entered the left ventricle. The creature dropped as it's consciousness left it, and Una walked slowly towards it, reciting the benediction of the slain, thanking it for its bounty and wishing it well as it traveled towards its new embodiment.

As she worked her knife deftly through the process of field dressing, she allowed her memories to wander to her first experiences with the gentle creatures. Two years old, she played in the mud at the edge of the stream while her mother washed their linens in its cold water, a fmaly of deer had approached her, the fawn clumsily nudging against her looking for a treat or caress.

As she maneuvered the bulk of the buck onto her shoulders and stood she heard a rustling in the brush, and before she had even turned around and begun to walk towards this evenings camp the scavengers had begun to pick at the entrails she had left for them. Tonight she would be scraping deer hide.

As she made her way through the trees she fell into reverie, her feet moving nimbly along the ground, in flow with the world. She was running, pure joy expressed in motion. She saw a flash through the distant trees of another figure on a parallel path. Dark, unable to be made out. For miles they ran alongside, trees flashing between them, each intensely aware of the other, yet never taking their sight from the glory of the living woods and skies. Then the air dampened and the ground took on a throbbing and they came to rest simultaneously at a cliffs edge, overlooking a cascading thundering fall of water, shaking the earth. Una now raised her eyes to the dark stranger and was struck with recognition, memories of childhood runs of the same nature through the same trees flooding back into her awareness.

"You” she managed to get past her paralyzed lips. Suddenly overwhelmingly shy, she dropped to her knees and lowered the deer to the damp moss, taking breath gulpingly into her lungs, attempting to tether herself against the sudden and entirely unexpected flood of feeling.

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retracingpoliphilo · 7 years

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Voyage

Dear, Dearest, Beloved Reader:

This is still not the piece whose memory initially prompted me to dig back into this project (which probably will have to be (re?)constructed, not appearing to have been written - only imagined, or lost), but it is the one that is timely. I love the name that I picked then. So spot!

June 11, 2015 - Gaussian and the boys

July 25, 2015 - Gaussian and his mermaid

Two pieces that are part of single narrative, I just compiled and filled in the missing gaps of the vision I had then but did not write until synthesis now.

----

Stifling his anticipatory laughter, Gaussian crouched, enshrouded in the nyavek pelt, waiting to pounce on the unsuspecting boys as they trooped up the hill together approaching the ceremony camp.

Challenging them playfully in safe, secure, environments was the an important experiental step in them facing the formative insecure challenges of the wider world as they grew into adulthood.

As a young leader in the wild with young boys taking their first ritual lone wander, he is leading them into their first consciously faced journey of mind, untethering, viewing into the great unknown beyond - a significant formative ritual in the path of individuation and commonalization, when a (ship?/craft?/vessel?) translates in, close - too close, emergency failsafes overridden close. emergency - the craft had been struck in full-space - that plane that quantum ships travelled, weaving between realities. a young mind grasped, gasped, slipped - the young boys, already having let their consciousness drift beyond their bodies, couldn’t help but reach for her. Gaussian, too - but then, she was gone. Not slowly, fading - suddenly. grasping at their thoughts, and then, simply not there.

Gaussian determinated and called the boys back to the circle of selves, away from the waking dream of memory past and future. A true death, as had just been thrust in front of their minds, was not a thing to be untethered for the aftermath of. Grounding was what was called for now. ... the central proceedings of the yearly Pilgrimhajj and its myriad proceedings; come the the announcement of death and preparation for the giving of materials of life released - when! the discovery that one of the young boys had grasped her mind, was still grasping, through the melee, thus her sudden seeming dissapearance - she had been grasped, but by an unprepared, unknowing mind.

germ-line mods to be able to symbiote with the quantrees - the (plant being) that travelled the fractal ways. The boy was both too young to take healthfully the germline modification, and that aside, if he did it would likely sever the link the transit would be undertaken to salvage and redeem. So he needed a host. An increasingly uncommon occurrence, it was nonetheless an enmeshed reality, now to be addressed. Gaussian now found himself faced with a decision point of bifurcation with no clear preferred choice. His current individuated incarnation’s calling in this moment, versus his higher partnered calling. Seated in the security of trust and faith in his higher purpose, he faced what had been placed squarely in his path and made the decision he knew to be dharmic. He would himself accept the germline modification of not just passive transport, but of greater foster and nurture of unmodified life in order to travel in nurture and guidance of the young boy and his link to the lost consciousness, in service to both and the all everything greater.

