An Expression of our Shared Knowledge

" But I don`t believe in hope without endeavour.``

**this is not an entry which necessarily makes sense**

.` 

 I realized I want to be an Expression of Shared Knowledge.

Is that possible?

No.

But I am pumped to try.

"The process of seeking equilibrium is what makes our life and society possible."

John Raulston Saul

"Why do we have trouble embracing our own genius? Our own Humanism? ...We would rather the illusion of certainty."

I am so optimistic.

And I am wary that people often think me happy because I am ignorant.

Or because I do not care to think of the unpleasantries.

but often, what others find unpleasant I do not

and what I know is hard or uncomfortable is a learning experience

because nothing is non momentous about life

nothing that does not move.
To me, nothing is meaningless.

My happiness would ebb less, were that the case.
And in being happy, I am not inert. I am in want of betterment.

"Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor. " ~Dr. Alexis Carrel

Grow some moss

Were I a statue of contentedness.

I want to cultivate gardens before I grow moss.
I do not want to be inert. I don't believe in meaninglessness. Not moving. Not influencing.

I think one of the most meaningful decisions you can make is to try to not move. Not influence. Not claim your ability to respond. yOur responsibilities.

But, if everything is meaningfilled... And I don't believe it possible to fathom the complexities of life...

Should I be paralyzed because I do not understand? Even if I am in want of doing what my gut seems to know I need to do?

Should I get lost in the 'wilderness of opinion' (Wapola Sri Rahula "What the Buddha taught")

for fear of moving

and the perpetual consequences

What is the role of an actor in the world?

In society?
To ourselves?

``What passes for common sense becomes a panicked, determined obsessiveness. Anyone who looks up or around is marketed as irresponsible or a romantic... There is no need to treat common sense as a parody of itself. Better to embrace its natural complexity"

Saul speaks of not thinking of knowing in the same way we think of understanding.

 

(Plan: Bee was a great example of life as a social being. Collaborative. Messy. Not understanding what would happen but knowing that I trusted in it and the process itself. So complex, so many contributions and opinions so hard to manage so easy to appreciate and so joyous in its execution. The most natural acting of my life in many ways)

The role of an actor:

Someone who acts in the world.

As an actor, cares about the opinions and lives and accumulated actions of others.

Who plays with those on stage to create a plot

And knows what they care about themselves first?

If I think I see the scaffold, should I measure it out and hire some builders?
Boss people around?

Goodness, that is not me.
I fear being manipulated or mislead so much, that I would hate to ever mislead someone away from what they might truly want for themselves
And I work the least when I am told what to do precisely
and feel my agency is encroached upon wholly
and best with a messy scaffold wherein I can create.
I am not a boss.
Good gracious.
Whenever I have been called a leader? It is only because I often can recognize how and where other people are leading


often subtly and beautifully
and believing them to be better at a task than I might be
I do not trust myself as a grand director,
I take my direction from all directions
but I do trust myself as an appreciator
and am a great appreciator of novelty, and the unique and am perpetually amazed by how unmundane all things are. And by the glory of every single person and thing.
If anything, I want people to reframe people as actors. Redefine definitions.

"A definition is intended to clarify things, to free us for action... a definition can just as easily become a means of control, a profoundly reactionary force, a crutch for certainty and ideology."

People have painted themselves into little boxes, and denied themselves to their neighbours and vice versa. With fears of skeletons in their closets, they are too ashamed to call the exterminators.
I wish people understood themselves as social capitol. As meaningful actors on the grand stages of life.
armed specifically and beautifully to execute their delicious paths of action

But (now that I have digressed, again) :

Do I mind my flighty mind?

Could I wholly mind my flighty mind?
Only when it keeps me from acting. Or thwarts my attempts to be responsible and conscientious.
Or hurts those around me with my negligence
But the struggle itself keeps me on my toes

My creative and curious parts?

I cannot anymore, because they are my greatest gift

Do I mind my happiness?
Sometimes, I fear it makes me insensitive--to others and to my own self.
I worry I am unfeeling because I feel so content
but it is a blessing always
(in fact, I feel quite like an arse when I complain about my happiness)


 So why mute myself?


