Thank you for this beautiful and provoking piece, that was one of the highlights of today. It just came after a 'how are you?' opened up a whole conversation with a colleague. I wonder if it is not the quality of the attention, as much as the question itself, that brings forth a meaningful exchange.
David Whyte has become a perennial reference in so many of my conversations. In his recent podcatst with Joe Monk from Coaches Rising, https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/coaches-rising/id1144203613?i=1000659495629&r=202 he shared that “surprise is one of the great diagnostics of real conversation. When you lose surprise, you lose the essence of the conversation. And that's one of the great difficulties in long-term relationship, romantic or collegiate is losing the element of surprise. You're under the illusion that the other person can't surprise you and they're under the illusion that they can't surprise themselves. And it's because we've lost this edge. And to my mind, the surprise occurs out of this disappearance, out of treating conversation as an art form and out of the loss of silence as an arbiter of the increasing depth of the exchange. So it's very hard to have surprise in your conversational abilities or your conversational affect or your conversational invitation, unless you have a relationship with silence. Because it's in that silence that your attentive powers will spontaneously alight on the next stepping stone across the river you're trying to cross or the next level in the depth to which you're wishing to go if you want to change the metaphor.”
Your work and his have been most inspiring and suprising. With sincere appreciation
I've noticed interesting cultural differences. In England the typical responses to "how are you?" were, "not bad" or "yeah, okay, I guess" or "can't complain". In America I often heard, "I'm good". Here in the land of the pure it's usually "shukar alhumdulillah" ("well, praise God).
Does anyone still ask, "where are you from?" Do you think the question changes depending on the gender of the two people?
Not sure about the world question. If a white person asked me that I'd think they were half mad.
Best thing? A tie between having a zinger burger and reading parts of a brill. book, Formation of the Self.
I've been told, by Europeans, that they are much more often engaged in conversation by strangers on American street corners, particularly in our major cities, in ways that never happen at home. Granted, Americans will say "Hello" to strangers in small towns, but not in the cities. But random conversation with strangers is one of the principle virtues of American cities, and tends to go quickly into more depth than rural encounters with Hello-sayers. Then again, that depth is partially warranted by the high likelihood the chance meeting was a one-off; the small town encounter may be more surface-friendly and depth-guarded because of the likelihood you will keep seeing each other around.
Take a social open species, school it, put it to work, don’t ask questions.
The most unique and caring species ever to exist in jungle, meadow, river or beach, set against itself with stories of fear, trauma of abandonment for the corporate idea, only capable to communicate through hand shake, dog, child or frailty, the long list of conspiracy that has every right to its conspiracies and stops anything that signals the dance, the jiggling leg of nerves, the tapping fingers of impatience, the fluttering eyelids or rolling eyes, all signals of dance, not plunge, the collective stress of nerves, so tightly bound, the only method is the rocket class human in the wheeled or fuelled escape of never having enough.
The concept of course is ‘freedom’ the very idea of mental escape, mind over matter, indoctrination of success in individualism and not fitting in.
Fittedness becomes after the emergency when all of a matrix bond is lost, we have no attachment of the petty judgement, we look for authenticity, a reliable personality, not the actor, the conveyor of promises, the friendly bank clerk or the school principal who pretends to conduct the feral kindnesses using force, separation, long divisions and straight rows as if we are a crop against the pattern of chaos and life in expression.
Squares on a sphere, don’t fit, can’t dance and are boxed in for a square planet, unable to awake from the calendar to every signal of how to live in all the constraints every child questions, “why do we have to go?” “Why do I have to go”, which every undergirth means of a buried truth, “why don’t you love me?”
The machinery is old, it still doesn’t mean it’s right of habit to invent the words of nature.
It is what it isn’t, the competition of escapement, the linear envelope of a past flat earth, always seeking new levels, always looking for more layers, continually talking of new flat dimensions, unable to think in spheres, in the great laboratory experiment of dead and frozen stuff, searching forever in particle form because some dude invented the starting point to measure from in a world of no measures.
From 1 to hungry, how hungry are you, is it mostly, almost or very?
The particle is arbitrary, but it did some thorny work without the noise of the jungle, the one silenced by the song of machines, our comfort of their friendship inside the coffin with plastic roses, built of a tree we have never seen, yet plundered.
We instruct the young to tread lightly and leave no trace, what happened, convention insists we leave evidence of destruction, larger than the sum of living parts.
The poet has only the garden left, that too will be rendered of the stupid tourist, pretending to care of why.
Objective rights v subjective analysis, the world of double binds, the endless bipolarity, the endless, because it’s good for you, removal.
Dance before the next handshake, it may improve the chances, this is the book, the internet of things, the library that talks to the book next to it, the straight jacket beginning to loosen, the faded picture of evangelical madness, the border guard in his apartment of terror, the prostitutes sacrifice, the London fog, the audacious to be best in the world at being antisocial, judgement before understanding, fitted before tailored, demanded before realized, the entrepreneurial discovery, be fore the conscious realization in stealing another’s time and life, for our ‘me first’ genius, even the continued Neoliberal genetic supremacy as if the gene were a mechanical fix, not a blind fudge to the billion alien invented and catastrophic influences upon us.
