[Image: “Metanoia: transformation, a change of heart or mind,” by Patricia Wu Wu; found on Flickr, and used here under a Creative Commons license (thank you!). It’s not clear, exactly, but this image seems to be a draft, of sorts — sketches in black ink or paint: Patricia Wu Wu is a fashion/textiles designer. Apparently this image was included in her “Metanoia” show at the Glasgow School of Art (see the corresponding Flickr album for more). You can see more of the work she exhibited there at her own site.]
From whiskey river:
Then again, if physics is right, we shouldn’t exist. You can watch ions hop across synapses, follow nerve impulses from nose to toes; nothing in any of those processes would lead you to expect the emergence of subjective awareness. Physics describes a world of intelligent zombies who do everything we do, except understand that they’re doing it. That’s what we should be, that’s all we should be: meat and computation. Somehow the meat woke up. How the hell does that even work?
(Peter Watts [source])
…and:
Prelude
Waking up is a parachute jump from dreams.
Free of the suffocating turbulence the traveler
sinks toward the green zone of morning.
Things flare up. From the viewpoint of the quivering lark
he is aware of the huge root systems of the trees,
their swaying underground lamps. But above ground
there’s greenery—a tropical flood of it—with
lifted arms, listening
to the beat of an invisible pump. And he
sinks toward summer, is lowered
in its dazzling crater, down
through shafts of green damp ages
trembling under the sun’s turbine. Then it’s checked,
this straight-down journey through the moment, and the wings spread
to the osprey’s repose above rushing waters.
The bronze-age trumpet’s
outlawed note
hovers above the bottomless depths.In day’s first hours consciousness can grasp the world
as the hand grips a sun-warmed stone.
The traveler is standing under a tree. After
the crash through death’s turbulence, shall
a great light unfold above his head?
(Tomas Tranströmer [source])
…and:
The plain truth is we are going to die. Here I am, a teeny speck surrounded by boundless space and time, arguing with the whole of creation, shaking my fist, sputtering, growing even eloquent at times, and then — poof! I am gone. Swept off once and for all. I think that is very, very funny.
(Charles Simic [source (via)])
