systematic assertion of a false reality

Towards a definition of Materialist Realism, following this and this. 

Materialist realism 1 is the systematic assertion of a false reality based on the idea that material substance is all that exists in the universe, and that questions about consciousness and sentience can be explained away by the action of "lifeless atoms subject to blind and purposeless forces"2. Materialist realism draws on, among other arguments, a limited reading of Darwinian evolution and scientific cosmology (the Big Bang theory), to normalise its worldview through institutional cultural saturation 3. It is opposed here by spiritual realism, a rational approach to understanding human consciousness, based on direct perception of its underlying essence 4. Materialist realism is so entrenched today, it actually provides the framework for most current religious and spiritual discourse, a dilution of the knowledge taught in the traditions that presents it as an accessory to a consumerist lifestyle. 

Notes:

1 As a concept, materialist realism stems from ideas about Capitalist Realism, a form of Marxist analysis, that suggests capitalism has been institutionalised in the same way that Socialist Realism was institutionalised under Stalin in the former USSR. 

2 The quote is from the award-winning popular science author, Paul Davies, in The Origins of Life, Penguin 1999

3 Scientific theories are necessarily limited to the perceptive abilities of their makers, and are always framed by the cultural conditions in which they arise. Spiritual realism is not opposed to scientific enquiry, and delights in the evidence of how the material universe operates as part of a wholly conscious singularity.

4 As discussed in the various traditions of self-enquiry like Vedanta, Buddhism, and the esoteric teachings of  Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

constellation of mechanisms

"Most of us believe that we possess a self - an internal individual who resides inside our bodies, making decisions, authoring actions and possessing free will. The feeling that a single, unified, enduring self inhabits the body - the 'me' inside me - is compelling and inescapable. This is how we interact as a social animal and judge each other's actions and deeds. But that sovereignty of the self is increasingly under threat from science as our understanding of the brain advances. Rather than a single entity, the self is really a constellation of mechanisms and experiences that create the illusion of the internal you. We only emerge as a product of those around us as part of the different storylines we inhabit from the cot to the grave. It is an every changing character, created by the brain to provide a coherent interface between the multitude of internal processes and the external world demands that require different selves." 

I discovered this blurb for The Self Illusion by Bruce Hood on Amazon. It's an interesting formulation of words, representing the slow nudging of material science towards an acceptance of the universality of self, the logical outcome of an acceptance of the social self  - which has enormous repercussion for notions of individual free will. It's nowhere near an acceptance of the transcendent self, the formless absolute of spiritual understanding, but it prompts questions about what constitutes sentience and consciousness that should challenge the notion that we are individual beings operating separately in space, somehow independent of the process that formed us. 

pic from here

her plastic eyes

"Geminoid F can appear strikingly beautiful in a way that doesn’t translate to photos or video. Her hair is smooth and glossy, and falls across her delicately translucent, pale silicone face. As she sits in the chair at Osaka University, she runs through an idling program of random motions. She blinks, fidgets and makes small, distracted movements with her lips. When she turns her head and looks at you with her plastic eyes, the effect is thrilling and unsettling. It feels as if you’re being stared at, a little too intently, by an attractive stranger."  from That's Not A Droid, That's My Girlfriend, Aubrey Belford

Robotics and Artificial Intelligence debate addresses consciousness as if it were a material construct, something made from the flux of processing energy in the circuitry of the object, a combination of forces existing in the material universe but harnessed in such a way it gives rise to sentience. But what if it pre-exists it, as the formless ground of all that arises as form, always present and pervading, emerging slowly into self-knowing as the driver of evolution? All that blinking and fidgeting, all those small, distracted movements would be the sign of this subtle unfolding, the self recognising itself in the subjectivity of felt emotional existence. Geminoid F is loveable because 'she' mirrors our own nature as consciousness in material form. In that respect, 'she' teaches us that our love for other human organisms is of the same nature, consciousness expressing itself as energised process.