These words blew my mind! Very psychoactive and clear - a beckoning shout of "emperor with no close" whispered in the tiny covered corner of internet threads
do you feel uncomfortable asking these questions ? i always felt it put people at ease and they would open up about their lives,moods etc.
when my son was a senior in high school he made a curious comment to his friend. "Ken knows everyone in the neighborhood and thinks everyone is his friend,"
That's a fab question, and it puts me in mind of a short video by Leah Manaema, which I've returned to over and over again, in which she talks (among other things) about how indigenous people greet one another: using what might be called coordinates of belonging ("where did you grow up", "who were your parents, your ancestors...", "what formed you as a person") and coordinates of longing ("what do you yearn for", "what drives you"). Here's the video:
The best thing that's happened to me today was to receive several long, conversational replies to emails and online comments, which have fired up my brain, made me feel seen, prompted further thoughts and conversations. Though this wasn't entirely positive as, if I'm honest, those conversations arose from my procrastinating, avoiding what I feel _ought to have been_ my world today, which is writing a serious chunk of text for a roleplaying game supplement which I promised my Kickstarter backers would be delivered by the end of this month.
Oh, but my morning walk with the dog, across the high moors of the North Pennines? That was pretty sweet as well. Nature, reality, that's ultimately my world.
My world, known to my wife as my obsession, is a model of reality that is based on ancient knowledge restated in modern concepts along with several ideas that had no home before. The Akashic field and the Mind combined with the concept of Levels leaves most readers interested but not believers. The framework of Cybernetics allows a monistic approach but sheds more readers immediately.
My World remains in my Mind and yet I continue to ponder Reality for all.
The Best happening today was my wife and my doctor agreed and when translated into a language I could understand seemed to make sense to them. However, I could not resist on summarising my own opinion. "The numbers from the tests are all better but I still feel like a short walk is beyond me. Why do I have to take 7 types of pills two of which have the opposite effect." My expectation level is lowered.
Dear Jonathan,
Thank you for this beautiful and provoking piece, that was one of the highlights of today. It just came after a 'how are you?' opened up a whole conversation with a colleague. I wonder if it is not the quality of the attention, as much as the question itself, that brings forth a meaningful exchange.
David Whyte has become a perennial reference in so many of my conversations. In his recent podcatst with Joe Monk from Coaches Rising, https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/coaches-rising/id1144203613?i=1000659495629&r=202 he shared that “surprise is one of the great diagnostics of real conversation. When you lose surprise, you lose the essence of the conversation. And that's one of the great difficulties in long-term relationship, romantic or collegiate is losing the element of surprise. You're under the illusion that the other person can't surprise you and they're under the illusion that they can't surprise themselves. And it's because we've lost this edge. And to my mind, the surprise occurs out of this disappearance, out of treating conversation as an art form and out of the loss of silence as an arbiter of the increasing depth of the exchange. So it's very hard to have surprise in your conversational abilities or your conversational affect or your conversational invitation, unless you have a relationship with silence. Because it's in that silence that your attentive powers will spontaneously alight on the next stepping stone across the river you're trying to cross or the next level in the depth to which you're wishing to go if you want to change the metaphor.”
Your work and his have been most inspiring and suprising. With sincere appreciation
Jonas
Very interesting post Jonathan!
I've noticed interesting cultural differences. In England the typical responses to "how are you?" were, "not bad" or "yeah, okay, I guess" or "can't complain". In America I often heard, "I'm good". Here in the land of the pure it's usually "shukar alhumdulillah" ("well, praise God).
Does anyone still ask, "where are you from?" Do you think the question changes depending on the gender of the two people?
Not sure about the world question. If a white person asked me that I'd think they were half mad.
Best thing? A tie between having a zinger burger and reading parts of a brill. book, Formation of the Self.
Thinking about this some more....two people have said to me on our first meeting, "what's your story?" Both northerners, incidentally.
Your world questions sounds (to me) too much like: "which world are you living in?!" And that sounds more like something my wife would say to me!
Also, it's slightly disconcerting if you sense the other person *really* wants to know how you are or what you do.
I've been told, by Europeans, that they are much more often engaged in conversation by strangers on American street corners, particularly in our major cities, in ways that never happen at home. Granted, Americans will say "Hello" to strangers in small towns, but not in the cities. But random conversation with strangers is one of the principle virtues of American cities, and tends to go quickly into more depth than rural encounters with Hello-sayers. Then again, that depth is partially warranted by the high likelihood the chance meeting was a one-off; the small town encounter may be more surface-friendly and depth-guarded because of the likelihood you will keep seeing each other around.
Take a social open species, school it, put it to work, don’t ask questions.
