Addendum to the clockbook.

Dearest mentor~

       Apologies for not getting back to you sooner---I just returned from a trip to Toledo, OH to see a few doctors. It turns out my migraines (the ones I have written about in the clockbook) are comorbid and at the very least exacerbated by several underlying conditions including dysautonomia secondary to Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome type 3 involving a mutation in the gene for connective tissue, essentially causing my entire vascular system to be slightly too stretchy and not constrict properly when standing up or digesting food. So blood does not get back up to my heart and brain as it should. Anyways, this complicated medical picture has been prominent, although only recently understood, for nearly 6 years, half of which I've been out of school for. It's placed me in an entirely new landscape, and challenged me to grow fiercely in other, non-standard-for-these-years, ways. In winter of 2009, during an intense period of chronic daily migraine, I began to write a letter to you. It just happened; in a way the letter was written to no one, but then...it was still a communication. I knew deep down, after I had written it, that this letter was from a Lost Boy, the androgynous child that lives somewhere in me, that's lost, but not in the way that things are lost by and in grown-ups. So it was from a Lost Boy, to the marvelous creative writing mentor I had when I was nine, the Horse of a Different Color who gave me Orion's Belt when I began to consciously face death and try to understand it for the first time. Suddenly, slowly, there was this steady, gradual string of writings that emerged over the next year and a half. I still don't know what connects them all, but there was this process of finding each one in another, in the rest. Sometimes I feel that they are the only validations of something, of me, of my interactions on Earth from that period, which in so many ways was so surreal and so real and so both that it feels hard to remember. But then I only need to listen to the crackle of dreams like coals in the engines of my daily life, to the pulse of this small and steady Redwood of integrated and (on the whole) spiritual growings, to the Lost Boy within. Or I could just look up at Orion's Belt, a constellation that is on hand here in the winter as the nights start before dinner time. These pieces of me, which came together in the form of the clockbook, have been so important to me, but more even as symbols of inner-cultivation, of home-ness in alone-ness, of being with various living processes (and dying ones, and cyclic ones) in the truest sense, than as the writings they are. 

       I think that whether or not as a result of those early, coinciding events at Centauri of processing death, loss and living and freeing myself open to draw upon any and every experience lived or living to write, the both such things (which turned out to be more like practices than things that could be contained in single events) have been such parallel processes that it is impossible for them to be un-entangled and even more impossible for me to stay away from while living deeply. That is why I needed to write, and why it became a letter to you---I think that for a long time, I was in kind of a 'dark night of the soul,' a winter in which each migraine killed me off, while each migraine woke me up. Sent me into dreams, vivid, lucid even. I had experiences where a migraine killed me, and then there was no separation between the migraine, the room, and me, and I could feel all of it, each part, without holding my breath, without suffering or separation. And when I felt better and emerged from my home into the wintery, streetlamp-lit streets, I would see continents of stars instead of blankets of snow. One morning, when the house was already empty, I walked into my parents' bedroom just as the sun was rising, and stopped flat. There was this glister of starlight coruscating from a diamond stuck to the window pane--it was indeed starlight, because the sun had just peeped through the jungle of obstructions between me and the sky and walked right through the frost above the sill, straight into my retinas. It got into me, something so strange and ephemeral, so I was strange and ephemeral; my pulse quickened, tears arrived, and I started to swallow back laughing, upward-beating gasps. Because the cosmos had just proposed to me, just offered this already melting diamond through which the sun's light moved, proposed and offered this moment, and now I was engaged with the cosmos! And this was my spiritual engagement with everything, with the processes and the strange loops and the dichotomies, half and whole truths, both/and. It was my choice to live the whole thing, good and bad and both and others, and give all of it, each kind of experience, my love.