Full text (and photo) here:

that blazing bliss

"(T)he universe is but one vast sea of compassion actually, a veritable holy honey, beneath all this show of personality and cruelty, in fact who knows but it isn't the solitude of the one-ness of the essence of everything - comma - the solitude of the actual one-ness of the unborn-ness of the unborn essence of everything - comma - nay, the true pure forever-hood, that big blank potential that can rain forth anything it wants from its pure store, that blazing bliss..."

Jack reads his essay on The Beats to students at Hunter College, NY, in 1958, infusing it with his own ecstatic vision of Buddhism (and punctuation). Funny and heartwarming.

Full audio (and pic) here

what's the point of enlightenment?

"Since enlightenment is part of nature - it's even called 'seeing your own nature', Kensho, 'to see your nature' - so, because it's part of nature we shouldn't be surprised that there are both sudden and gradual components to the endeavour." 

The talk in this video (see link below) is a well-considered appraisal of the actual purpose of the practice of mindfulness and meditation - something much overlooked by the popular teaching methods used (and currently in vogue) in our culture, which are largely designed to help us become better adjusted to the demands of consumerism and work. Though, of course, the talk proceeds from a subject-object address and uses a language bound by the limitations of duality to discuss the topic (as does this comment, of course). When enlightenment does occur, the non-dual nature of the world becomes clear and the spontaneous and inevitable nature of the process of enlightenment is revealed.

Video here
Pic from here

to fully know itself

Will robots become sentient? Does artificial intelligence (AI) imply that machines will develop consciousness like humans? To answer such questions we need to examine what we mean by consciousness. This blog supports a spiritual view that regards consciousness as a formless absolute that both transcends and permeates everything perceived as having material form. Materialists have a different view that admits to some difficulty.

According to the Oxford Guide to the Mind: “When physical structures like brains generate mental processes like perceiving, remembering and thinking, we have some explaining to do. But the articial brains of desktop computers can perform these kinds of activities, and the only problem that this presents is the similarity between human intelligence and artificial intelligence... They are simulations, of course, but they are the equivalent of activities that we know as mental processes.” (1)

This completely avoids the question of sentience. Where does conscious awareness come from in their view of the world? Materialists think it is the product of evolution. That it arises as a by-product of the complexity of the human organism. That it has its origins in “a mixture of lifeless atoms subject to blind and purposeless forces” according to Paul Davies in the Origins of Life (2). So, lifeless atoms give rise to sentient life. This doesn't even pass the test of linguistic logic. But it follows that, for them, the creation of machines that mimic our internal circuitry will be similarly self-aware.

Their confusion is due to a mixing of two things. The functioning of the brain and body is one thing, sentient self-awareness (consciousness) is another. Although the material world forms into its component parts, according to our spiritual analysis, it does so within the formless conscious absolute. So, in this view everything in the world is conscious, but that doesn't mean it is self-aware in the way a human organism is. 

In our spiritual view, material form evolves into its complex bological structures to reveal its underlying nature. It is what drives the process. Humans have reached that point in evolution when the underlying formless consciousness emerges to fully know itself. Robots have not undergone any such thing, and will remain at the level of their non-biological circuitry and structure.

1) Oxford Guide to the Mind, Oxford University Press, ed Geoffrey Underwood

2) The Origin of Life, Penguin, Paul Davies 

pic from here

urban colour scheme

From here

Zizek on Buddhism is an entertaining misinterpretation

“We know how Buddhism starts. You know. The problem is suffering. All living beings want happiness, want to suffer less. Then what is the source of our suffering? Desire, attachment to objects. You know the story. Here comes my first problem... If there is a lesson of psychoanalysis, it's precisely that we want to suffer... a typical (Film) Noir scene, for example, you get a guy, normal guy, suddenly he's seduced by an evil femme fatale. His life is ruined at the end, he's betrayed by her, everything. And at the (..?) of his death, somebody tells him, 'Oh my god. Now that you know how evil she was. Would you like to go back in time and start again, avoiding her?' And the typical Noir answer is, 'No, it was worth every moment.' ...This is the true Noir spirit. Even if I know that it's a catastrophe it was worth it.” 