He accepted this, knowing it would open rifts untold with his higher partner and within their shared mission of nativizing humanity on this newly opened world and fostering its life upwards - He on land in skies, she through land of seas. They had always known challenge would present itself to their mission here (as it does to all, in co-created formative growth), unknown of form until the moment of witness and point of decision. Returning directly to city from high ceremonies rather than trekking in husbandry alongside the land in the harvesting return of Pilgrimhajj, Gaussian tidied and packed up his life and prepared what he could of his projects for hibernation, all but that which he shared with her.

Then he put out to to sea to prepare, and for her. The only thing he knew to do now was to sail straight into the storm.

The sky had clearly been threatening the storm Gaussian now found himself battered by when he reached the harbor, run-skipping to his boat as the wind whipped up. Rumbling down the planking of his slipspace he had been fiercely grateful for the wind that was strengthening by the moment. His inners had been in a turmoil at the end of an overwhelming week that left him with a decision he didn’t want to make and no real choice not to make it. He had yearned for a good sound thrashing from the elements to overcome his senses; allow him to drop back to center and gain perspective on the crisis of the past zentagyc(zehntagcyc).

In the few moments when the storm calmed long enough for him to regain thought beyond survival mode, he remembered in that perpetual dance of forgetting/remembering/burninshing - how easily, naturally, it happens - the strength of the world around you. It wasn’t that he hadn’t been in some rough storms before, even one that broke his boat up and left him stranded on an atoll until he could bark himself up an adequate enough canoe to make land with human infrastructure. But, like with any extreme experience, the mind protects itself and quickly burnishes the resulting memory to a smooth pearlescent sheen. So he had forgotten how serious a real blow could be. He had certainly found center there, awhile back. And then he had raged at the universe. Finally, he had been browbeaten, and accepted - which was what he had really needed, though he had not set out in search of it. But now, exhaustion had set in and the storm had no end in sight.

Just as he was preparing to give in and hang his hope on the gods, she was there, adjusting the drag of the anchor into tune with the deeper currents and the swing of the wind, bringing about boat they had built together as teens so it ran as high as possible alongside the wind, cutting smoothly through the seas instead of smashing headlong into their walls. Watching her work, her singleminded attention to a task that formed the core of her being translating effortlessly into motion. And what motion! She moved with the beauty of heavenly bodies circling their shared center of mass, not an ounce of energy misplaced, every tendon and muscle fiber in harmony with the larger dance. Finally, the storm had spent its energy and began to weaken. But, at this (pause) in their own dance, where normally they would relax, momentarily, into each other, before (working, like a horse, being brushed down …) the boat down into a restful repose - instead, with a glance that said goodbye but only briefly met his eyes, she was gone, back over the gunwale, legs merging into tail waving goodbye, leaving the bedding of the boat to him.

So, she knew. Of course she did. And while she would always be there when he needed her, she hadn’t yet weathered the storm of her own emotions in regards to this, and so wasn’t ready for his.

Bracing his forearm across the water logged wood of the hatch opening, he leaned into the cabin and grabbed a blanket and the first print narrative his searching fingers encountered.

The Collected Children’s Fables of the Post Accelerando Hinter-Wilder. One of his favorites, and just the thing to soothe his struggling mind and spirit at this moment.