       The Lost Boy started out as a friend of mine who killed himself when we were sixteen. I was in a computer class at school in Japan when I found out, and five days into my exchange experience. The last time I had talked with him was just a couple days before I left the country; we parted on a staircase (he going down, me going on), on a hanging sentence, on a possibility. A tentative plan to meet up the next day (this part was spoken) that, tentatively, wasn't going to work for either of us (this part was heard only in our hesitations). We had French class together, and I first met him while reading The Little Prince, a book I've treasured since childhood. When he killed himself, he became lost to me. It was like he dove into that depthless canyon of death and created such a displacement of emptiness that when it all splashed out, we were no longer coexisting in the same dimension. He was downright unreachable, but closer than ever possible, since now the only him I had was in me, at a cross-section where the dimensions fold through each other. But the displacement caused floods, typhoons, dark nights of questions, and the suicide murdered all possible external answers. And so began the assemblage of some sort of spirituality for me, the building of a home for questions, for being with questions like pain and permanence and paradox and death and transience and odd things, broken things, breaking things, lost things, loved things, ugly, hard-to-look-at things, breathtaking things, life things. All of the foundations of this home were laid deep within myself, but I built it in the sky, because it is sometimes helpful, I think, to go outwards with deep inner-workings. The sky seemed perfect for a lost girl that was going to change grounds, fly off to a different world soon enough. I think it was a very beautiful beginning, because it was so full of growing pains, labor pains, frost-covered window panes, and it took place far, far away from answers (of which I could get none of any kind, for weeks), convention (which I could not find in my surroundings even when I wanted it, because I was like a baby in this new culture, and hardly able to speak), and escape (the impossibility of which snapped me like a glow stick, snapped me on, so that for seven weeks I lived with double the intention, energy, ferocity). 

       We were still kids when my friend killed himself, and we were lost. He didn't grow up, just like Peter Pan, and me neither--the parts of me that died went to my Lost Boy, whom, over time (as my migraines got worse), I realized was not really this friend (although they are found in each other, I think), but my other half. My childhood, which is certainly not lost the way it can be in grown-ups, only lost like a Yesterday on a Today at that age before you learned to know what days are Todays. He is like the one foot I have in any world (Any Where), while I am the other foot I have in this world (where the ground is hard and grounding is harder). The Lost Boy is a theme in the clockbook because when I started to die of migraines, I slowed down almost to a stop in my growth away from childhood; in fact, I started to find my childhood all around me. The migraines (like black cars) drove me further and further away from timelines (among other things) and I found myself and all of my lost worlds in a lost home (the one I began to build in the sky from the ground in Japan) much bigger than the Little Prince's planet (perhaps even incorporating it), out on the line of Orion's Belt, a place that you showed me when I was nine years old. A place that is far away from answers, convention and escape, but one that also takes answers, convention, and escape in as questions. 

       As this book emerged, each piece came up from within me like a birth, without choice or distance, and composed of my own body and my own interactions with the things I'm interbeing (with). It is a process that I think belongs to everyone, if only each will find her own form of it and then bring her consciousness to it. You facilitated my enduring engagement with and in this artistic and meaningful birth and rebirth through writing, with the 'first (or free) thought' exercises that you gave us bright-eyed, pointy-toothed, scribbling beginners under the Poet Tree. There is a kind of zen in that stream-of-thought practice, of getting to the middle ground, simultaneously listening and expressing, 'in the zone,' and living it. So---as the book emerged, I began to look forward to sending it off to you. It was always the goal to share it with you, to wait patiently for each piece to come until I knew it was complete and then to bind it as my grandfather bound books half a century ago, and finally to travel to Milwaukee, travel through chrome forests with leaves made of blank CDs, past distending double helices and beds of needles to acquire the clock-piece to epoxy-glue it to the cover and hand it over to the universe to deliver. The book is a tremendous journey (tremendous relative to me, anyways; I think I am still quite small), but it's choppy and like a conglomerate. I don't know what its place is, I'm not sure what to do---it's such an odd shape in my external landscape. I feel like while it's immensely important to me (not so much the book or the writing, but rather the worlds of growth I find in it), it doesn't really have a place anywhere here on Earth, just a space reserved for it with the lost things at Any Where. I think this is sometimes the struggle and suffering that artists face, as it can feel like a kind of stillbirth.

       Anyways, I thank you with all my heart for receiving my book. You can, by the way, find all the pieces (and a little bit more) online at a blog that I update only sporadically: http://intertrinsics.blogspot.com/ I eagerly welcome any feedback you have, as a writer, editor or publisher (you are both of the latter two, right?), in fact I think I'd be honored, but I don't want to distract you from your own current adventures.