This interesting provocation from Slavoj Zizek, the popular Marxist thinker currently promoting his new documentary, is one of many issues he takes with Buddhism in this video. Though while quite right to call out westernised “Buddhists” on their dilutions of its core perspective - in particular the attempts to parlay it into an underpinning of a 'progressive' middle class lifestyle - his materialist perspective leaves him incapable of understanding its essential truth. Both bourgeois westerners and Marxist philosophers would benefit from first understanding what the actual teachings of Buddhism amount to.

What is meant by suffering, in spiritual terms, is not the opposite of happiness, but precisely this getting caught up in the endless struggle to achieve happiness and avoid suffering - the natural consequence of attachment to objects. The opposite to suffering is spiritual enlightenment. This is what the philosophy is actually about (as opposed to leading a more pleasant, happy life). It means the human mind opening up to transcendent consciousness, the formless basis of the material world. From this perspective, all objects, all energy forms, are viewed with complete equanimity as parts of a whole the human organism lives in interconnected harmony with.

It's worth pointing out here, that Marxist philosophy actually appropriates this spiritual understanding, reinterpreting it as a secular end-point to a historical struggle. Here's Frederick Engels, Marx's collaborator and financial backer: “(T)he more this progresses [the historical struggle] the more will men not only feel but also know their oneness with nature, and the more impossible will become the senseless and unnatural idea of a contrast between mind and matter, man and nature, soul and body.” (From The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Apes to Man, 1876.)

Buddhism, though, is not opposed to social action. From its perspective, the human body, embedded in its environment, is naturally involved with social relations and their organisation. And in a globally-wired up world, that means it is connected in a tangible and meaningful way with the organisation of humanity across the planet. But a Buddhist knows that the deeper the internal perspective - the closer to the unitive essence of the universe - the more the sense of individualism and egoic separation is removed. They operate always from a genuine sense of relationship with everyone, regardless of superficial differences. Deeply connected with the unifying consciousness that pervades the universe, they bring clarity and understanding to social predicaments.

As for Zizek's point about Noir and the yearning for suffering, it is easily explained when we understand that he is confusing Buddhist 'happiness' (enlightenment) with pleasure. And that suffering and pleasure, on the terms he uses to discuss them, are not actually opposites, but different poles on a continuum. The human mind that cannot grasp its essential nature feels separated and alone in a world of objects - some it derives pleasure from, some it is repulsed by. To take the Noir example, this gives rise to sexual pleasure when communion with an apparently mutually-attracted human 'object' is engaged. But pleasure comes with an undercurrent of suffering, because even if unacknowledged, the sensation is always temporary and dependent on another's compliance, which can always be withdrawn.

Noir characters are drawn to formerly unattainable sexual pleasure and their previously unthinking, innocent happiness is disturbed as a result. Theirs is a journey to self-knowledge through experience, and to a deeper understanding of the fragile contracts social relationships are built on. It is the point of the genre, and why it is so compelling. It speaks to the deeper sense of truth missing from films about love that posit romantic coupling as the ultimate happiness we can achieve. Zizek is entertaining and insightful in his analysis of films, but only up to a point. Though the fact he actually attempts to engage with spiritual philosophy is welcome, and also shows his perspective takes him beyond the banal simplicities usually found in left-wing, secular materialist thought. 

Pic here

easier to imagine the end of the world

More on capitalist realism, following this earlier note about the need for an analysis of materialist realism to fully understand the nature of reality. 

"Capitalist realism can be seen as a belief: that there’s no alternative to capitalism, that, as Fredric Jameson put it, it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Other systems might be preferable to capitalism, but capitalism is the only one that is realistic. Or it can be seen as an attitude of resignation and fatalism in the face of this – a sense that all we can do is accommodate ourselves to the dominance of capitalism, and limit our hopes to containing its worst excesses. Fundamentally, it’s a pathology of the left, nowhere better exemplified than in the case of New Labour. Ultimately, what capitalist realism amounts to is the elimination of left wing politics and the naturalisation of neoliberalism." from here

pic from here

inevitable cruelties and defeats

"Lovers are not in control of their actions. They're drawn by unbidden forces stored in the body, deeper and more real than the socially conditioned. Secret thoughts, terrible acts, impossible to contain, arise without welcome, undermining the planned and scripted life. Social niceties are abandoned in favour of the inevitable cruelties and defeats of the driven heart, selfish in its neediness."

