Curious and Curiouser

PERSONS AND EXPERIENCE
"As adults, we have forgotten most of our childhood, not only its contents but its flavor; as men of the world, we hardly know of the existence of the inner world: we barely remember our dreams, and make little sense of them when we do; as for our bodies, we retain just sufficient proprioceptive sensations to coordinate our movements and to ensure the minimal requirements for biosocial survival - to register fatigue, signals for food, sex, defecation, sleep; beyond that, little or nothing. Our capacity to think, except in the service of what we are dangerously deluded in supposing is our self-interest, and in conformity with common sense, is pitifully limited: our capacity even to see, hear, touch, taste and smell is so shrouded in veils of mystification that an intensive discipline of un-learning is necessary for ANYONE before one can begin to experience the world afresh, with innocence, truth and love...As domains of experience become even more alien to us, we need greater and greater open-mindedness even to conceive of their existence" (22-3)

R.D. Laing - The Politics of Experience


Laing was a Scottish experimental psychologist interested in the experiences of the mentally ill, specifically schizophrenics. He was one of the first to compassionately and convincingly argue that the mentally ill could be undergoing an internal process of conflict-resolution in the face of a fundamentally dysfunctional society. The schizophrenic's fragmented mental state is consistent with the way a sensitive individual reacts to the pathological nature of so much of our culture. He proposed that not only could the mentally ill be properly administered to and offered counseling, but that the broader human community has much to learn from this radical experience of the world. A student of zen, Laing also believed that modern industrialized people are largely devoid of the constructive mythology of spirituality, and therefore unable to imagine the slighter and more profound aspects of daily existence.

How much do we miss on our way from here to there? Small wonders? Worlds within worlds? Can we recognize truth when we encounter it, or is it buried amongst so many different versions and facsimiles that we confuse the truth with the word (or its various synonyms?) In our hyper-relativistic world is there any objective thing called 'the authentic', or, like faith, instinct, and intuition, does it only exist in its own experience and nowhere else? How does a culture of avatars and proxies find truth through an experience if, increasingly, the arena of life is actually a hall of mirrors? The harder you look at the image in the mirror, the clearer you see what's not really there. In order to experience the presence of the image, you need the faith to forego its immediacy. Only then does the image lose the redundancy of the word to become nothing more than it ever was: its Self.

Sometimes though, as in the case of photographs, it's necessary to duplicate the original for the purpose of showing. And sometimes, with an eye for the extra within the ordinary, we stumble upon a world within a world.


Cheers for now. Good luck, good riddance, good lord!

Bionic Salmon Escape Hatch, Toaster Harbour, WA

Rock Climber, Snohomish County, WA

Beach Umbrella, Bellingham, WA