A flower of peace and appreciation for you, and for the teacher within~

         Sola Vie

[From late 2010]

By Dint of Dappled Motion

By dint of dappled motion, 

of passage on the ocean, 

(driven along a freeway's coast 

with semi-ease of flight) 

I found, I found 

on troubled grasses, 

in crick of neck, 

in mouth gone tight, 

I found a grove for my inflection, 

grief of throat 

and roving spection

I found it out the window first,

the distance offered trust

Past troubled lakes and bighted straits

of deeper sounds

with sadder banks 

I found my hiding place:

A copse of dappled Box and wood

A middle growth 

at river's mouth

where sediments of sand and stones

and lumped laments from fretful throats

Did nothing worse than stretch and bruise 

the sky that held 

one lone gull 

who grieves above the delta

But tires turn 

and I lost sight

refinding in the sounds my grounding:

stolen thumbs on bluer strings 

of steel strung between these trees 

in the grove, along the coast

(of all these wrongs that wring these hands)

that stretches thwart this sky of Right within;

I've found my port within me

it's the thicket in the storm

(though these storms are only thicker skies,

horizons I have torn)

And I am here

And here I find,

I find the growth of dappled space,

in crowded limbs and dry sweet-grasses

A birch canoe, 

an unheard fever, 

other things I find I face

I find,

eagerness of winded eyes 

exhausted on these sundry skies

but still more time for tired blinking 

(by which to see with light to glean

these motions I had never seen 

while squinting) 

I find,

I'm out of time,

my shoes are full

My feet so full, my head so braced,

I wouldn't see them lose their way

But I like these trees to hold me

I like my head embraced,

But these chest-wide palpitations

beat me (breathless) to my brain

Then I'm heaving,

hyperbolic, 

and my trees are all but limbless 

I've got to wait to cross these rivers

I need patience for those notions

I feel the call to motion

I feel, I feel

my tires turn

(I can only sit in trees so long)

I must blink to find my footing,

see my footholds, feel the folds

of choppy lakes that pass me by,

the pain of deltas at my side

(Right bed-side)

I find, I find

Above the lakes,

ease of wind

Above the deltas,

one lone gull

who, blinking, gleans then sulls and loses 

a dimpled thumb on blueless strings,

and unseen leftside shoe-shaped bruises

I've found a space to introverse,

A river to cross, and nothing worse

or better, because I found,

I find it 

all in dappled motion

Discourse on Happiness

A Discourse on Happiness 

(as taken from, and inspired by/edited/expanded upon, the Mahamangala Sutta)

What can bring about a peaceful and happy life?

To transform anger into compassionate awareness, 

impulse into loving action, 

and loss into honoring, learning and growing

To freely give every wounded ego (including my own) 

my loving hand to lift them up, 

keeping attentive presence 

to my own capacities as well as others'

To listen deeply to foolish and wise ones, 

keeping solid like a tree my inner-knowing, 

and sustaining the balance 

and diversity of my interactions; 

to honor those who call my honoring 

and life in all its different forms within each being

To cultivate my environment into healthiness, 

to plant good seeds, 

and to realize that I am on the right path

To have a chance to learn, 

to be skillful in my profession or craft, 

and to know how to practice mindfulness and loving speech

To be able to support my parents, 

to cherish my own family, 

and to have a job that I like and work with love

To be generous in giving, 

able to give support to relatives and friends, 

and to live a life of mindful conduct, consumption 

 and contribution

To avoid doing things that are harmful, destructive, 

unethical or ultimately contradictory to 

my deep, true inner-knowing; 

to avoid being caught by intoxications, 

and to be diligent in doing nourishing 

and life-sustaining, life-enhancing things

To be humble and polite, 

grateful and content with a simple life, 

and not to miss the opportunity to learn and grow

To persevere and be open to change, 

to have regular interaction with self, 

others, and environment, 

knowing that each is on their own path; 

to participate in constructive, 

wellness-oriented discussions

(As a group or community:) 

To be collectively like the sturdy Redwood trees, 

whose roots all interconnect; 

to bring our consciousness to intergrowing 

(as individuals, as community)

To live diligently and attentively, 

to perceive truth where I find it in myself, 

others, and my environment; 

to realize peace within and around

To live in the world, with my heart in the cycle of 

filling and emptying, embracing and letting go, 

growing towards the healthiness of 

all living beings and the planet, 

with all sorrows embraced and transforming, 

dwelling in peace

Living such practices, I will grow with and through and past 

and again, never-redundantly again,
 the states of the heart and the mind
 and the nature emergent, with recognition
 Wherever I am; 

always I'll be home and happy----

Living such practices---this is the deepest happiness.