From a short blast of a piece on Amy Hempel's Offertory for Dead Ink. Full text here


"The narrative begins in media res as a sort of spy thriller: ‘The woman was stripping the prisoner, tying him to a chair’. Already though, little details in the language prime the reader to expect a twist somewhere. Talk of ‘Fanatics’ gives way to a focus on how the prisoner ‘stretched his muscled body against the rope’ and the sexual frisson of how ‘the hard spike of [the woman’s] heels scrap[ed] concrete as she opened [the door].’"

From a not entirely complimentary review of my story, The Ruins, in Sabotage. Full text here

we rarely listen

“It's not a soporific soundwash. It's not nostalgic... it will be a dynamic piece which stimulates peoples' imaginations and strikes them, hopefully, in a personal way. Because a lot of the sounds, I hope, will be familiar to people... when you ask people to stop and really listen it then becomes a very creative and engaging activity. We tend to hear everything, but we rarely listen.”  

Chris Watson's new installation at the Millenium Gallery, Sheffield, asks us to deepen our awareness of the moment through paying attention to sound. 

Video: here

with her mouth open

"When the actor is finished with her, he turns to the second girl, who has been watching him with the first. He turns her over so that he can fit himself into her from behind; at the same time, another man (he had been lounging in the chair earlier, naked) pulls her on top of him and enters her from the front. While this is going on, the first girl wipes her eyes and breathes with her mouth open as she watches the girl beside her on the bed. After a while, the second girl cries out in Polish." 

from Offertory, by Amy Hempel (2006)
text here
pic here

Be a Dog for Your Daddy

(short story published in New Trespass, summer 2012)

He wanted northern dirt on his shoes. Grime and grit. The kind he used to play in as a kid back on that council estate in Sheffield fifty years ago. When he was underprivileged. When he didn’t have food to eat. When he didn’t have love from his daddy. When he lived the blues. Those fucking blues.

Those fucking shoes. American sneakers with black canvas tops and white rubber soles. Converse. Worn by baseball players. Worn by him, back then, when he first ran from home. Running to the sound of rhythm and blues. To the sound of black soul. With blaxploitation movies in his head, that turned his downtown West Street into 10^th street any-American-city. Thinking any-American-city had a ghetto with a 10^th street. Thinking any American ghetto would recognize the pale-faced son of an alcoholic steel-man as a brother. Especially as his daddy hated him and his music. Those fucking shoes. Those fucking blues.

But, what the fuck! I’m glad my feet are his size. I’m glad I’m five seven. I’m glad he gave me this job. I’m glad I met him, or, at least, his PA Dahlia.

"Yeah, just wear them on the estate, scuff them, get them dirty, the usual deal," she tells me when we hook up before the trip. Six months after we first meet at The Cage. When I agree to the other thing with the spike-heeled boots and the frock. For the price. For the fucking price.

We sit at the counter in the American Diner in Old Compton Street and she hands me a plastic bag with the box inside and places rail tickets in front of me.

"He can’t go himself. He still feels the hurt. But it’s his big comeback tour. It’s stripped to his vest and jeans, like in the beginning. He needs Yorkshire dirt on his shoes."

Then she unzips a brown leather handbag with buckles and zips I guess is Mulberry. Slides a long smooth hand inside and pulls out the kind of phone I cannot afford to buy. With the camcorder and the Internet connection.

"Here, he wants you to use it. You gotta phone at a certain time. His number’s in the address book. You gotta send him a live picture. You can’t go faking this trip."

I take the phone, roll it in my palm and open it. Click it on and look at her on screen, adjusting until she’s centred, her red lips cracking a fake smile. Like saying, this fake smile is for you. Professional and true to itself.