The messiness and my blurring of lines?

My optimism?
My romanticism?
This is how I see.

This is my arsenal of knowledge.
My acting style
My personal Reality
I combine me with what I think everyone might want
for the world
and what might be best for all
Who and what is on the stage

and then act.
I gave up my life to become who I am today. Was it worth it?

Certainly.

How could I mourn my own existence if I know it a blessing?
Because there have been times when I have mourned life
And thought better of it.
 

"“I know not how I may seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with”

Do I enjoy being distracted by things in the same manner as Plato?

Should I paint a blurry canvas and let the lovely things come out? In the same colours as my grandest dreams?

Borrow from the knowledge which surrounds me? Be distracted by that which draws me in to learn from it?

Goodness yes.

``The Curious thing is that no one can name a single manager or administrator of the Renaissance. Yet there were lots of them... Yet we can all name Picasso. And  not because the artists are celebrities. In general they are far less in the public eye than a well-paid CEO.
...It seems that memory does work. It retains what is central and filters our what is tertiary or marginal. Leonardo (da Vinci) remains because he is an expression of our shared knowledge. The manager does not. He has a role but remains marginal to society`s sense of itself, even to the manager`s own sense of himself...``

you cannot deny your calling

if you know, you know

I never want to feel like a manager.

I often think of this Henry Ford quote, when I think of all things leaderly:
"The question, 'Who ought to be boss?' is like asking, 'Who ought to be the tenor in the quartet?' Obviously, the man who can sing tenor."
I have been okay with lending direction, with 'leading' or bossing
because I don't erase myself or other people in doing it
I suppose, that means I am okay it it
even if I am uncomfortable with it as a prospect.
But, as I said earlier: Discomfort is the best sign of learning.

And I am terrified of Ideology

and fear feeling as though I know, as though I am done looking.
As though I am grown up.

“Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.”-Kahil Gibran

I want to be an expression of shared identity, shared knowledge

I don`t mean that I want to be remembered, or da Vinci for that matter

I want to help be

that blur which makes us us

I want to help popularize common sense.
``If understanding is impossible, than knowing is imperative``(Primo Levi)

and be cozy in not understanding

But in want of knowing

and allowing myself to know the things I do know.

Bring my private voice to the public sphere.

`What I am suggesting is the essentially non-linear nature of common sense. You might say that it is the witness of society`s existence.`

To know I am not hiding. At let others know they need not hide

or fear being seen

“Be content to seem what you really are”
Marcus Aurelius

I think the greatest sin of them all, is to try to hide.
For in hiding what you think is your worst you will often hide your best
and if your worst remains in hiding
then you cannot make the best of it
and if you only think you hide it
and it is obvious to all those around you
you are a fool.
who will never feel comforted in knowing they are truly known.

An amorous hedonist

wary of formalizing and yet always craving structure and sense

cheezy often

user of semiotics

analogy

legend

fable

therefore a mutt of pasts and presents and all neighbours of her existence

furiously borrowing from everyone around her and everything around her

trying to cite her sources

wary of her own untruths

and curious about yours
all collects as many blurred lines as possible
to try to reassemble The Grand Mosaic

who outsources to be sure
"Is this what it looks like?"

but will never hide her opinion

and cannot tell you where the voice inside her comes from except to say 

"me"

and you and you and you

 and you and you and you

A person who seeks personal serenity

By helping people be better people

by being themselves

by making this a better place.

Not inert.

Not understanding

Not paralyzed

No expert

But knowing she wants better.

and that she loves it.
And those around her.
And the place she is lucky enough to call home
Her grounds for exploration and limits and boundlessness

perpetual serendipity and symmetry

That doesn't sound bad to me at all.

But, if it sounds bad to yee I would love to know.
'Cause I need you to be better and build better.
Humans are social creatures.
And beautiful ones at that.

Plan: Bee

Once, a man named Brian Riley got some friends together

because he wanted to make something beautiful

    

Then we got together and started thinkin' a lil about what could beeeeee

We agreed it should be a process, an experience involving the audience

Mind, Heart and Body

Lecture, Song & Dace

And that it should be about bees.