--- The Secret of the Double Shadowed Dark Dark ---

In the wilder of the Glacier-Waterton International Peace-Park, there was a neo-primitive wool-hamlet(/village). The closest approach of (modern?) civilization was a (1/4) mile high train and access piste. The Hamlet(/v), like any responsible civic entity, utilized the infrastructure and (impact) of the piste, shaping itself into a harmonious merging (at/of) the interface of wild and human artifice. The buttressing pylons of the sky-trail were worshipful monuments to trees, cast in (material? - the iron, granite and cedar timber of the region). The primary supports landed s a series of hills that gave the village extents it’s beautiful roll, and their sky framing pillar uppers and road bed served to harvest rainwater and have a pressurized central water supply for irrigation and ancillary needs. Having it’s fabric so integrated to the piste structure, it was inevitable that the shadows of the piste interacted strongly with the life of the city. {[(I have no memory now of what I intended the beginnings of this myth to/for)]} --- … ---

Sunlight broke over the horizon, stroking his eyelids gently to wakefulness. As he stirred he felt her head on his chest and wrapped his arms around her, burying his face in her hair and neck. Having crept into his arms under cover of his exhausted slumber, she felt his nuzzle and curled sleepily back against him and they both slumbered back down together for a bit longer before facing the day and conversations to be had.

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retracingpoliphilo · 7 years

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Initial Sketch

Dear reader: I dug this up while looking for something else I have wanted to share with you for quite some time. Though now as I search for it I’m not sure I ever wrote it down, or if it is just a dream that wrote itself into our universe, as much of what I will come to share appears to be. The story style starts roughly halfway through. This is as drafted June 7, 2013, except that I had no name for Heike then, wrote it as (name). Upon re-reading now I realize its clearly Heike, which is to say me per meine Heisse from Junior High Deutsche 1, which feels terribly self-important to me, But also maybe the beginning of shining up my inner mirror. ----