The Dream Unfolding...

Dear friends,

I wanted to share with you my ever-unfolding dream of being involved with the evolution of the public educational system. I feel like my whole entire short life thus far has been culminating towards it---towards the philosophy and spirituality of growing, of cultivating and nourishing oneself, and in turn others and the world, for thriving. For peace. Through mindfulness, exploration, opening, growing; through peace and peaceful interaction. Being with this process, present to it in myself and with others is the thing for me---it's what I want to cultivate and nourish.

I'd really love to see a peaceful, respectful and resourceful space in public high school education for young adults to be able to observe and examine themselves and the world and the way we interconnect. A place for us to start focusing on well-being on all the different levels---just a safe space that can facilitate the individual's own conscious development of themselves and their interactions with others. We already share together in the learning of math, science, language and social studies; what about sharing together in learning about well-being, healthy interaction, and conflict resolution? As a whole fifth subject in standard education. I really feel like it belongs. It seems to me that no matter how social you are or aren't, no matter what you end up doing, whether you drop out or continue education, whether you do factory work or house work or social work or military work or technical communication or art design or political writing or business owning or flower-picking or research or daydreaming, even if you locked yourself in a closet, you're interacting, with your environment, yourself, and (at least at some point) others. High school is an incredibly social place where most of us are pushed or push ourselves to really develop an identity (as cliché as that sounds). What a wonderful place of opportunity to start to consciously make space in ourselves for some of that growth and reflection, think about our well-being and the well-being of the world we live in, and cultivate some respect/compassion for ourselves/each other as we all share in some of the confusing mixture of human experience. Given all the complexity around us, it seems necessary to be able to integrate our sometimes-tendency of polarized thinking with a more holistic approach. 

So I was recently inspired to write down some of the possible bones of a potential curriculum for such a subject. Many of the ideas here come from exchanges I've had with others: teachers I found in my parents, family and friends, in public, private, alternative and charter schools across the U.S., at Centauri Summer Arts camp, in the YFU program, in trains, planes, buses, streets, conferences, colloquiums, museums, businesses, non-profits, retreats, sanghas, monastic communities (like Plum Village, LoMB) and forests, throughout the U.S., Japan and Europe. I wanted to share this outline with you guys because I thought maybe you could give me feedback. I'm aware that this lofty aspiration is potentially risky in the way it could turn out (if ever it did), as facilitation can sometimes border on manipulation if not conducted well, and biases to certain view points can easily cloud or cut off the process. The dream is for mindfulness, openness, acceptance, transformation, reframing, the cycle of embracing and letting go, and peace. I was thinking maybe it could be a retreat or workshop, or even just start out as a discussion group...

Retreat/workshop/curriculum idea:

Cultivating peace, well-being, and conflict resolution on global, national, community, interpersonal, and inner levels.

With focus on participants’ explorations of:

- what it means to be healthy

- how to cultivate well-being through healthy interaction with self and others (and how to apply to any sort of conflict, from inner to global)

- how complexity can often cause us to feel lost and unable to make change or transform problems; how one can best (i.e. in most peaceful/respectful manner) reframe a situation in a non-reductionistic way that offers the individual more insight and feels more workable, if not less stressful

- emergent feelings/emotions (such as stress, sadness); where do they come from? What influences can they have on our life and others, how do they affect our body, our activities, our relationships, etc.? How can we modulate, manage and/or utilize these feelings in a healthy way, especially when we feel like we’re stuck or can't change?

- self; how to see oneself clearly and interact with oneself in a way that feels healthy to mind and body

- nourishment and balance; what do these concepts entail? What do they mean in the context of relationships, with self, others, community, environment, etc.

- peace; what does it entail? Where does it start, and how do we maintain it in ways that are consistent with our values and the ideal of peace we want to work towards?

- the relationship between the landscape, inner-space, "weather" or potential peace within us and the state of the external world (the landscape, "weather" or potential for peace in our immediate surroundings, state/national/international community, our past, future, etc.)

- how can we best maintain a lifelong healthy relationship between the two?

- the role of peace in life, the world, give and take, conscientiousness, social justice, industry and trade (looking at politics, economy (effects of trade on budget and debt, on individual), global resources, food industry (choice, consumption, effect on social dilemmas), etc.), responsibility, unwarranted aggression, confusion.