And their everyday magic.

And how that relates to the Human experience.

Then we took over The Bus Stop Theatre, c/o Clare & Keelin

(who's kindness and creativity shall never be forgotten)

and covered it in glitter glue.

Then we prepared to arm our audience with Kazoos, fluff balls (pollen) and wings, drum beats and tonnes of honey

 

And we didn't know really what we were doing but we just did it!

We got to see it all for the first time with the audience. which culminated in singing "Don't Worry Bee Happy" and a giant dance party/drum circle.

One of the most magical and memorable experiences of my life.

 

It is lovely when all things just come together.

Photos care of Corizon Richardson and Eli Gordon

Plan Be

 

 Sweet illustrious New Year

I am absurdly privileged.

I am excited to do right by the world

And I have a good feeling

About this one

"
Get this in mind early: We never grow up.
"
 

Some call the way the world works

"The Goldilocks Paradigm."

Not too hot, not too cold. Just right.

Not too big, not too small. Just right.

A precise balance
(I think this ignores that she did steal porridge
but at least she knew what she wanted, I suppose)

"
Avoid problems, and you'll never be the one who overcame them.
"

Sometimes I gravitate towards goodness 

and live in its extremes
So I seek problems so I might solve them
My pathology and my disposition encourage such a thing.
I seek to balance it all out

I love arguments and hearing I am wrong the morbidly beautiful, mortality, the ugly, the gross
the surly, because these are the ways I can feel my growing and know that I am knowing

Somewhat similarly in love,

I don't like fellas too hot

(so that I might imagine them deluded about who I am)

so I seek a caring coldness
Because I think it a better teacher

But really, I do want to live a lovely balance

Because otherwise I cannot give all I can give

And I cannot feel my rhythms which animate me
Cannot be properly called out
and called on my shenanigans
It is no good making out the problems others have with you as their problems
even if they are?
everyone's reality is of consequence


"
Allow the world to live as it chooses, and allow yourself to live as you choose.
"

I feel (and perhaps sometimes I pretend) everything is a mirror, and inherently a part of myself

But sometimes I forget to check for who I am
and recognize my own choices

In the Circle Game

I want to break

these bones, your prisoning rhythms

            (winter,

            summer)

all the glass cases,

erase all maps,

crack the protecting

eggshell of your turning

singing children:

I want the circle

broken.

Methinks, we all tell ourselves stories of our lives

because we all see things differently, and it is hard to deny everyone's reality is of consequence

Certainly to themselves. and if they are actors in the world then they are of consequence to us all

but it is all our own fiction we are telling ourselves and the world

and sometimes we forget to own our own fiction

That we are our writers

(Who do I want to be? Ultimately, how would I desire to be? Did that just happen?)

and for a wee while there not only did I not own my own fiction

I did not see the difference between me and the mirror

felt trapped, that something wrote me

rather than honoring my ability to respond

and did not even like the story I was telling myself








 "
Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you're alive, it isn't.
"

It is a beautiful freeing thing

when you remember to choose life.

Right now I am obsessed with Bees.

 

It is so so interesting that the creatures only have one method of defense

and it rips their guts out

so they are not in any way defending themselves, 

they are defending the hive.

When I was a kid I always used bees dancing as proof of the divine.

I have been thinking
About being a conduit
About what it means to feel the divine
and yourself
and other people
always.
And how to best do it without being known as crazy
and without stopping hearing the wind
or negating the value of my dreams


(Polar Dip 2011)


And how to write a story
that is the best story
The one I have inside me
a balanced story
sensible enough that
the moral might be easily applied and internalized for those who read it
and I might still be bettered for it
and feel blessed and satisfied in watching its ripples
and all facets of what might be
from who I have been

And still telling whole truth.
that I might tell
.

My first dream of the New Year that I can remember is
sailing with David Crosby

by little islands
outside of Venezeula
"Sometimes the music is strong enough... it pulls out of us a better self" -David Crosby

I feel so free.
So aware of illusions
and happy for their existence
and their meaningful meaninglessness



"
I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth it?

"


Abosolutely.

 I am going to go see the river man.