Feeling is the outlet for instinctual knowledge (gained of repeated experience, vs researched experience) - knowledge which accumulated first as learned tradition over tens of thousands of years, if not hundreds of thousands of years - becoming culture and eventually tradition and finally, possibly, instinct. Just like breathing - something a mutant sea-dweller once had to actively puzzle out and then capitalize on which is now involuntary, or like walking or even language - something which at first you must endeavor to learn but the components of eventually become second nature, something done below a conscious level most of the time. This is the story of how western civilization in the years around the turn of the second millennium AD as measured from the date of birth of the primary son figure in the christian mythos, almost lost the world, began to regain it, and then almost lost it again - substituting improved logic for feeling, rather than striking a balance between the two. It began in each culture somewhere around the time a symbol to represent the concept of "equal" came into existence, and from that the connecting of weighing one thing against another to determine if they were equal or not. From that point the meme of comparing two things to each other in a vacuum, of determining value based only on the things and not the context of the thing. And then people would become more concerned with making sure that their side of that equal sign was not found wanting in comparison to the other side, and then the desire to be the one with more value, as it gave power. From there it was often only a matter of time until things got too wildly out of balance - society or the colony or even the economy, if not 2 or all three. But at some point in the second half of the second millennium AD ( …) westciv struck the choke point that had engulfed the last few high points of civilization prior to this go round and while we skirted the fall, westciv made it to the far side by rapidly expanding their knowledge and experience and then using that, settling an entire continent (pay no mind to those already living there) talk about how logic overran feeling in the valuation assessment, leading to all problems facing now via overspecialization and pushing for efficiency. obviously here I'm pulling from fisher king and handless maiden then students finally all got together around a slogan which tapped at the essence of what the problem was stemming from, not just for education but for so many of the problems ruining the world which were secondary effects of the watered down piss poor education. That Slogan was: "Education without context is no education at all." and was the frontrunner to the famous calls of the american spring - "(come up with this) This all eventually snowballed into a New Deal package, as sponsored by the first non corporate party (nee DemvsRepub) president, and signed into action by the first representative congress and senate (representing more parties than states, a law allowing for special interest groups to form parties and nominate elections to a third legislative body, giving lobbying a recognized and regulated voice amongst the interlocking structures of federal government. A large part of that new deal package was the building out of as complete an economic model we possibly could, understanding all of the nuance not just in our monetary interactions, but in the much larger world they were set in - analyzing businesses impact on ecology and community, but also analyzing societies impact on economy and ecology, and fully understanding the ecologic - especially climate - plays on economy and society. At levels from the individual to the family to the entire world. The hope was that we would be able to regain the lost knowledge of other civilizations, even of our recent forbears. Things which lived on in sayings like "karma says that whatever you put into the world will come back threefold" which was popping up in detailed analyses everywhere now that we were able to comprehensively analyze information and understand how things worked. But never did we realize that we were still only following one half of the picture - logic, not developing and evolving our instinctual understanding of the world. And it became obvious something was still missing - but only after we again began capitalizing on all of the extra value added by our added knowledge and comprehension, somehow not grasping the larger picture, once again, instead running off course in the direction of our original course correction. Having reached the point of equilibrium that we could have move comprehensively forward from, but paying it little heed as we raced on, dazzled by our own speed and daring. (tie in multiple role and role type in education, approach and contribution) then - girl who has done all of the right stuff developing her knowledge in order to best build the value of her contribution as high as possible as fast as possible, vs that which values experiential and researched knowledge the same, calling on the knowledge of how memories are formed, and how sports players learn complex actions and judgements to the point that they become second nature. most undertakings require both researched (past) and experiential knowledge to become proficient, but then they require experimental knowledge to learn and grow and add new value. Most importantly, and most overlooked when viewing things purely from a metric standpoint - inputs and outputs, is the ability to make intuitive leaps, something that comes from having a broad range of education and experiences which never slows, but also from taking respite time, changing course, changing pace, and finding a completely different view than one you'd ever have thought of it you were chasing it. (somewhat the idea of paleo fitness vs gym/nutritional fitness) everyone earns a basic living, they can earn it at whatever undertaking they please if they can find it, and if not they provide service to the public administration. Some even specialized in public administration, making the complex upper level interactions their area of focus where to others it was just a part of context. while there was a lower limit, there was no upper limit - if you could in fact provide enough value to enough people then you earned that value. Often it took a group of collaborators to provide the larger values, and generally the only way it was worth it was if it was to be aimed at a mass audience - in fact, that was more or less the evolution (better word here) of the public administration. Corporate structure, at