- desires behind consumption; what do we truly desire, and how do desires influence our consumption of material goods, ideas/beliefs, the media, identities/styles, anything we buy into, use or adopt.

- What do we desire in our relationships with others? How might our desires nourish/stimulate or constrict/damage those relationships? How can we sort out healthy wants and needs from those that might cause suffering for self and others? How might we voice our desires and needs to others such that we don’t suppress ourselves or hurt others, especially when expressing them feels difficult?

- change vs. facilitation; what are these concepts in the context of one’s motivations and actions in the world, with oneself and others? How might one learn to be able to freely change perspectives or open oneself to change in self and surroundings (while staying respectful of one’s needs)? What does it mean to be a facilitator? How could we go about facilitating growth in self/others/the world?

- resources for well-being, ranging from health clubs, community centers, and leisure sports, to discussion groups, spiritual community, integrative therapy, non-profit organizations and humanitarian or environmental projects

- passion in life, hobbies, work, activities or elsewhere; how can we cultivate meaning in life, and how can we pursue our dreams? What are resources that can help us or fuel us in following our hearts?

Goals for cultivating:

- ability to look at complex situations in an ecological way that integrates both global and linear/causal perspectives

- ability to embrace, express (constructively), move through and transform emergent/reactive feelings/emotions such as stress, anger, sadness, grief, anxiety, confusion, fear/discouragement, etc.

- awareness of the individual's life process, and patience and compassion for that process, in self and others

- ability to practice mindful listening and speech without necessarily compromising oneself or another; ability to identify for oneself a middle-way in a situation such that one can act in a manner that cultivates peace

- ability to, at any point throughout life, listen deeply to oneself and understand what one (personally) needs or can do to be healthy

- understanding interconnectedness (relationship) within and between communities, states, countries, and the world; awareness of the impact of decisions/actions/interactions (from voting, protesting, writing letters to voice opinions, issues, solutions, etc. to informed consumption and diversity of mental/physical input to affects on the individual by changes in seemingly distant/irrelevant politics, economy, and environment)

- a bank of resources for personal well-being that can nourish us and help us to thrive throughout all stages in life; resources that promote mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being

On the Philosophy of a Möbius

       I've been knitting various möbiuses for some time now, and noticing a lot of curious phenomena. You use one long cable doubled up, cast on (using a method that produces what feels like weaker stitches, weaker links) a number of stitches, say 60, and end up with twice that number, 120. You have 60 stitches above and 60 below, and it looks rather like the stitches that you are most immediately working with (those on what appears to be the top) are the positive stitches, and the ones below are inverted (negative). The half twist of the möbius is almost never where the needles meet as it can get in the way as you knit, which makes it even more difficult to wrap your mind around it at first---you'll probably end up knitting 60 (the circumference of the loop, if it wasn't a strange one) and realize that the marker for the beginning of the row is on the cable below and that suddenly one row is all 120 stitches. And as you work with the first row, every other stitch is facing the opposite direction. It gets even better: the stitches grow between the needles/cable; you started knitting in the middle instead of at one end and it's growing out! (But actually between.) Moreover, by knitting every stitch, which naturally appears as a purl stitch on the back (think positive and negative again), your resulting möbius is a strip that's half knit and half purl on one "side" (and inverted on the other "side"), despite your using only the one type of stitch, and despite there being only one side. It would be the same creature if you purled the whole thing; without even turning it inside out. The only thing that would make it different would be that it was constructed with a different orientation.
       You'll certainly have gone loopy by the beginning of this, and you won't know it if you think you're at the beginning. The stitches you knit are the edge of the möbius. They're the first stitches you knit, the last stitches you'll knit, and every stitch you knit between-in. You start in the middle and grow from there, though it's growing between and not out. The beginning and the end are one and the same, despite that you can make it bigger and bigger, adding more stitches "between" the two.
      The topological definition of a möbius is a surface on/in which there is no point at which to orient oneself. Objectively, ultimately. Every point is relative. And yet as you knit the möbius, each stitch you make is unique and individual, separate and identifiable, made of the same never the same material, flow of material, varying in dimensions, mass, consistency, time of creation, etc. Similar to beings in our world, and to particles in general, right? So we can chose a point to orient from, and we do as we beings live life. Everything becomes relative; every measure, every separation, every individualization of anything is relative and yet is what it is, completely and as if relativity never factored in. 
        I like the möbius because for me it symbolizes existence in a way, making one coin out of all 'many' things, even half twists and not. It transforms an either/or, a polarization that can be a deception (in the way that dichotomies can be) and yet still be totally necessary to life, into a both/and. It even makes both/and and either/or one thing . I like the möbius because it reminds me of the middleway, of all ways and no ways, and even if we can't totally pick it apart or wrap ourselves around the paradox, we can still make one to hold and touch and live. And we can gradually become familiar with its nature.
       I'm currently underway with a new knitting near-fiasco to see what comes of a hyperbolic möbius. My dad shared with me a devastatingly awesome project, movement, and eventually foundation started by these twin sisters from Australia, who, combined, have a background in mathematics, art, creative and science writing, women's studies and more, and (to boot!) like to crochet while they watch Battlestar Galactica and Xena: Warrior Princess. They defied Euclidian geometry and lots of stuffy old mathematicians by crocheting hyperbolic surfaces (previously thought to be unproducible) in the image of sea cucumbers and corals and such to draw attention to the world's suffering coral reefs, while at the same time empowering women through a handicraft that's traditionally been 'theirs' and empowering the people by putting this previously inaccessible theory of math, geometry, and physics into their hands, with a crochet needle. They are sock-knocker-offers who continue to inspire the communities of the world on the topics of environmentalism, math and geometry, physics and the sciences, feminism, education, evolution, fiber arts and more as their project continues. Look them up at:
http://www.theiff.org/

