Fish In the Afternoon

…I and you in the gateway whispering together, whispering of eternal things – must not all of us have been here before? –And return and run in that other lane, outward, before us, in this long, eerie lane – must we not return eternally? – Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

For MK.

*s(u)wen-, *sunno, sunne, sonne, sun – that which lights everything, that which shines, that which sustains, the cosmic feminine.

The sun has always been feminine. In the shade of the ash trees, the people of the garden reflect on the shadows as emanations of starlight, the love of the sunne. The frogs bribbit good morning in the helicopter ponds, echoing time through vine and bark, Embla and Askr emerging wyrd from the before. The sun comforts and welcomes the earth-souls into the pining present.

There is no measure. All there is is incommensurate quality, being in its hereness. No one is anyone else, no doing is another. I breathe, you breathe, we kiss, we kiss. Each moment is the emerging of a world from the is. Each is incomparable – again and again and again, waking up next to you is falling in love for the first time. Time. Time appears in the dance of being-together: “being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.” (Borges) I am here-, now-, with-you. The now-and-then is the choreography of presence, the holy longing of togethering. Every presence is anew a future-appearing, utopia-becoming. The present is the present of presence.

Measurement obscures time. This-and-that becomes this-or-that; the here becomes a 1, a 2, a 3… Quality is sliced into quantity, the sublimity of being catalogued, the wholeness of time split-apart. There is no presence in quantity, only absence. The quantity of a thing is the absence of what it is not – being is occluded in the nothing, the cave. Shadows take the place of forms and the people of the garden forget that it is the sunshine that makes the shadows dance. Anamnesis is remembering the sunlight, that being-here is already holy, that we are presence, not absence. Measure makes us forget the gift of the present, suspended anxiously between past and future… But the sun is always shining.

Measure creates self-denial, self-negation. It crystallizes pain through marking our being as that which we have lost, or that which are not. But there is nothing in us which is not, which is absence. You are you are you are. Here here here. Now now now. We are histories ever-present in every moment, whole worlds walking whole worlds. You are my world and I am yours. We are worlds making worlds, you and I. You and I. You and I. You and I. The holiness of You is immeasurable, incomparable, infinite – you-as-you-as-you. You-as-you-are, you-as-you-were, you-as-you-will-be. You.

Nietzsche invites us into the eternal return, the affirming of every moment as a moment we live infinitely, happily, excitedly, over-and-over-and-over-again. The eternal return escapes from measure, from quantity, through making every moment, every doing, every being, every life, eternal. The eternal gifts to us the present again. The present is You. We are presents, gifts, Christmases of loving-becoming, the infinitely valuable gift of Us. We present the present of our present presence and unfold together as blankets of starlight, every point a wold, every moment a universe. Even if all I had was one moment with you, I would have everything. Every moment with you is a moment I would return to again eternally. Again and again and again, just to be-with-you, to be-with-Katie. I refuse Nirvana to reincarnate again with you, to experience with you again. I will traverse samsara just to hold your hand again.

The sun has always been feminine. In the shade of the past, I warm myself in your light, every moment a timeless now in your presence. Leaving the cave, I kick away the ladder and feel the heat of love freckle my arms, future worlds dotting my skin like constellations. The grasshoppers sing recognition in the morninglight as joy dews like sweat on our lips. Embla and Askr, earth-souls wyrded by the gods, we soul-onward into eternal return, the ship of being arriving again-and-again. There is no part of you, no moment with you, that I would not return to – because I return, I return, I return to you. I wyrd the mystery of existence with you, two autos in allos, a together togethering a home. Summer breathes the infinite together; the sun holies my heart. You are my sunshine.

I love you.

Every situation, every moment — is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole eternity. – Johann Goethe, quoted in Conversations with Goethe by Johann Eckermann

Image: In Bed, the Kiss by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1892)

The unfettered clouds and region of the heavens,
Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light—
Were all like workings of one mind, the features
Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree,
Characters of the great Apocalypse,
The types and symbols of Eternity,
Of first and last, and midst, and without end.
- William Wordsworth, The Simplon Pass

ἀποκάλυψις – ἀπό-καλύπτω – apó-kalúptō – apokálupsis – apocalypse – un-cover, un-veil, un-conceal, reveal

I gift to you the unveiling; you gift to me the apocalypse.