all, however, is a thing of the past, which becomes the limiting factor - reality. but it was very regimented, still - feeling was given very little value, the value that people pursued for themselves was always what the graphs could tell them they needed to add value, what they understood would add value - few strayed outside of those lines. Eventually the analysis became constant and ongoing, and were adopted into the body - small implants which continually read bio and mental feedback patterns, which you would eventually sort into your own method of feedback and reporting, or buy a pre-fab suite of tools for specific applications, customizing them if you truly applied yourself (like 100 milers driving clubs) you were born, your parents raised you well, turning over a year of their stake in you at each birthday, to be divided between the community holding, the educational holding and yourself. At 18 you reached majority and you then tithed only to follow value - if you continued to gain value from that which your parents provided you with, they received tithings off of those portions, same with your teachers. and if you continued to gain value out of interacting with them, then you continued to interact with them. It wasn't ruining the world, not like we'd almost ruined it before, but still, something wasn't right. We all did for the most part, the right things. And we invented new things. We were pleasant and warm and caring to each other, we had become amazing stewards of our environment - we were even paying serious attention to fostering sentience in our animal brethren. And we were doing none of it under coercion (other than general obligation, which people met with varying degrees of commitment), but that didn't make it free will either, and something, some spark of life, was lost - or in serious risk of going out. When all of your decisions and actions became essentially logic operators based on input - you were intelligent, yes … but perhaps not sentient any longer. That is what she said anyways. She had that look that people work so hard for in the gyms and spas - that look of utter balance in her muscles and carriage, that completely relaxed yet tightly coiled physique, and perfect comfort in her body and its motions. yet she insists she rarely sees the inside of the gym. Today she's taken me to see what she does instead. The train doors pull open and the air instantly changes texture and smell, the damp spray of Great Falls floating into the cabin on sunbeams. The crowd takes a collective breath of appreciation and debarks, walking down the stairs. I love Great Falls - it invokes an inner quiet that I don't understand but which I quietly treasure - and which I'm sure I can see an effect of, on my value - if only I could parse out the equation I see hiding in the delta-feed. I'm headed for the overlook when she pulls me away, mischievously, towards the lower locks. I look again towards the floating cloud of spray when she taps me with whatever she has just taken out of her bag, holding them out to me insistently. They are rubber soled glove shoes. I give her a look but she's already down on the ground wrangling another pair onto her own feet. I give a surrendering sigh and sit down next to her, slipping off my sandals and fiddling with my toes until they're on properly. She grabs my shoes and shoved them in her bag. Ok, lets stretch, she says, and drops into a perfect down dog, then shifting her weight forward until it was evenly distributed between her toes and hands, lowering her body down, plank-like until her nose brushed the floor, then turning her toes under and letting her pelvis sink to the floor as she straightened her arms, coming into cobra momentarily before rising back up into down dog and then transitioning into warrior 1. Here she paused, grinning at my dumfounded stare. "Heike! I didn't know you were a dancer! And a damn fine one at that, I've only rarely seen flow like that, only from the Capitol troupe." "Why thank you! But, I'm not a dancer." "What? But, gymnast, then? Swimmer?" "No, No. I guess you could say I'm a scholar." "Who are you kidding, with that body. You're no scholar." "We'll see about that. Come on, lets finish up so we can run." She says as she continues her vinyasa and does a back bending walkover, taking a few steps on her hands with her feet and legs all akimbo the air before dropping back upright, feet on the ground, springing into a jogging stance. "Ok, lead the way." I say. We set off down the canal towpath at a slow run, warming up our muscles as we glide over the gravel and dodge the cyclists and boaters. Passing a troupe of tattooed play boaters we get appreciative whistles, and she spins around while continuing to make forward motion, making eye contact with all of the young bucks, a mischievous smile on her face. I almost miss it when she cuts abruptly off of the trail, angling down a dirt path. I follow and pretty soon we're hopping small builders and cresting small hills, dodging the occasional tree as we go. Pretty soon the air gets misty and damp and the earth falls away from the rock at our feet until we're running on bare granite. Suddenly the ground begins to pull apart, as we race across the flood plain of the might Potomac River. Every spring the torrential rains and snowmelt pour down this gorge and toss large trees like they were toothpicks and leave behind a changed and foreign landscape in their wake. My favorites are the cairns, where some rocks collected and were swirled by the water until the began to grind away an indentation and eventually a deep hole for themselves. Some are larger than my student apartment. I wonder idly if proto humans ever lived in cairns. Pretty soon I'm weaving my way across the crevasses fairly well, having built up a reliable short-term set of analyses for which crevasses to jump and how. I wonder what great pro-set she must have, to be making the jumps she is - often her jumps are not advised as the best potential by my knocked together analyses, but often have better results than my own. Finally, laughing and out of breath, we stop, a few feet short of the cliff, staring down into the mather gorge, 80 feet below. A few kayakers float by, spinning their boats on end or standing them on their noses. I look on admiringly. "That looks so much fun. I'm envious sometimes of the more physical pursuits." "(Name)," she says, "you did pretty well with those crevasses back there. Did you enjoy it?" "Oh yes!" I say, "I really got my analytics dialed in there towards the end. You must have an amazing suite though! Off the shelf, or