{"id":16999,"date":"2015-07-17T09:52:14","date_gmt":"2015-07-17T13:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=16999"},"modified":"2015-07-18T06:47:42","modified_gmt":"2015-07-18T10:47:42","slug":"the-mutable-and-not-mutually-exclusive-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2015\/07\/the-mutable-and-not-mutually-exclusive-real\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mutable (and Not Mutually Exclusive) Real"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name=\"top\"><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"intrinsic-container intrinsic-container-16x9\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/97vPNAUYJsc?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p class=\"smalltext\"><em>[Video: &#8220;Chameleon,&#8221; by Johannes St\u00f6tter. For more information, see <a href=\"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2015\/07\/the-mutable-and-not-mutually-exclusive-real#note\">the note<\/a> at the bottom of this post.]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>From <em><a title=\"whiskey river: Richard Grossinger, on consciousness\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriver.blogspot.com\/2015\/07\/i-would-argue-that-if-consciousness.html\" target=\"_blank\">whiskey river<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I would argue that if consciousness exists, it can&#8217;t be obliterated; thus we borrow from consciousness in order to become (to get an identity), and we return what we borrow as egos to the greater conscious field when we die, so that&#8217;s what happens to &#8220;us.&#8221; The real question then is the fate not of our consciousness but of our personal identity.<\/p>\n<p>You know, science&#8217;s definition of us is that a light goes on, a light goes off, and it wasn&#8217;t even a light, but that&#8217;s like not existing at all. And we <em>do<\/em> exist &#8212; in the sense that we are not <em>just<\/em> interdependent with everything else in the universe; we <em>are<\/em> everything else in the universe, and ourselves too. That&#8217;s <em>why<\/em> we exist at all, why we have a personal identity. Likewise we are not <em>just<\/em> everything else in the universe; we are one probabilistic form even of ourselves. At each moment, all of our other selves, making different choices and experiencing themselves differently exist elsewhere as well as in deep latency in us, and in states just as physical as ours. <em>They<\/em> bail us out of this mess, but we bail them out of their messes. We support one another eternally. The light we share never goes on, never goes off, and that&#8217;s the Soul.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Richard Grossinger [<a title=\"Google Books: 'Dark Pool of Light, Volume Three: The Crisis and Future of Consciousness' by Richard Grossinger\" href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=lP33j-82nz8C&amp;pg=PA493#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<a title=\"whiskey river: 'This Might Be Real,' by Sarah Manguso\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriver.blogspot.com\/2015\/07\/blog-post.html\" target=\"_blank\">and<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>This Might Be Real<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>How long in a cold room will the tea stay hot?<br \/>\nWhat about reality interests you?<br \/>\nHow long can you live?<br \/>\nWere you there when I said <em>this might be real<\/em>?<br \/>\nHow much do you love?<br \/>\nSixty percent?<br \/>\nThings that are gone?<br \/>\nDo you love what&#8217;s real?<br \/>\nIs real a partial form?<br \/>\nIs it a nascent form?<br \/>\nWhat is it before it&#8217;s real?<br \/>\nIs it a switch that moves and then is ever still?<br \/>\nIs it a spectrum of cross-fades?<br \/>\nIs what&#8217;s next <em>real<\/em>?<br \/>\nWhen it comes will everything turn real?<br \/>\nIf I drink enough tea to hallucinate, is that real?<br \/>\nIf I know I&#8217;m waiting for someone but I don&#8217;t know who, is he real?<br \/>\nIs he real when he comes?<br \/>\nIs he real when he&#8217;s gone?<br \/>\nIs consequence what&#8217;s real?<br \/>\nIs consequence all that&#8217;s real?<br \/>\nWhat brings consequence?<br \/>\nIs <em>it<\/em> what&#8217;s real?<br \/>\nIs <em>it<\/em> what turned everything to disbelief, the last form love takes?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Sarah Manguso [<a title=\"Amazon.com: 'Siste Viator,' by Sarah Manguso\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Siste-Viator-Sarah-Manguso\/dp\/1884800696\/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1437129696&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=siste+viator#reader_1884800696\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Not from <em>whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Not only are selves conditional but they die. Each day, we wake slightly altered, and the person we were yesterday is dead. So why, one could say, be afraid of death, when death comes all the time? It is even possible to dislike our old selves, those disposable ancestors of ours. For instance, my high-school self &#8212; skinny, scabby, giggly, gabby, frantic to be noticed, tormented enough to be a tormentor, relentlessly pushing his cartoons and posters and noisy jokes and pseudo-sophisticated poems upon the helpless high school &#8212; strikes me now as considerably obnoxious, though I owe him a lot: without his frantic ambition and insecurity I would not be sitting on (as my present home was named by others) Haven Hill. And my Ipswich self, a delayed second edition of that high-school self, in a town much like Shillington in its blend of sweet and tough, only more spacious and historic and blessedly free of family ghosts, and my own relative position in the &#8220;gang&#8221; improved, enhanced by a touch of wealth, a mini-Mailer in our small salt-water pond, a stag of sorts in our herd of housewife-does &#8212; flirtatious, malicious, greedy for my quota of life&#8217;s pleasures, a distracted, mediocre father and worse husband &#8212; he seems another obnoxious show-off, rapacious and sneaky and, in the service of his own ego, remorseless. But, then, am I his superior in anything but caution and years, and how can I disown him without disowning also his useful works, on which I still receive royalties? And when I entertain in my mind these shaggy, red-faced, overexcited, abrasive fellows, I find myself tenderly taken with their diligence, their hopefulness, their ability in spite of all to map a broad strategy and stick with it. So perhaps one cannot, after all, not love them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(John Updike [<a title=\"Amazon.com: 'Self-Consciousness: Memoirs,' by John Updike\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0812982967\/#reader_0812982967\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Willingly<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When I get up he has been long at work,<br \/>\nhis brush limber against the house.<br \/>\nSeeing him on his ladder under the eaves,<br \/>\nI look back on myself asleep in the dream<br \/>\nI\u00a0 could not carry awake. Sleep<br \/>\ninside a house that is being painted,<br \/>\nwhole lifetimes now only the familiar cast<br \/>\nof morning light over the prayer plant.<br \/>\nThis &#8220;not remembering&#8221; is something new<br \/>\nof where you have been.<\/p>\n<p>What was settled or unsettled in sleep<br \/>\nstays there. But your house<br \/>\nunder this steady arm is leaving itself<br \/>\nand you see this gradual surface of<br \/>\nnew light covering your sleep<br \/>\nhas the greater power.<br \/>\nYou think now you felt brush strokes or<br \/>\nthe space between them, a motion<br \/>\nbearing down on you&#8212;accumulation<br \/>\nof stars, each night of them<br \/>\narranging over the roofs of entire cities.<\/p>\n<p>His careful strokes whiten the web,<br \/>\nthe swirl of woodgrain blotted<br \/>\nout like a breath stopped<br \/>\nat the heart. Nothing has changed<br \/>\nyou say, faithlessly. But something has<br \/>\ncleansed you past recognition. When<br \/>\nyou stand near his ladder looking up<br \/>\nhe does not acknowledge you,<br \/>\nand as from daylight in a dream you see<br \/>\nyour house has passed from you<br \/>\ninto the blessed hands of others.<\/p>\n<p>This is ownership, you think, arriving<br \/>\nin the heady afterlife of paint smell.<br \/>\nA deep opening goes on in you.<br \/>\nSome paint has dropped onto your shoulder<br \/>\nas though light concealed an unsuspected<br \/>\nweight. You think it has fallen through<br \/>\nyou. You think you have agreed to this,<br \/>\nwhat has been done with your life, willingly.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Tess Gallagher [<a title=\"Poetry Foundation: 'Willingly,' by Tess Gallagher\" href=\"http:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poem\/240440\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p><a name=\"note\"><\/a>_________________<\/p>\n<p><strong>About the video:<\/strong> Johannes St\u00f6tter, <a title=\"Johannes St\u00f6tter -- Artist, Musician &amp; Fine-Art-Bodypainter\" href=\"http:\/\/www.johannesstoetterart.com\/johannes-stoetter-artist-musician-fine-art-bodypainting.html\" target=\"_blank\">says his site<\/a>,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>is [an] artist, musician and fine art bodypainter. Born and based in South Tyrol (Italy), he spent his early childhood in the high Alps and grew up with 3 brothers and a sister in a family of musicians. He sings, plays violin, whistle and bouzouki in the Celtic Folk band, Burning Mind, he studied education and philosophy at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and was involved in several social projects which he combined with art and music.<\/p>\n<p>As a fully autodidactic artist Johannes developed his painting style and his bodypainting technique without any relation to other bodypainting artists and their work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I can&#8217;t speak for how similar his work may be to that of other bodypainters, but I can easily say his work is striking on its own terms. He seems to have a predilection for melding the human form into nature; you can see this both in the &#8220;Chameleon&#8221; video and in another recent work &#8212; an advertisement for the fruit beverage called Cappy:<\/p>\n<div class=\"intrinsic-container intrinsic-container-16x9\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/54589944\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em>[<a href=\"#top\">back to top<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Video: &#8220;Chameleon,&#8221; by Johannes St\u00f6tter. For more information, see the note at the bottom of this post.] From whiskey river: I would argue that if consciousness exists, it can&#8217;t be obliterated; thus we borrow from consciousness in order to become (to get an identity), and we return what we borrow as egos to the greater [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[247,1393,405,115,250,5,50,251],"tags":[370,732,1330,1400,1615,4104,4105,4106,4107],"class_list":{"0":"post-16999","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-nature","9":"category-advertisingpackaging","10":"category-art","11":"category-06_writing","12":"category-language-writing_cat","13":"category-poetry-writing_cat","14":"tag-consciousness","15":"tag-self-consciousness","16":"tag-john-updike","17":"tag-the-self","18":"tag-reality","19":"tag-tess-gallagher","20":"tag-sarah-manguso","21":"tag-richard-grossinger","22":"tag-johannes-stotter","23":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-4qb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16999"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17012,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16999\/revisions\/17012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}