Nine days from heaven, nine days to hell. The earth reveals the concealed, above and below. We animas in animation ballet the possible, hylomorphs of spiritmatter dueting the cosmos. I flower in time, the bloom of the here-and-now. Sunflowers mystic the senses, the what-is unveiling beauty. Every moment is an apocalypse and every motion a rebirth. Creation creates creation.

Thinking is a doing. Cartesian gnosticism haunts the bodymind. There is no form outside the forming and enformed, no world other than the one of spiritflesh. We talk the same world that we think and think the same matter in our listening. Walking. Kneeling. Rocking back-and-forth. Consciousness bubbles up from bodies-in-placetime, the circulation of attention in kenosis. The self is gift and given, same-as-love. How many Seraphim can nap together on a couch? Perichoresis charts the ineffability of the is; love animates the imago Dei. Jesus weeps and thinks that makes him special. We weep and pretend that we don’t. Humanimals mundane the special. Animanimals special the mundane. We never left the Garden but forgot that it was growing. To understand is to apocalypse, to reveal the already-here. To apocalypse the all, one spirits the cosmopsyche, unraveling the universe in particularity, the eternal super-kenosis. Sophia is as Pan does.

We forest us forests. Every life is a biome, the ecosystem of my body, the placetime of my mind. There are no properties in the thing; the properties emerge from relation. Each bundle of spiritmatter potentiates powers that enform the faculties of other powers, the lifepower of subjectivity. This enforming actualizes a potential, manifesting a property as a relation between you and I. No leaf is green, but I and the leaf together qualia greenness. There is neither subject nor object, only world. Consciousness is the world-in-animation, the flow of actualizing potential that is spiritmatter. To perceive is to apocalypse, to reveal the potential, to make-new the world. God Gods as I I.

You gift to the One, Many; I gift to the Many, One.

γένεσις – γίγνομαι–σις – gígnomai-sis – génesis – genesis – origin, source, to-come-into-being, to-become

What one needs to do at every moment of one’s life is to put an end to the old world and to begin a new world. – Nikolai Berdyaev, The Beginning & the End

Image: Genesis by Alexander Bogen (2002)

Home is where the heart is. – Pliny the Elder

Here.

En-placed and en-homed, togethers draw-together in the doma. Sophia is loving-wisdom, and one wisely-loves only in place and in time. Placetime. I am here-, now-, with-you. I am never nowhere and nowhen; where and when are always -with-. Being inhabits being in dwelling in the here-and-now with-you, the neverplaceless moment of togethering. I Sophia onward the dawning sunlight, the in-the-world that inaugurates the here.

Placetime has the quality of hereness, but this hereness emerges from the act of dwelling rather than the naming of place. I dwell in the world, not in ‘America’. The -time of placetime is itself timeless, a being-now that qualifies rather than quantifies, the never-measured ellipsis of doing through which the Unique Uniques. Placetime is the arena of Uniquing, the unfolding of Unique-togethers in their Unique dwelling. This togethering architects the doma, the home or nest where the unfolding of each overlaps the unfolding of another and matters the matter of their dwelling. The doma is not nowhere or nowhen but a -where and -when so close to the skin that each atom vibrates the history of the together. Uniques unique together in the historying of their dwelling, making home in the warmth of their being-with. Togethers hearthing together.

The good of the doma is the enacting of the good-itself: the Unique. This Uniquing is always a Uniquing-with, and the good of each Unique is the good of the dwelling in which the Unique resides. Because of this, to enact the form of the good, each Unique must attend to the Uniqueness of their Unique together, loving-wisdom being a loving-dwelling with the beloved Unique. Love loving love is the essence of the good, reflecting the creating-begetting-proceeding of the all. The oikonomia of the doma is an energeia, Uniques in hypostatic union acting-together to unfold their together in the world, nesting virtue. To enact the good, one must en-home.

With you.

Every beloved object is the center point of a paradise. – Novalis, Fragment No. 51

Image: Basket of Fruit by Caravaggio (~1596)

So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in autumn. – Henry David Thoreau, Walking

Being is becoming; existence is a journey.

We saunter futures that echo pasts as the present guides our feet. Calloused soles that soul onward, we toe-tap memory into magic, intention guiding attention, attention presencing the absent into meaning. I wander the many-worlds with you.

Serendipity. Epicurus: the Swerve. Atoms loose possibilia into modal cornucopia. To plan is to seek a future, to navigate time. This navigating is a navigating-with, with-the-world and with-another. We intend the time-to-come and in our present we journey the to-be. But this journeying is always a wandering, an improvisation. Being becomes through creativity, through a leap of faith into love, attending to the coming-dwelling. Hope is an artwork.