customized?" She just shakes her head."I don't have a suite." Again, that pause as she took in my perplexed look. "Oh hell, I can see there is not going to be any convincing you. This is what I always argue anyways, some things can only be known through experience." "Sorry, what?" "Turn it off." "Turn what off?" "Your processor." "WHAT?" "Turn it off. Mine is off. Look, see?" she shows me her wristband, its face the dull gray of sleep mode. "Uh, okay. I guess I said I was game for anything." and I thumb the switch into its emergency only position. "Now, lets go again. I'll be slow." and she sets off at a skipping pace down the cliff wall. I follow, warily. Slowly the sun and the movement overcome me once again and I find myself blinking for crevasse analysis, only to realize its powered down. I begin to try to remember the overlay equations, and almost stumble to my knees in my preoccupation. So i just start heading for the safest looking passages, and quickly lead myself into a blind alley and am forced to retreat as (she) stands by, doing tree pose on a boulder farther ahead. I begin to approach my run like a chess game, looking at my available options, and weighing them against what options they would lead to downstream. before i know it I am keeping up with her again, and there is a slow feeling I usually only associate with sex or a really good book creeping through my chest. Suddenly our downriver flight is blocked by another cliff as a stream crashed down the hillside into the river. We slow to a walking pace and amble alongside until we can cross and then climb back up to riverside. She drops down into a stretch, takes her pack off her back and opens it up, handing me a sandwich. I see a flash of neon orange just over the ledge and climb into a seat with a better view, expecting a bird. What I see is in flight, but aside from that is about as unbird like as possible. A helmeted man lands his little plastic kayak in the middle of the standing wave on the river, plants his paddle near his stern, executing a flat water spin before lunging forward into one more aerial before falling off the back of the wave as he rights himself. I make an appreciative nose in the back of my throat and she giggles. "Ever been with an athlete?" "No, I'm definitely sapio-sexual. Its the brains that get me hot and bothered. Still, there is just something SO appealing about accomplished motion." "Is that so." she says to me, and then leans out over the water. "Hey Yon! Come here! I'll trade one of my sandwiches for a couple of those ciders I know you've got in your stern!" And the golden boater grins up at her, paddling hard for the shore where he beaches his boat, quickly climbs out and shoulders it, scrambling up the slope to us." Yon sits down with a six pack of the local brew, popping their lids and stowing them on the bottoms of the reusable cans before handing them to each of us. "Nice to meet you …" he leads, as he pulls his hand back from what is now my beverage. "(Name)," I say, smiling rather dopily. "Nice to meet you as well" "Yon is a hydrological engineer." She says byway of introduction. I giggle. "Is that like domestic engineer?” I riff, playing off his boating prowess. Neither of them smiles. "No, really - Yon is the top contributing hydrological engineer at Georgetown Tech, in fact I'm peer reviewing one of his latest papers right now." She says, and Yon ducks his head in embarrassed acknowledgement." "It's true, but it isn't the entire story. (Name) here is the one who suggested I take up kayaking when I was struggling to put the pieces together in the lab with this latest hydro model." "So wait, but I thought you said you worked in urban planning? How are you peer-reviewing his paper?" She laughed. "Good Question, I suppose. I don't exactly work in urban planning, though that facet is how you met me. I work more in the human settlement pattern, as ill defined as that is, but also sometimes beyond it. Yon and I actually met 120 feet up in the air, so to speak - doing our community contribution with the forest corps. And I am reviewing his paper now under the guise of general flow modeling - air and water behave very similarly, mimicking each other in our climactic patterns, and potentially in many other world patterns, when viewed in a very macro manner." "So you must both have great ADD suites …" I say, and before I can complete my sentence I am stopped by their broad grins. "Nope, trashed that thing years ago." Yon says, “Heike never had one at all," he adds. "By following only the most statistically reasonable paths we are stifling not only new knowledge, we are destroying existing knowledge because it doesn't fall along the cone of reason." She says, vehemently. "We pursue only the most expediently viable option, closing off so many avenues. We are imbalanced, and what we fail to see holds us back, and where it fails to hold us back we endanger ourselves, not having the full context of our new knowledge in exceedingly narrow fields." ... Eventually a second, quiet revolution. talk of how the creators of the new deal intended it to be adaptive, for us to regain the lost knowledge of the harmony to our logical melody, but that ultimately we would internalize that knowledge into culture and then instinct as we moved past healing into development again. We had regained the learned knowledge and understanding of the experience which had gone before, and what that told us about the complexity (this term eventually replaces universe, being a more accurate representation of the infinite multidimensional fractal pattern that is our growing world) - but we didn't internalize that knowledge, we didn't KNOW it. When making the best choice, the right choice, you are failing to gain experience and knowledge from all of the other choices. Intuitive leaps are most common in those interstices, and least common along the most followed practice, once it becomes established from its own intuitive leap. She had gotten rid of most of her educational value analysis packages, shelved them, slowly but with more surety over the years. She now used only the basic life support functions and depending on her activity would turn on or off other customized suites. … all it took was for a few of us to start expanding our experience, and balancing the logical analysis with our own feelings, forged in multidisciplinary experience, and working together to experiment new paths.

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tumblr is a mess. why no time stamps?

posted 20161222-2219

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