PSYCHOSCAPES: February 2012

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Distrust That Particular Flavor

Snow spattered Coco ponders eternity while distrusting
the mealy, mass-produced dog treat between her paws

In William Gibson's new book, Distrust That Particular Flavor,

he often admits his failings in the notes after each piece.

One of his descriptions of the Internet hints
That he is grieving the same existential loss
as Coco:

It is like rummaging in the forefront of the collective global mind,
Somewhere, surely, there is a site that contains…
everything we have lost?

Monday, February 20, 2012

Creativity

This image and text that follows is from http://www.nomadology.com/

Living structures canalize energy flows so as to insure their internal coherence and linear expansion. Creativity means transversing existing canals, inventing new ways. Thus, it is natural that rigid structures, such as totalitarian political systems, fear artistic creation.

Creativity is a kind of chaos, it is the fact of life. Creativity is also the principal tool nomads use to adapt to new situations. Creativity arises naturally in conditions of changes and novelty. In a changing environment creation is permanent.

The construction of an identity is a creative, nonlinear process. It is a dialogue with one's physical and socialenvironment; a multiple-ways, dynamic relationship.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

THE QUALITY WITHOUT A NAME

Sea Point Beach, Kittery ME: 2/17/12

The fact that this quality cannot be named does not mean that it is vague or imprecise. It is impossible to name because it is unerringly precise. Words fail to capture it because it is much more precise than any word.

The word which we most often use to talk about the quality without a name is the word "alive." There is a sense in which the distinction between something alive and something lifeless is much more general, and far more profound, than the distinction between living things and nonliving things, or between life and death. Things which are living may be lifeless; nonliving things may be alive. A man who is walking and talking can be alive; or he can be lifeless. Beethoven's last quartets are alive; so are the waves at the ocean shore...*

* Quote from A Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander