To make, to hold.

observation from The Wabi-sabi House: the Japanese art of imperfect beauty

They provide a tactile meditation almost impossible to find anywhere else.

"They" are "[t]he arts of spinning wool, making pottery, and weaving baskets". They are "more than just wabi-sabi items for your house." They provide.

Something here is elevated: process. Such elevation makes meditating upon the found item such as a simple stone a sort of challenge to involvement. That which I have made, that which I have placed. The difference vanishes in the meditation.

And so for day 168
31.05.2007

Ergonomics of Continuous Listening

The poet's voice in Robert Kroetsch's The Hornbooks of Rita K invites us to contemplate acts of audition.

The poets of Canada learn to sing by walking barefoot on gravel beaches. This makes for a fascinated listening. A constricted listening.

Any way to redeem that straightend word "constricted"? Perhaps in some understanding of the role of compression in comprehension. That which can be held like a snowball.

And so for day 167
30.05.2007

Attributions

Reproduced from the back cover of Volume 4, Perspectives and Realties, Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples 1996

I have no written speech. Everything that I have said I have been carrying in my heart, because I have seen it, I have experienced it.

Without a name the statement stands emblematic. Elsewhere the attribution is made to Mary Lou Iahtail, Cree educator, Moose Factory, Ontario.

To carry in the heart. To witness.

I am missing the gestures that would help me parse that "because". The commas look out of place.

And so for day 166
29.05.2007

Two French Verbs or Three

There are two French verbs, s'attarder and s'attacher that make me think of the semantic ground covered by linger awhile, dwell upon and brood over. Yet the valence is different and can be set in the key of "mindfulness" or that of "inattention" and "habituation". To become delayed and to grow attached. Time and roots. Easy to spend. Hard to eradicate. But that is another verb, s'enraciner, almost German in its insistence. Attachments need not have depth; the clinging can be all surface.


And so for day 165
28.05.2007

Woolf II

In the back matter of Woolf by Madalyn Eastus is an epigraph drawn from Michel Foucualt.

The human intellect, from its peculiar nature, easily supposes greater order and equanimity in things than it actually finds; and while there are many things in nature unique, and quite irregular, still it feigns parallels, correspondents, and relations that have no existence.

To make believe is the source of making do.

Foucault is quoting Bacon. And the keyword is "equanimity".

The range and ambit of the term "equanimity" may have shifted since the Renaissance, still this excerpt from the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius gives a flavour of what Bacon is signifying:

Country houses, retreats in the mountains or by the sea — these things men seek out for themselves; and often thou, too, dost most eagerly desire such things. But this does but betoken the greatest ignorance; for thou art able, when thou desirest, to retreat into thyself. No otherwhere can a man find a retreat more quiet and free from care than in his own soul; and most of all, when he hath such rules of conduct that if faithfully remembered, they will give to him perfect equanimity, — for equanimity is naught else than a mind harmoniously disciplined.
[from the Project Gutenberg transcription of Volume 3 of Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern]

The passage continues and in the perennial vein of Max Ehrmann's Desiderata "Go placidly amid the noise and haste [etc.]"

Cease not then to betake thyself to this retreat, there to refresh thyself. Let thy rules of conduct be few and well settled; so that when thou hast thought thereon, straightway they will suffice to thoroughly purify the soul that possesses them, and to send thee back, restless no more, to the things to the which thou must return.

The human intellect supposes and feigns. The power to form, shape or alter is the very power to stabilize and bring rest.

And such movement is exactly what this dynamic picture book of textile echoes does entrain.

And so for day 164
27.05.2007

Woolf I

Madalyn Eastus has designed a picture book in which "a series of images made only of paper — cut, folded, and woven […] rely upon each other to create multilayered" offerings. It is evocatively titled Woolf. In the back matter is a set of principles set out in verse form. They are reproduced here with regard to the spacing:

no narrative – only pattern


no glue – just friction


reflection over horizontal
& vertical axes


cropping, symmetry,
surprise

A set of predictable actions; a set of unpredictable outcomes. The story is universal: to be charmed by pattern coming back again. Such a character pattern is!

And so for day 163
26.05.2007

On the authentic

A page from Judith Martin's Miss Manners' Basic Training: Communication

[Etiquette provides] a whole catalogue of things to say on every occasion: congratulations, thank you, I'm so sorry, happy birthday, I love you, happy holidays, best wishes and I offer you my sympathy. None of these, it will be noticed, is funny, insightful or original. Surprisingly enough, that is not what is wanted. On important occasions, people don't necessarily want to be lectured, enlightened or kidded; they just want to bask in the ideal that people who care about them are sharing their pleasures or sorrows.

But the commonplaces are not meant to not be personalized (hence my championing Erasmus's De Copia) and Ms. Martin obliges with a reminder of obligations:

Signing one's name to such a statement is supposed to convey that. Actually putting it into one's own handwriting suggests that there was some thinking going on, as opposed to mere acquiescence in someone else's statement.

Leaving traces in the appropriate fashion is the polite thing to do.

And so for day 162
25.05.2007

Bedtime: think time

John Stands in Timber in Cheyenne Memories concludes a tale about the seven stars of the big dipper thus

It was a story supposed to make us go to sleep, but I would lie awake thinking about those seven brothers for quite awhile, and what happened to them. I never did hear what became of the girl.

And so we are left to wonder too.

And so for day 161
24.05.2007

Costume, Person, Role

Tony Peake in Derek Jarman: a biography offers a description of an aspect of the film The Tempest:

For the costumes, a sense of timelessness was aimed at [...] Jarman was equally keen that the costumes reinforce character. The way Miranda's dress is festooned with shells and feathers, so that it looks as if she carries the island about her person, is a precise indication of her upbringing, just as Prospero's rumpled but once magnificent velvet waistcoat and breeches hint at a richer, more cosmopolitan past.

There is a touch of Jungian treatment here as character, theatrical, slides into character, psychological. French has "caractère" for psychological character and "personnage" for the theatrical role and both are different from personality.

Costumes may reinforce character but they also make role codable.

And so for day 160
23.05.2007

Personality, Role, Function

The narrator of Robert Silverberg's Those Who Watch describes the mores of the Dirnan:

Vorneen was by nature a seducer. That was his role in the sexual group: he was the predator, the aggressor who initiated the matings. Mirtin would never take an active role, while Glair provoked sexual activity only in the feminine facet of the healer, the consoler, the soother. Vorneen sought passion for its own sake. That was acceptable, and moreover necessary to the continuity of the group. Within the group he kindled, he galvanized. If
sometimes he found it needful to go outside the group, neither Glair nor Mirtin objected. Why should they?

1967 science fiction offering a mirror to remind 2007 readers that primate behaviour can be quite complex even within its simple bounds.

And so for day 159
22.05.2007