Someone is missing.
Where is she ?
She is not here because her grand parents
died before they had time to have any
children.
In fact, they died before they met, fell into
love, and married. Sadly, they died in infancy.
Or would have done, if they had had any
parents themselves. Invisible generations of
nobodies, of not-peoples, of never-beens.
She is not here. She will never be here.
She existed, but only as potential, as latency.
Nobody ever saw her bright eyes and rosy
cheeks, or heard her footsteps coming home.
A kind of existence. Not quite enough to be
substantial, tangible, material, but sufficient to
be imagined. More of an existence than some
entity entirely unknown, unimaginable, that
could never exist in any form whatsoever...
not even as a mental figment, not even as an
an imagined phantom, not even as a dream.
What might such a thing be like ?
Are there many of them, unknowables,
inconceivables, outside, beyond, the periphery
of the human imagination ?
She exists, but only in the sense that an
empty field contains the possibility of an
arrival of cows, or an empty church the
arrival of a congregation....shall we wait ?
Shall we carry gifts of bread, to tempt her
to appear, like Nelferch from the lake ?
Is she the opposite of a person ?
A possibility ? A negative existence ?
Being versus anti-being ? Think, think !
What could the answer be ?
" There is the house whose people sit in
darkness; dust is their food and clay their
meat. They are clothed like birds with wings
for covering, they see no light, they sit in
darkness. I entered the house of dust and
I saw the kings of the earth, their crowns
put away for ever...".
From the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh.
Where are they ? Where is that house now ?
Where is that narrator ?
I see them here, now, in my mind, in the
dark mysterious shadows, clothed like birds...
dust for food...
Several thousand years ago, Gilgamesh set out
on a journey, to seek wisdom and immortality.
He asks Utnapishtim the Faraway, " How was
it that you entered the company of the gods
and found everlasting life ? "
As Paul Gauguin painted in 1897,
" Where do we come from ? What are we ?
Where are we going ? "
Utnapishtim said : " I will reveal to thee,
Gilgamesh, a hidden matter, and a secret
of the gods will I tell thee...."
If I tell you that there is not such a thing
as Truth, is that a true statement ?
Therefore, there is such a thing as Truth ?
Would you believe me, if I told you that
what I believe is true ?
I do know something. What is it ?
Do you know how much you don't know ?
Can you know what cannot be known ?
Can you know everything ?
Can you know nothing ?
What do you really know ?
Anything ?
"It might be thought that knowledge might
be defined as belief which is in agreement
with the facts. The trouble is that no one
knows what a belief is, no one knows what
a fact is, and no one knows what sort of
agreement between them would make a
belief true."
Bertrand Russell, The Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Koans, those paradoxical questions which
Zen poses to its trainees, are specifically
designed to short-circuit the whole intellectual
process. You cannot solve or answer them by
normal sequential thinking. You have to find
another level, another mode of consciousness.
If you name the truth, you miss it. Truth is
not the words and ideas that describe reality,
but the reality itself.
So tell me, pray, what is truth ? and tell me
please, what is reality ?
' What is a koan ? ' That's an excellent koan !
( I really shouldn't do this, it's very wrong,
but I'll let you in on a little secret here, and
tell you the answer...the REAL answer is this:
EVERYTHING is a koan !
There ! You have it ! Ssshhh ! Don't tell them !
Be grateful, and never say I don't do you
any kind favours...Don't ever forget that, now,
will you ! It's very important ! No, no need to
thank me, just never forget where you heard
it first ! ok ? )
Whether an idea is true or not is also an
idea which may be true or not which is also
an idea which may be true or not which is....
Koans, like mantras, are tools for penetrating
the mystery, keys for the hidden doors.
Thus sang Taliesin :
'I have been a blue salmon,
I have been a dog, a stag, a roebuck on the
mountain,
A stock, a spade, an axe in the hand,
A stallion, a bull, a buck,
A grain which grew on a hill,
I was reaped, and placed in an oven,
I fell to the ground while I was being roasted
And a hen swallowed me.
For nine months was I in her crop.
I have been dead, I have been alive,
I am Taliesin.'
Anon. 13th. C.
What is Taliesin ?
What does Taliesin mean ?
What is the meaning of ' meaning ' ?
What you see, upon your computer display,
behind the glass of the screen, HERE, is being
seen by your eyes. The photons of light are
being caught by your eyes.
The patterns that your eyes collect are then
transmitted by nerves to be processed by the
occipital cortex at the back of your skull.
Somehow, by means beyond anyone's ability
to explain or understand, you perceive that
baffling quality, that mind-boggling ' thing ',
which we call ' meaning '.
These pictures I have created on these web
pages, exist first as electro-chemical pathways,
somewhere in the tangle of dendrites and
synapses in that incredible jelly that is the
brain, that ' stuff ' which allows imagination.
Then, as electrons, photons, digital information,
binary numbers, zeros and ones, pulses in the
wires, they travel, liberated from my control,
and chance to reach you, whoever you are...
So, where, along that strange journey, do these
words and images, and their meanings, actually
exist ? In my mind, in the technology, on your
computer's hard disk, in your eyes, at the back
of your brain, or somewhere in between ?
Or all of these ?
And where does the ' meaning ' reside ?
Do I ' put it in ', like water into a bucket,
and then you somehow extract it ?
What if you don't understand any of this ?
Has the meaning somehow evaporated away,
to leave dessicated lifeless symbols and marks ?
But the symbols and marks are entirely neutral,
aren't they ? Just pixels. Just patterns. They can
have no meaning whatsoever, unless a viewer
prescribes meaning to them, inscribes meaning
upon them. That can only happen at your end..
How do you do it, if you do it at all ?
What if these words and images carry several
meanings, simultaneously ?
If there are multilayered meanings here, how
could you tell whether you had extracted
them all ? How would you know whether you
might not have read into the words and
images something which I never intended
at all, something entirely of your own, which
you mistakenly but sincerely assume to be
what I really do mean ?
The word ' intelligence ' comes from ' inter -
legio ', ' to read between ', as if the real
message, the superior meaning, lies secretly
inscribed somewhere in the gaps, in the
empty spaces and the undefined apertures.
The really clever readers, then, can look past
these little packets of letters called words,
so cunningly woven into sentences and
paragraphs, and gather up the esoteric
essence which hides behind and between.
Is this not what every creative author who
dares to make marks upon the pristine
virginal vellum has always had to do ?
The author's work being to translocate the
translucent idea and carve out the meaning
that is hidden within the blank and empty
page so that it protrudes...
The reader scans, and notices, this and this
and this and this....
Like running your fingers through matted
hair, there is something....
But what is it ? What does it mean ? What....
Back at the ranch meanwhile, trouble
is brewing....
TOP. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ NEXT.
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