My first journal was predominantly how focused. Watching the presentations from our IMA Resident Dream Team provided me with some much needed clarification. Since then, I’ve increasingly focused on settling into my body and listening for what arises by sensing the space around my qualitative lighthouse. And today that means giving myself the space to not to make sense and just clear out what’s in my head.

The language of seeing:

see/ regard/ notice/ respect/ consider/ observe/ read/ scan/ view/ witness/ attend/ relate/ value/ contemplate/ remark/ watch/ behold /mind /care/ honor/ appreciate/ address/ connect/ identify/ acknowledge / recognize/ mind/ meet/ touch/ take-in/ validate/ remember/ share/ reflect/ invite/ accept

The language of not seeing:

miss/ forget/ ignore/ disregard/ confuse/ disbelieve/ scorn/ disrespect/ oppose/ dishonor/ misinterpret/ disadvantage/ distance/ assume/ devalue/ invalidate/ mistake / indifference/ determine/ discard/ decide/ misunderstand/ hate/ damage/ bypass/ overlook/ see-through/ walk-over/ handle/ dispute/ mock/ condescend/ patronize / partial/ suspect/ reject/ object/ expect/ project/ deflect/ presume

The language of uncertain:

ambiguous, wonder, transformation, fluid, anxiety, indecision puzzle, quandary, disquiet, dilemma, reserve, mistrust, confusion, irresolution, curiosity, mystification, bewilderment, conjecture, constrained, dubiety, guesswork, insecurity, contingency, change, edge, possible, unknown, movement, alive, unexpected, spontaneous, verb, mercurial, tottery, unpredictable, vacillating, fluctuating, sensitive, reactive, borderline, volatile, mutable, knotty, tangled, labyrinthine, impermanent, precarious, shaky, relationship, ambiguous, fluctuating, pending, mobile, variable, turbulent, fragile, conditional, complex, provisional, adaptive, sketchy, elusive, vague, nebulous, imprecise, restricted, generalized, inexplicable, loose, learning, shadowed, unsettled, problematic, flawed, unintelligible, enigmatic, indirect, dark, obfuscated, shady, covered, imaginary, dreamy, visionary, colorable, purported, outward, professed, ideal, incredible, implausible, rare, unlikely, weak, thin, strange, fantastic, collaboration, intimacy, freedom, space, perspective, play, process, metaphor, representation, touchable, unspoken, approximation, being, ultimate, incomplete, partial, uneven, off-center, flow,  vulnerable, fuzzy, innocent, relatable, relative, qualified…

The language of certain:

assurance, truth, positive, clarity, death, composure, predictability, stagnation, defined, final, boundary, planned, known, impossible, fixed, established, guaranteed, decided, determined, settled, specific, particular, individual, evident, infallible, conclusive, predestined, unmistakeable, known, plain, safe, literal, doubtless, firm, noun, attached, habit, stable, unquestioning, resolved, expecting, conclude, sum, sheer, limitless, finished, total, whole, measured, planned, ended, automated, finalized, perfect, steady, glued, unconditional, impenetrable, ideal, absolute, independent, complete, categorical, exact, separation, destination, decision, labeled, expressed, verbalized, articulated, claimed, light, transparent, obvious, open, sure…

***Crossovers***

paradox, bisociation, neti-neti, interface, balance, transformation, nexus, reticulate, dialectic, reflection, system, impermanence, practice, adaptation, image, feeling, matrix, interlocutor, genesis, wabi-sabi, art, mesh, interlace, ligament, junction, seam, crossover, trace, residue, balancing, borderline 

Contemplations:

Contemplating shunyata in the context of identity and community, I’m inclined to use Thich Nhat Hanh’s terms. Coexistence. Interbeing. Coexistence in action: the way live theatre expresses impermanence, collaboration, immediacy, and compounding creativity. Interbeing in action combining identity and community in interactivity, complex adaptive systems, Yoga etc.. 

Contemplating noetic and autonoetic consciousness – imagining an improv scene built around a Rorschach Inkblot with ritualized chanting. 

Contemplating language, imaging words as soundless objects, drained of all emotion and nuance, exchanged in mindless transactions as interchangeable parts…moving down an assembly line to be constructed into exacting models of easily consumed empty sentences. 

Contemplating sensation I imagine how it would be to end a day with only the intelligence of palpation to guide me. I see my eyes, ears, nose, mouth melt away  – my whole head dissolves, and my mind and all my sense receptors infuse the the exposed surfaces of my skin, concentrating at my fingertips and the soles of my feet. I move, rediscover my apartment. Varied fabrics resonate in my body – halting and unintelligible at first, then with symphonic clarity – the all encompassing cognizance of weightlessness in water. Texture has a friendly language- it dialogues with subtle internal sensations  – my pulse, my heart beating, blood circulating –  small shifts in air temperature feel vivid and seamlessly linked to the music of every other sensation. Running my fingers through the softness of my dog’s fur, I am embodied affection.