And also watch this terrific 15 minute lecture:

http://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_wertheim_crochets_the_coral_reef.html

      I'm in thought right now about the meaning of this growing hyperbolic möbius. I haven't found that anyone else out there has tried this, but that might be the fault of internet search engines. It's working out, though the increase is slow. I'm particularly interested in the kind of... Uh, reframable amplification that's going on. Lots of seemings. The exponential growth looks strange in a möbius. It makes me think about lasers and mirrors and the conversion of matter into energy and the relationship between matter and energy, matter and anti-matter, and also egos and selfs and consciousness. And space. And the geometry of the cosmos. And also, the dimensions. (My theory is that there's a half-twist uniting the dimensions, as in a twist that folds, for example, the 3rd through the 4th dimension, and that life emerges at the intersection, interjunction of the two, if not from all of them... Still workin' on that!) More to come later. I'll be entering into a retreat in engaged Buddhism, and I'm sure that more will emerge.

From a January Thaw

         I find myself trying to understand the nature of value, of right and wrong, of truth, life, and death. Of time. In the past several weeks, as my migraines have improved, I've been making observations about human and animal nature, from coping and survival and the nature of pain to communication and orientation and desire. Is "keeping" an illusion? Why are we the way we are, what's the point of wanting to hold on to something, like a friend who dies or an experience of clarity, when we lose it anyway? Wouldn't it be more efficient to not spend any energy, any moment on a twisting heart or the kind of despair that takes us close to death (which is always close to life)? If we're designed to strive to flourish as a species, why are we equipped with both cognitive and emotional consciousness, when the two things often work against each other? It's a silly question; I know the answer for myself, but I abandon the answer and cling, closed hearted, to the question when I despair. For example, a couple weeks ago, when the horse I was working with, learning from, slipped on the ice and fractured her leg, severed the artery, went into shock, and died in my arms. When, one moment she was alive, and I was holding her head, and then she was dead. My heart broke, it broke open, letting in all this sadness, and everything else, too. I was happy, incredibly so, to be there with her. But why, what's the point of all of that? Why is life so simple that it can disappear, but so complex that it can't be retrieved, and that it always remains connected with the rest of existence (through at the very least some physical impact that it had on its environment, if not in other ways that we might consider)? 

         And what is time's role here? The only "moment's difference" between alive and not is the term we give to the difference, the change... Are moments like dominos, separate and individual but connected by movement and the presence of another domino? Like individual life forms? But if so, if moments are separate, individual, then what lies between them? Space? Is physical space between moments? I guess I feel like it would be a moment, what lies between moments. The moment between. But that doesn't make sense. If you keep adding moments, dividing a long moment into smaller moments, it becomes exponential to a point where you lose orientation and relativity, you get lost and can't compare what has become an incomprehensibly tiny amount of time with, for example, the endlessness of how tiny it can get. 

