This is pointing us to a hard truth that we might otherwise seek to avoid. But what is growing and possibly failing at the same time all around us may not leave any other option than to face it. We will have to go through it, even if some of us don't make it very far, let alone to the "other side". What I keep coming back to is the need to live on the other side of it now. Or to begin to fathom what that might possibly mean. Most of us aren't very good at suffering. An art that was still largely intact within living memory, like you say of your Grandmother, but which we have falsely imagined was in the past. In becoming students of it, we might learn to be more fully human again, that is if it doesn't break us first.
This brought to mind many associations, including a quote I once read in a Swiss transportation museum to the effect that, with the arrival of the railway, we entered the age of restlessness. I saw it some years ago, before I was as conscious (as I am now) of the speeding up of time through technology and how we live. Back then, it struck me as a revelation: there was a time when people were not restless, when they were not already thinking of their next four steps ahead.
I am not nostalgic for the old days, but I am for slow times, for spacious gaps and silences in the flow of time.
It seems like there's something in the nature of technology that is opposed to those silences. I don't know, maybe it's a matter of whether we master it or it masters us.
I think possibility and freedom are there; but sometimes technology freed too. I feel that it's not the same sort of freedom; but would have to think more to untwine that properly.
“Perhaps we can sing a spiral song with the world awhile.”
Beautiful
I’ve just returned from contemplating the glaciers in Southern New Zealand where I now live, remembering the one winter when we carried our youngest children above snow choked Yorkshire limestone walled lanes.
Seeing the glaciers disappear it came to me that ‘glacial’ once meant slow. If Slow is fast, then certainty time is losing its grip, as the seracs collapse.
As always, an excellent piece, and personally resonant, as my nan, born a farm servant in Aberdeenshire, told us what I suspect were similarly harsh stories to those of your grandmother.
Time is a gyre, a spiral. For the best written evocation of this, good enough to go alongside the spiral carvings found all over our islands, read Ursula LeGuin's 'Always Coming Home'. The book, full of stories, songs, drawings, myths, 'artefacts' and more, tells of the people who know how to stay alive, and of the gyre of time. I gather and eat acorns each year, and first followed the method laid down in that astounding, instructive 'fiction' book.
Oh, and there already is a movement, I have glimpsed it with peripheral vision, the corner of the eye. Most of you reading this may already be part of it. But it is the non-doing of a movement, and requires no force nor leadership. Chuang Tzu left clear instructions in his muddy jokes. If it were a fabric, it would be nettle and hemp, a weft of practicality and a warp of conviviality, a cloth with a lot of 'give' in it.
A cheery wave from the cliff-top sweet chestnuts of Dorset, whose October-preserved fruits I ate last night with my T'ai Chi master.
I am preoccupied with what time represents at the moment (especially on which timescale to settle on as meaningful). My days allow this, being rarely delineated by external obligation. It's nice to notice that the birds will generally tell me where we are in the cycle, each day.
This is a fascinating piece! I have been thinking about spirals lately, and ancient cultures. Also in my family we have started a tradition where each person makes an original painting early in the New Year. I am the last person to get to mine, but I know I want it to be inspired by ancient art. I have a collection of images including spiral art and pottery from Mesopotamia (a recent interest, hehe). Thank you for the reminder that spirals are associated with Hild, who I also love.
The essayists I read are on fire lately, with so many beautiful meditations that are challenging me in complex and interesting ways.
I didn't really touch on it because I'm no kind of expert but spirals do seem to turn up in ancient art everywhere: across different continents. Maybe it's just because they're a simple geometric shape, but it is suggestive anyway.
I don’t know you and you don’t know me. But your words make me well up. It’s actually give. Me something to hold on to. I was chopping wood with my brother yesterday. It doesn’t make sense to so many people, and sometimes not to me either. But now it makes sense. Thank you.
Br. F- I am trying to expand my substack podcast. My intention is to make it more of a true dialogue than as an interview. I am still working out the technical details so none of this imminent. But if you're interested in have a conversation at some point let me know. We can then work out a rough timeframe.
Thanks. Yes, hopeless death, or devotion. It is actually surprising what actually lives on, perhaps some living time, if we get the feel from it and at times ask our creature world.
btw Jeremy Naydler In The Shadow of the Machine: The Prehistory of the Computer and the Evolution of Consciousness https://www.goodreads.com/en book/show/42289015
I have written a review of the book if I can get round to making it available. It is quite some loom we are tending now.
So much to think about. I grew up in rural Australia. My parents told me in my childhood that the seasons were changing, had changed, since they were young. Every year it seems, Summer is later to arrive. Is the mundane nature is industrialisation and it’s timeline, flattening them out too?
This is pointing us to a hard truth that we might otherwise seek to avoid. But what is growing and possibly failing at the same time all around us may not leave any other option than to face it. We will have to go through it, even if some of us don't make it very far, let alone to the "other side". What I keep coming back to is the need to live on the other side of it now. Or to begin to fathom what that might possibly mean. Most of us aren't very good at suffering. An art that was still largely intact within living memory, like you say of your Grandmother, but which we have falsely imagined was in the past. In becoming students of it, we might learn to be more fully human again, that is if it doesn't break us first.