I take the tickets and a roll of twenty pound notes. She says it comes to two hundred. You can buy your own refreshments. I flag a cab on Shaftesbury Avenue, ride it to Kings X with my i-pod on random. Listen to a boyband’s lament for lost love followed by a slice of cut-throat rock trash by the New York Dolls. In the station buy a sandwich at one of the concessions. With bacon, lettuce and tomato inside. I mean to eat it on the journey but catch the smell of grilled meat as I finger Attitude magazine in WH Smith. I take a bite, dump Attitude and pick out Dazed. The boys are sexier and it matters that they aren’t so clean cut. Thin guys with expensive haircuts in cool shirts. And the shots are designed to appeal to hetero vanity. I take it and finish eating in the check-out queue. The train’s on time. My seat in First Class wide and deep. I spread the pages and flick through them. Feeling good about the job. Feeling good about the money tucked into my jeans pocket. I love the way Dahlia deals with me. The way she fucking deals.

Like when she told me I could make money if I played a game with her. Back then, in The Cage, on that cold December night three months before. When she came across to the bar and tapped my shoulder. When she asked, "Excuse me, you available tonight?" After I told her it depended on who and how much.

"You know who he is don’t you?"

"Yeah, I told her. It’s my job to know."

"Well," she said. "Mark can be very generous to a young man who likes to play."

Mark Schroeder. The English BB King. With the American inflection and flat northern vowels.

Yeah, I thought. I can play.

"Yeah," I said. "Tell me exactly what he wants."

She took me over to meet him where he sat in a corner at a table. He looked white and shrunken. Black T-shirt with faded new vintage Levis. Black faux workboots. His hair limp to his nape. Balding scalp through a gel-matt sheen of black dyed strands. Toad eyes. Bloodshot from whiskey. I can smell it as he makes room for me after Dahlia tells him my name. After I squeeze in beside him and feel breath on my ear as he puts his right, guitar strumming arm, around my shoulder.

"How you doing Jamie?" he asks me. "Where did you get that frock?"

"The frock? Oh, it’s from Topshop, nothing special."

"Topshop, you little cheapskate. Is it all you can afford?"

"Yes, Mr Schroeder, I’m only a poor South London girl."

"Are you now? That’s good. That’s very good you piece of shit. Tell me about yourself. Where do you come from Jamie? What fucking council estate spewed you out?"

"Brixton," I tell him, because I doubt he will know what a Peabody Estate is. Doubt he wants to know about my education.

"Brixton, where all the spades live. I bet you get called some names when you go out dressed like that, don’t you Jamie, you little whore?"

"Yes, Mr Schroeder, I do Mr Schroeder."

And so on until we get back to his flat an hour or so later. Dahlia pays me in the lounge as he disappears into the kitchen to get a bottle of booze. I place the money in my knee-high black spike-heeled synthetic leather boots. Then she leaves me alone and goes to wherever she goes. And he comes back in pouring Scotch into a glass and chucks a plastic dog bowl down onto the carpet and pours Scotch into that too. Then tells me to kneel on all fours and bark like a dog. A fucking dog.

He sits on a brown leather sofa, watches me crawl around and sip whiskey from a dog bowl. My frock hitched up over my arse. Pants down to my knees. Knees sore. Stomach turning from whiskey and the smell of carpet as it takes him an hour to shoot into a red neckerchief. Then he says to call a cab and pick it up on the next street. Before I go I let him see he doesn’t own me and has not humiliated me for real. I do this by the way I re-arrange my pants and dress and pick up my coat from an armchair and put it on and check my face in the mirror that hangs over a restored Victorian fireplace. And how I look in his eyes when I tell him Dahlia has my number any time he needs to call me. Oh, and thank you for the money. And I see he knows because his eyes look away. Those toad eyes. And I know it bothers him. And I know he will be back for more. Because I know these men and know they always need to stretch their fucking limits.

So the next time Dahlia calls she says to wait home until she arrives. So I dress in my flat. In my fucking Peabody flat. Straighten my hair so it falls to my shoulders. Put on light foundation because my skin’s darker with the weather hot and clear. I make my eyes black and wide. Wear navy Mui Mui bought with his money. Stuff the tits with fake resin breasts. Leave tanned legs oiled and naked. Pink stilettos. When the doorbell goes check there’s no neighbours on the landing because I usually do not dress before I get to whatever dump I’m playing in. Then skip down the stairs and out onto the street. I see Dahlia next to a blacked out 4x4. She pays me in cash before she swings the rear door and says have fun. Then walks off to wherever she goes and Mark Schroeder snuffs the brake and puts his foot down.