The most unique and caring species ever to exist in jungle, meadow, river or beach, set against itself with stories of fear, trauma of abandonment for the corporate idea, only capable to communicate through hand shake, dog, child or frailty, the long list of conspiracy that has every right to its conspiracies and stops anything that signals the dance, the jiggling leg of nerves, the tapping fingers of impatience, the fluttering eyelids or rolling eyes, all signals of dance, not plunge, the collective stress of nerves, so tightly bound, the only method is the rocket class human in the wheeled or fuelled escape of never having enough.
The concept of course is ‘freedom’ the very idea of mental escape, mind over matter, indoctrination of success in individualism and not fitting in.
Fittedness becomes after the emergency when all of a matrix bond is lost, we have no attachment of the petty judgement, we look for authenticity, a reliable personality, not the actor, the conveyor of promises, the friendly bank clerk or the school principal who pretends to conduct the feral kindnesses using force, separation, long divisions and straight rows as if we are a crop against the pattern of chaos and life in expression.
Squares on a sphere, don’t fit, can’t dance and are boxed in for a square planet, unable to awake from the calendar to every signal of how to live in all the constraints every child questions, “why do we have to go?” “Why do I have to go”, which every undergirth means of a buried truth, “why don’t you love me?”
The machinery is old, it still doesn’t mean it’s right of habit to invent the words of nature.
It is what it isn’t, the competition of escapement, the linear envelope of a past flat earth, always seeking new levels, always looking for more layers, continually talking of new flat dimensions, unable to think in spheres, in the great laboratory experiment of dead and frozen stuff, searching forever in particle form because some dude invented the starting point to measure from in a world of no measures.
From 1 to hungry, how hungry are you, is it mostly, almost or very?
The particle is arbitrary, but it did some thorny work without the noise of the jungle, the one silenced by the song of machines, our comfort of their friendship inside the coffin with plastic roses, built of a tree we have never seen, yet plundered.
We instruct the young to tread lightly and leave no trace, what happened, convention insists we leave evidence of destruction, larger than the sum of living parts.
The poet has only the garden left, that too will be rendered of the stupid tourist, pretending to care of why.
Objective rights v subjective analysis, the world of double binds, the endless bipolarity, the endless, because it’s good for you, removal.
Dance before the next handshake, it may improve the chances, this is the book, the internet of things, the library that talks to the book next to it, the straight jacket beginning to loosen, the faded picture of evangelical madness, the border guard in his apartment of terror, the prostitutes sacrifice, the London fog, the audacious to be best in the world at being antisocial, judgement before understanding, fitted before tailored, demanded before realized, the entrepreneurial discovery, be fore the conscious realization in stealing another’s time and life, for our ‘me first’ genius, even the continued Neoliberal genetic supremacy as if the gene were a mechanical fix, not a blind fudge to the billion alien invented and catastrophic influences upon us.
These words blew my mind! Very psychoactive and clear - a beckoning shout of "emperor with no close" whispered in the tiny covered corner of internet threads
War continues, the jubilee was a lie in its render, and with it the stones inside of an angry queen, breaking promise after promise.
do you feel uncomfortable asking these questions ? i always felt it put people at ease and they would open up about their lives,moods etc.
when my son was a senior in high school he made a curious comment to his friend. "Ken knows everyone in the neighborhood and thinks everyone is his friend,"
That's a fab question, and it puts me in mind of a short video by Leah Manaema, which I've returned to over and over again, in which she talks (among other things) about how indigenous people greet one another: using what might be called coordinates of belonging ("where did you grow up", "who were your parents, your ancestors...", "what formed you as a person") and coordinates of longing ("what do you yearn for", "what drives you"). Here's the video:
https://www.instagram.com/p/C5-mL_nR63v/
The best thing that's happened to me today was to receive several long, conversational replies to emails and online comments, which have fired up my brain, made me feel seen, prompted further thoughts and conversations. Though this wasn't entirely positive as, if I'm honest, those conversations arose from my procrastinating, avoiding what I feel _ought to have been_ my world today, which is writing a serious chunk of text for a roleplaying game supplement which I promised my Kickstarter backers would be delivered by the end of this month.
Oh, but my morning walk with the dog, across the high moors of the North Pennines? That was pretty sweet as well. Nature, reality, that's ultimately my world.
My world, known to my wife as my obsession, is a model of reality that is based on ancient knowledge restated in modern concepts along with several ideas that had no home before. The Akashic field and the Mind combined with the concept of Levels leaves most readers interested but not believers. The framework of Cybernetics allows a monistic approach but sheds more readers immediately.
My World remains in my Mind and yet I continue to ponder Reality for all.
The Best happening today was my wife and my doctor agreed and when translated into a language I could understand seemed to make sense to them. However, I could not resist on summarising my own opinion. "The numbers from the tests are all better but I still feel like a short walk is beyond me. Why do I have to take 7 types of pills two of which have the opposite effect." My expectation level is lowered.
Back to the Threeness of things.