This brought to mind many associations, including a quote I once read in a Swiss transportation museum to the effect that, with the arrival of the railway, we entered the age of restlessness. I saw it some years ago, before I was as conscious (as I am now) of the speeding up of time through technology and how we live. Back then, it struck me as a revelation: there was a time when people were not restless, when they were not already thinking of their next four steps ahead.
I am not nostalgic for the old days, but I am for slow times, for spacious gaps and silences in the flow of time.
It seems like there's something in the nature of technology that is opposed to those silences. I don't know, maybe it's a matter of whether we master it or it masters us.
It's opposed because, I think, possibility and freedom are inherent in those silences.
I think possibility and freedom are there; but sometimes technology freed too. I feel that it's not the same sort of freedom; but would have to think more to untwine that properly.
"like a skyfull of rooks taking to a tree..." you've got some powerful stuff in here, but that one hit me hard. beautiful work. thanks for this.
i know we're not starting a movement or anything, but if we were, i'd sign up.
“Perhaps we can sing a spiral song with the world awhile.”
Beautiful
I’ve just returned from contemplating the glaciers in Southern New Zealand where I now live, remembering the one winter when we carried our youngest children above snow choked Yorkshire limestone walled lanes.
Seeing the glaciers disappear it came to me that ‘glacial’ once meant slow. If Slow is fast, then certainty time is losing its grip, as the seracs collapse.
Kindness
Yes
Thank you
A more apocalyptic image than my strangely green fields!
It was unnerving
I stood for a long time watching the water pour away, their life
The seracs close to the summit of Mt Cook suggested that it will not be long before it loses its snowy mantle
As always, an excellent piece, and personally resonant, as my nan, born a farm servant in Aberdeenshire, told us what I suspect were similarly harsh stories to those of your grandmother.
Time is a gyre, a spiral. For the best written evocation of this, good enough to go alongside the spiral carvings found all over our islands, read Ursula LeGuin's 'Always Coming Home'. The book, full of stories, songs, drawings, myths, 'artefacts' and more, tells of the people who know how to stay alive, and of the gyre of time. I gather and eat acorns each year, and first followed the method laid down in that astounding, instructive 'fiction' book.
Oh, and there already is a movement, I have glimpsed it with peripheral vision, the corner of the eye. Most of you reading this may already be part of it. But it is the non-doing of a movement, and requires no force nor leadership. Chuang Tzu left clear instructions in his muddy jokes. If it were a fabric, it would be nettle and hemp, a weft of practicality and a warp of conviviality, a cloth with a lot of 'give' in it.
A cheery wave from the cliff-top sweet chestnuts of Dorset, whose October-preserved fruits I ate last night with my T'ai Chi master.
Lovely, lovely writing, as always - thank you.
I am preoccupied with what time represents at the moment (especially on which timescale to settle on as meaningful). My days allow this, being rarely delineated by external obligation. It's nice to notice that the birds will generally tell me where we are in the cycle, each day.
That's a nice point: even if migratory patterns are shifting, we haven't budged the day/night cycle of birds even a smidge!
This is a fascinating piece! I have been thinking about spirals lately, and ancient cultures. Also in my family we have started a tradition where each person makes an original painting early in the New Year. I am the last person to get to mine, but I know I want it to be inspired by ancient art. I have a collection of images including spiral art and pottery from Mesopotamia (a recent interest, hehe). Thank you for the reminder that spirals are associated with Hild, who I also love.
The essayists I read are on fire lately, with so many beautiful meditations that are challenging me in complex and interesting ways.
I didn't really touch on it because I'm no kind of expert but spirals do seem to turn up in ancient art everywhere: across different continents. Maybe it's just because they're a simple geometric shape, but it is suggestive anyway.
This is a stunning piece. It's going to give me a lot to think about over the coming days and I'm so glad I read it.
You have written a powerful article with significant descriptions of “humans in time” to think about.
I don’t know you and you don’t know me. But your words make me well up. It’s actually give. Me something to hold on to. I was chopping wood with my brother yesterday. It doesn’t make sense to so many people, and sometimes not to me either. But now it makes sense. Thank you.
Thank you!
Br. F- I am trying to expand my substack podcast. My intention is to make it more of a true dialogue than as an interview. I am still working out the technical details so none of this imminent. But if you're interested in have a conversation at some point let me know. We can then work out a rough timeframe.
I hope you are well. -Jack
Emailed you!
I created a little piece of art in part inspired by your words, and other things. Thanks again!
https://torthuiljourney.blogspot.com/2023/02/art-of-23.html
Oh wow! It reminds me of the cup and ring markings, which were at the back of my mind when writing too.
A stunningly insightful piece. Thank you.
Thanks. Yes, hopeless death, or devotion. It is actually surprising what actually lives on, perhaps some living time, if we get the feel from it and at times ask our creature world.
btw Jeremy Naydler In The Shadow of the Machine: The Prehistory of the Computer and the Evolution of Consciousness https://www.goodreads.com/en book/show/42289015
I have written a review of the book if I can get round to making it available. It is quite some loom we are tending now.
So much to think about. I grew up in rural Australia. My parents told me in my childhood that the seasons were changing, had changed, since they were young. Every year it seems, Summer is later to arrive. Is the mundane nature is industrialisation and it’s timeline, flattening them out too?