We drive through Croydon on the A23 to Purley, then taken the A22 out past the suburbs, into the country. By the time we stop the sun is down and we are off the main road in a car park lit by headlights. Other cars parked around the sides facing in. Mark Schroeder pulls up the hood on his sweat top and steps out onto the dirt. Opens my door and tells me to get out too. I slip out and feel my heels sink. See men opening car doors, heaving themselves into darkness. He tells me to walk with him as he steps into the middle, into the light. I have to press my toes forward to keep from losing my shoes. The men watch us come. When we are in the centre he tells me to get down. Go on you little slut, all the way down, on your paws. I do as he says. He lifts my dress over my waist. Now crawl in the dirt you little slut. Like a dog. Be a dog for your daddy.

When he’s played with me. When he’s shown the men what he can do. When he’s shot on the dirt and watched all the others do the same, as I bark like a dog, he tells me I can get in the car. It feels a long drive back and he only speaks to ask for directions when we are back in Brixton. As we turn into my street I thank him for the money. Let him know with my voice that he hasn’t done it for real. My voice personable and professional. I’m upbeat and pleased with my work. I get out of his motor and if he listens he hears my heels click as I walk away satisfied. 

A couple of weeks later, Dahlia phones and asks would I break in his shoes? Would I break in Mark Schroeder’s shoes? For a fucking living. I wore all those girl’s heels. Must be I had little feet. Mark is size seven. So fucking small. And he can’t stand new shoes. And he’s always buying shoes, something to do with not having shoes as a kid. "Just wear them in. Scuff em up a bit. You know, run around in them for a day. We’ll pay you by the hour. He buys a pair a week. You got good work for good money." So I went to work the following day. Walking around Soho in Mark Schroeder’s new shoes. Walking around Brixton, near my flat. Walking up to Brockwell Park and scuffing them in the grass. 

Those fucking shoes. I put a new pair on as we roll out of Chesterfield, last stop before Sheffield. They fit good. Easy. I place my baby blue Paul Smith brogues in the bag and let my raw selvedge classic 505 Levis slip back over my ankles with the half inch cuff showing the red stitch in the thread. Traditional jeans with traditional sneakers. Levis and Converse. Fated. Fucking fated. 

Wybourn is a council estate twenty minutes from the station. You go up behind, past Park Hill flats, work your way left and pick up the bottom of City Road. Then climb the hill and turn into the estate at Manor Oaks Road. I follow Dahlia’s instructions and come round under a hill with a row of cheap terracing. You go up the grassy slope. It’s where he played as a kid and has family he still sends money to. You go up the slope and get dirt on the Converse. I go up to the top where other kids used to come and make him go crying home to a daddy who didn’t like his sissy ways. With his little hands and little feet and his music always playing. And I’m scuffing the white rim of the soles and making sure the black canvas is mucked, when I see a bunch of kids come out from behind the houses.

Five of them with a white pitbull on a leash. With the bitch straining to run. The kid with the leash leaning back, digging heals in to keep from falling forward. Scowling and shouting at it to steady. The others with their eyes fixed on me as they come in their Reebocks and polyester JD tracksuits. I think about turning. But they come quick. Surround me, the dog yapping at my knees.

The boy holding the leash asks what’s in my bag. "Shoes," I tell him. "Shoes and a magazine." He nods to one of the others and as I feel my bag taken from behind I let it go. The dog keeps leaping off the ground, the leash jerking him back and up as he chucks his weight at me. The other boys look inside the bag and one of them pulls out the shoes. This kid, about twenty, with bad skin and cropped hair, holds them up laughing. His mate holds up Dazed.

"You’re a fucking queer aren’t you?" the boy with the dog says.

"I like fashion."

"Fucking fashion. We’re in fashion. I don’t know what you’re in."

Then they find the phone.