In plans we scribble the future. In seeking, we prophesy. I orient, I lean, I intend, I attend. I intend to attend to a future with you. I attend to unveil my intending, my attending-to-come. We lean, we orient. Towards one another, towards a future, a willing-of-time. I will, I will, I will. To will is to unfold a future; holding hands is loving-in-time. I journey to journey forever with you, sauntering the unknown. All I know is love.

Dreams dream, our imaginings layering on our skin, wrapping ourselves in the quilt of time. Please, plan. But please, wander. Creation is perichoretic kenosis, indwelling, self-giving love. Creating, begetting, and proceeding. Nature is a pilgrimage to a holy land that is already-here. Earth-souls plant memory in fertile soil to spring-forth the tree of life, Eden the un-naming of the forms, paradise a being-here. I am here, I am here, I am here. I am always here.

Uniquing is always a Uniquing-with. Uniques unique together, togethers togethering in the together of togethers. Holy earth journeys multiplicity, life echoing infinite Uniquing. Hold my hand and leap into the heart of the world. Journey with me the becoming.

Being is becoming; existence is a journey; to be is to love.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time. 
- T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding

Image: Evening Primroses in the Vase by Paul Gauguin (1885)

He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars;
General good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer:
For art and science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.
- William Blake, Jerusalem

This was originally written for my students.

What is an idea? Ideas are partitions of the senses, both present and absent, divisions of spacetime into objects, into this-and-thats in-the-world. This-and-thats are action-potentials, or affordances: layers of what-it’s-for within this-and-that. Our ideas have a direct effect on what we can do and what we imagine we can do. The can-do is a function of the what-it’s-for of a field of affordances, a what-it’s-for that is both invented and discovered, both in-us and in-the-world.

The properties of the spacetime bundle constrain the what-it’s-for by defining the physical limits of what-can-be-done. To stop thinking of a chair as a chair may change the what-its-for, but it can not take on the what-its-for of a lamp. We also, however, invent the what-it’s-for. Our ideas are world-embedded, overlaying on the this-and-thats of the real. The what-it’s-for emerges out of how the idea modifies the affordances of the physical, a uniting of both what-can-be-done and what-we-see-it-as-for. Though we may not be able to change the what-can-be-done, modifying our concepts modifies the what-it’s-for through modifying what-we-see-it-as-for. Conceptual engineering is also agential engineering, the changing of our ideas for the sake of changing the what-it’s-for of things around us and opening up new possibilities.

There are, however, things that do not have a what-it’s-for, or where the thing-itself is what-it’s-for. This is the Unique, that which is itself-in-itself and irreplaceable with any other. The what-it’s-for of the Unique is Uniquing, unfolding as it is in the way that is right to it. The Unique grounds value, everything is either valuable-in-itself as Unique or valuable-to-a-Unique. Ultimately, the what-it’s-for of all things is the Unique, everything else appearing as valuable in the overlapping Uniquing of Uniques-in-the-world.

Every person is a Unique in this way. People are that which do not have a what-it’s-for or who are themselves their own what-it’s-for. This extends to all living beings: life-itself is the Unique and the Uniquing of all is life-itself. Life is what does and acts in the world, and which through this doing makes manifest the what-it’s-for of everything else. This means that the what-it’s-for is mutually-shaped, not just a what-it’s-for for me but a what-it’s-for for me and you and you and you and you. The what-it’s-for is -for all of us and to exist in community is to take all others as the what-it’s-for of your activity. What-it’s-all-for is me. And you. And you. And you.

What-it’s-all-for is all of us. All of our hopes and dreams and fears and anxieties. All of our pasts, and all of our presents, and all of our futures. All of our wants and needs and desires and loves.

What-it’s-all-for is the world-as-it-is and the world-as-it-could-be.

He shewed me a little thing, the quantity of an hazel-nut, in the palm of my hand; and it was as round as a ball. I looked thereupon with eye of my understanding, and thought: What may this be? And it was answered generally thus: It is all that is made. I marvelled how it might last, for methought it might suddenly have fallen to naught for little. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasteth, and ever shall for that God loveth it. And so All-thing hath the Being by the love of God. – Blessed Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love

Image: The Human Condition by René Magritte (1933)