You have again excelled, magnificent; this is a work of art, sprawling succinct, beautiful, (contradictions, I know) dynamic, evolving. It shines in its brilliance. My heart is ecstatic at reading your words. Breathless they have left me, my mind high and numb. Thank you for sharing.
Your words are evocative of life, fractured, broken nuggets, musing and observations. We try to compose narratives when our thoughts are broken fragments that we attempt to combine to construct stories — something that makes sense, making sense out of nonsense. Of course, they are just random occurrences and experiences, but, alas, we do love our stories. We love to compose stories because they give us the veneer of control over reality — that we are actively constructing it. We write in tenses, and so in this way, we delineate time.
I love how this piece weaves and meanders. It catches the fleeting glances of random thoughts. The mind’s scattering, a staccato, a vibrato, this is about the real, our experiences as lived. It is akin to splashing paint on a canvas to create a random composition; this is the chaos of being, the thoughts wandering, the idea of string theory comes to mind. I don’t pretend to understand it. I used the idea of string theory as a metaphor, noodles of fragments of words hanging in the ether. It is akin to connecting the flaccid spaghetti threads to create a composition. In reading, we are constantly making inferences: references back to ourselves, our lived experiences, it is all about us, the narcissistic self. We delude ourselves into believing that we are impartial that there exists a space between us, the text or painting. In this space, our thoughts and those of the writer coalesce to create an objective truth — the melding of minds.
You mentioned paintings, and these words pricked my attention. I then referenced myself engaged in the act of painting, where there is no space between me and the object. It is what I call a mind-meld. I am now thinking about Spook in Star Trek. I remember the experience of painting a cave on the coast of Anglesey. It was my first experience of the erasure of the space between me and an object. It was akin to a mediation on the subject. We fused; there was no me or it. The finished painting bore no resemblance to the ‘real’ as seen on the surface by the eyes. I had painted with my mind’s eyes.
Another thought has just fleeting flashed through my mind. In that instance, it made sense, particularly in the context of this composition. But, alas, I was trying so hard to capture my immediate thoughts, focused on structuring the story’s narrative that I lost the fleeting thought. I feel a sense of loss and remorse because the lost insight felt profound, and one can argue that it emerged out of the composition: The narrative had triggered a conscious thought. One can say that ‘objectively, reality consists of random thoughts flashing through the mind. They seek an object to rest upon to make some sense of the external world, a world that is perpetually becoming. The mind it appears is always actively seeking to create reality.
Ah, eureka, the lost thought has come back to me. I recently started practising meditation. I was putting this into practice whilst walking to work. On one of these walks, I decided to make a concentrated effort to focus on being aware of the movement of my body, for example, my feet hitting the paved ground, the tension in my shoulders, back, stomach, buttocks, thighs etc. Whilst walking, it suddenly dawns on me how much others seek our attention. It appears to be a magnetic pull where others seek out validation — shouting, look at me. I was trying my best not to look at others. I told myself that I needed to focus, look at the ground and the near distance. If you look too far ahead, you are already projecting too far into the future. In doing so, one can never exist and experience the moment. I found this exercise incredibly difficult because I felt the magnetic attraction of others beckoning me to look at them, look at how important I am, or was it me seeking validation of my existence?
I interpreted the others as saying, you are because I exist. My thought then switched to thinking about Robinson Crusoe. What I ask myself would it like to be the only person in the world? Would life have any meaning? In the absence of a point of reference, would we know that we exist? Would I perceive or them perceive themselves as human, a distinct entity? Would there be a need to make sense, would reality as we perceive exist?