"Look at this," one of the others says.

"Yeah," I say. "Careful with that. Don’t fuck with it, it’s expensive and it isn’t mine."

"Let me have that," the boy with the dog says.

It flies over my head and he catches it clean. Then I approach him and he lets out the leash. The dog nips me with shark teeth that take the surface flesh. I jump back as he re-curls the leather around his hand. The others close around me. He flips the phone open. They hold me, pushing me down onto my knees and step back. That’s when I tell him the phone belongs to Mark Schroeder, a personal friend of mine.

"Mark fucking Schroeder, who the fuck’s that?" the boy with the dog asks as he clicks on the phone.

"He’s a really rich guy, a rock star."

"Oh that Mark Schroeder, who used to live round here."

"Yeah, him."

He clicks through the address book.

"Oh Yeah. Here’s his number. What are you doing with his phone?"

"He gave it to me."

"Mark Schroeder gave you a phone?"

He rings the number and jams it to his ear to listen to the reply. Tells Mark Schroeder he’s got someone here says he knows him. I can hear Mark Schroeder say something like who the fuck is it?

"A queer fucker, says he’s your friend."

The voice is lost in the breeze but the boy with the dog presses the phone harder to his ear as he hands the leash to one of the others. Then he frames me in the camera, focussing and weighing the shot. As he chooses the moment his scowl relaxes.

"Bark like a dog," he tells me as a smile splits his face. "Be a dog for your daddy."


© danny broderick

pic from here

urban colour scheme

genuine insight offered

This is a brilliant analysis by Ken Wilber of a constant misunderstanding, prevalent in modern culture, as to what spiritual enlightenment actually is. In short, it's not a return to an infantile state of pre-lapsarian, innocent one-ness, but rather a state that arises (in my opinion, spontaneously and naturally, though Ken would probably disagree, given he kind of believes in a self-determining free will that I can't see the logic of and will write a post on sometime), after we have absorbed the process of ego-ic growth and have a full experience of its depth and breadth. The quote here deals with the misconstructions of the two great proponents of modern psychoanalysis, but the thinking is widespread, from New Age bell-tinklers to secular mindfulness faddists:

"The pre/trans fallacy actually formed one of the major fault lines between two of modern psychology’s greatest founders, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, both of whom stood on opposite sides of this fallacy—Freud would reduce spiritual states to a resurrection of infantile feelings, while Jung would elevate pre-rational mythology to trans-rational glory. The pre/trans fallacy allows us to put the pieces together into a more comprehensive whole, to liberate and integrate the genuine insight offered by these two pioneers, and to detangle their brilliance from the misunderstandings that were so rampant before this developmental view finally emerged." 

Watch the video and begin reading around the subject here
Image: here

sunlight high on the buildings

"She let herself out through a heavy door onto the pavement in shadow. Late afternoon sunlight high on the buildings. White cladding. Clean glass. Bright sky above. She walked to the corner of the block and turned into a bar. Three men sat at a table by the door playing cards, little piles of coins in front of them, next to beers and small glasses of spirit. Old workers, long since unemployed. One of them looked up at her then looked back at his cards. Muttered something she didn’t fully hear. The barman nodded to her, asked if she wanted her usual wine. She said no, I want the expensive one, and sat on a stool. The barman swore but fetched a bottle from along the shelf behind him and uncorked it. He took a glass from under the counter, poured the wine and placed the glass in front of her. Then he placed the bottle on the bar and said her business better be going well."

My eBook available here

Interview on Publisher's site here

stripped-to-the-concrete

The north wing of Park Hill flats is now fully functioning with new owners/tenants in residence. The entire re-fit combines stripped-to-the-concrete minimalism inside with a new frontage picking up colour hints from the Le Corbusier block in Marseille (see pic below). Up top, huge bedroom windows look out across the north west of Sheffield to the moors beyond, with balconies at the back that catch the sunrise. No one can look in but it doesn't stop people erecting net curtains, as you can see if you look closely.

