Posted by Alli (160.129.27.22) on February 10, 2002 at 13:05:39:
ok, so here goes nothing... probably things that ought not to be said (because they are either too obvious or too lame), have already been said, or are in the process of being said. i suppose my mind is going to make a bunch of associations now, & it's going to sound either really new or really old to whoever reads this. but i think that nothing's new or old - it's always been... we just haven't picked up on it yet in so many ways.
pancho, you asked me to "challenge" you, but it seems to me that to "challenge" you i'd have to know everything about you, which is impossible. so, yes, you're right - i mirror you & you mirror me - my response to most things until i know the situations better so i can more acurately reflect & deflect your & my own thoughts to make them more streamlined, more linear, less global in one way... but which way do i go? that's why i need context.
& sometimes i wonder who was the person who first saw a strand of hair or piece of straw & then a bird's nest & decided, quite brilliantly, after seeing these things over & over again, to weave. & then i wonder who was the person to look at the clouds over & over again, see a few natural clearings, & then imagine what that would look like on the ground where the forest was - clear the land for a road or a field. & who were the persons who "invented" metaphors, analogies, & allegories? the subconscious plays such a huge role in our thoughts - bigger than anyone would like to let on. all "brilliance" is to me: the ability to extend in a linear fashion, to extrapolate in a "new" way based on some pattern intrinsic to & shaped by ourselves & our environments, to put it in words, drawings - communicate it - before someone else does... & this communication, so essential to the survival of a whole, a society, allows for even more extrapolation, linear & global, that will be tested & perhaps disproven, but never truly proven.
what have i done all my life but put myself into other people's shoes, as best as i can manage, & try to feel what it might be like to be them? & also, i have done the same to nature - i hike & look around carefully, sit on cliffs throwing stones or watching the tree tops bristle in a breeze like my arm hair, lie down in the cool green grass full of bugs & dirt to gaze at the sky at all sorts of hours, watch, absorb, reflect, & then become these things to whatever extent that i may. i make associations, you make associations - everyone does it, differently & similarly. then we patent an "original" thought, give ourselves prizes, & continue to try to say something "new."
note to pancho: necromancer or neck romancer?