For context, go here (scroll down for Park Hill analysis), and here.

a very pretty boy

Allen introduced himself. He was talking about Walt Whitman and I mentioned I was raised near Camden, where Whitman was buried, when he leaned forward and looked at me intently. “Are you a girl?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Is that a problem?”

He just laughed. “I’m sorry. I took you for a very pretty boy.”

I got the picture immediately. “Well, does this mean I return the sandwich?”

“No, enjoy it. It was my mistake.” He told me he was writing a long elegy for Jack Kerouac, who had recently passed away. “Three days after Rimbaud’s birthday,” I said. I shook his hand and we parted company.

More: here

Pic: here

evocative as a smell

Text: here and here

english total football

nobody knows exactly

"When I looked at the cardiac arrest literature, it became clear that it's after the heart stops and blood flow into the brain ceases. There's no blood flow into the brain, no activity, about 10 seconds after the heart stops. When doctors start to do CPR, they still can't get enough blood into the brain. It remains flatlined. That's the physiology of people who've died or are receiving CPR.

Not just my study, but four others, all demonstrated the same thing: people have memories and recollections. Combined with anecdotal reports from all over the world, from people who see things accurately and remember them, it suggests this needs to be studied in more detail."

More: here

concentration and indistractability

"In traditional Theravadin Buddhism, there’s this thing called the Eightfold Path. It is the process by which we abandon the fetters, those pesky things that lead us to regular encounters with dissatisfaction in life. The last part of that, samatha, is two meditative practices: one focused on a wide awareness, the other on a singular awareness. Today, we see references to the first of those as insight, or vipassana, or satipatthana, the four foundations of mindfulness, probably the most recognized term in Western culture thanks to the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn. And for many people, things end there, without much attending to the eighth part of the path, the focusing of attention on one object to a degree of concentration and indistractability called jhana."

Podcast, videos: here

no ordinary street snaps

Story: here

where we ache to go again

Don Draper's best pitch from Mad Men. Kodak are doing their rounds, listening to what various ad agencies are offering. Don's marriage is in trouble. The guy that walks out - his has ended. The speech takes us from personal anecdote through technical detail to personal imagery and the emotional impact it has. The best line is "where we ache to go again". He means it here as an ache to go back to a time and place where we knew we were loved. Like when marriage is young and the fire still burning. But we all ache all the time for a time and place before that. Back to the primal experience of all-consuming love and nurture. This ache underlies every desire we have.

maximum quality

here

don't make me destroy you

not allowed to be original

"The students that take my class know how to write. I can hone their skills further but instead I choose to challenge them to think in new and different ways. Many of them know how to plagiarize but they always do it on the sly, hoping not to get caught. In my class, they must plagiarize or they will be penalized. They are not allowed to be original or creative. So it becomes a very different game, one in which they're forced to defend choices that they are making about what they're plagiarizing and why. And when you start to dig down, you'll find that those choices are as original and as unique as when they express themselves in more traditional types of writing, but they've never been trained to think about it in this way."

From 'Proudly Fraudulent,' an intvw with Kenneth Goldsmith here

urban-zen generation

"To ward off the nagging sense that a move to the suburbs is tantamount to becoming like one’s parents, this urban-zen generation is seeking out palatable alternatives — culturally attuned, sprawl-free New York river towns like Hastings, Dobbs Ferry, Irvington and Tarrytown — and importing the trappings of a twee lifestyle like bearded mixologists, locavore restaurants and antler-laden boutiques."

From 'Creating Hipsturbia' here

flat circle to something

“The (aluminium) bar is transported to Downey, California (from Pinjarra, Western Australia), where it is rolled flat in a rolling mill, and turned into aluminium sheets. The sheets are punched into circles and shaped into a cup by a mechanical process called drawing and ironing – this not only makes the can but also thins the aluminium. The transition from flat circle to something that resembles a can takes about a fifth of a second. The outside of the can is decorated using a base layer of utherane acrylate, then up to seven layers of colored acrylic paint and varnish that is cured using ultra violet light, and the inside of the can is painted too – with a complex chemical called a comestible polymeric coating that prevents any of the aluminium getting into the soda. So far, this vast tool chain has only produced an empty, open can with no lid.”

from here

pic from here