         Anyways, I was there, with that horse, while she was between dead and alive. I was with her between. And I feel between worlds all the time, between dreams and not-dreams, between old and new, between wanting and not wanting, being complete and incomplete, and always in reality. It's as if the world we live in, and time, are somehow like a möbius, each in nature resembling a fabric or flow that's two sides in one, and (perhaps) in turn together, combined, another möbius. A half twist that makes for a seamless trip around the dichotomy, makes each trip the same never the same, as it combines even change and no-change. An exponential growth, impenetrable (and yet inclusive and therefore shaped) by relativity. A movement through which there is no unreframable point for orientation, a network composed of framable and reframable everything, anything, something, even nothing. Could the strange loop be allegorical of the nature of the relationship between matter and energy? Time and space? Of relationship between things and/or non-things in general? 'Intertrinsic' emerges from 'inter' meaning 'between' and 'trinsic' meaning 'in.' Maybe a relationship emerges by interaction, as a phenomenon might by interference, and emerges 'between-in' things instead of between them, like in the domino scenario above. Does change come from half twists? 

         So I'm always getting caught in an endless loop of endless loops, of paradoxes. And ironically, I'm always far enough away (that is, not caught in the loop enough) that I can SEE myself looping, and I can be both. Living. 

For a while now, I've found myself incredibly far away from things I used to be apart of and things I used to do automatically, and incredibly close to things that used to be hard to look at, things that can't really be explained (even though humans have come up with thousands of ways to explain them). And time, which can be understood in many different ways; because of time, things that seem transient can feel eternal. Because of time, or partly because of it, there can be paradox, perspective, and possibility. 

        In the past several weeks, I've tried to understand all of it. I've read about it, thought about it, wrote about it, dreamed about it, laughed and cried about it, asked again and again about it, and I'm still living it. All of this. But what I haven't done is articulated it specifically in a way that seems appropriate for school. Sometimes I feel so IN it, that I feel in between wanting to articulate it and not. I feel paralyzingly far away from the kind of writing that one does for school, and rooted in a space that makes me feel like the only language I've got, and the only way I can use it, is this---my own. I know that it's a place I put myself in, and I've got to get over it, that in the real world according to real world values I have to suck it up and develop the skill to write for other people and institutions, in a way that fits the bill. I just can't help but push myself farther away by questioning why I have such values, and why I'm not fully accepting them, and why instead of making the choice I stay between.

  If I've lost you by now, I'm not surprised. I'm pretty lost myself. But that only means that I've got something real to write about, right?

[The above is an expanded-upon excerpt from a letter that emerged last winter when sitting down to write to a teacher. Never did get a reply.]

(two blue lines)

XXI.

         I can be split, lose the epic battle and be lost, never find the greater reach the greater space, like a shooting star shooting and missing---missing from a point of view Frame of reference Orientation, from here on the planet. No, here in my body; no, here from eyes, behind them, in my head in my mind. But to miss and to lose, success is a part of me, somewhere, there, part of me. I split to lose myself like the shooting star, I split to lose to find that I am growing I am going; and my two halves?

         They are like two blue lines. Shoot past my point of view Our frame of reference: without perfection, two halves, shoot forth in sync with each other, connected (not at the ends in double knots and time irrelevant promises, but) in between, and with half twists like möbius strips, withinformation, live, live a double helix, live a loop that never repeats. Living so beyond questions and answers, so not beyond so that you and I still know questions still know answers, so much a part of it so little, such a winding relationship with time that there are times when it's like music in sync, in time with the inconstant, the ephemeral and the little, the thing or things that we can't help but happen, the unseen, the meaning that becomes our decision so suddenly, and never.

         It's like music that incorporates the messy beats around you, the one within you, the dissonant waves of people together, at different points, together. Music that encompasses all this and still makes sense, that (better yet) encompasses all this and makes real sense, sounds, that everything together Sounds. Like music.

         That there are times when we are separate, when we are alone enough to not make a whole with other things. When we can suffer and smile and breathe and think, One At A Time. When a split makes two separate things, where thinking and feeling can fall out of sync and be one thing more than the other. Where art is not essential like blood in my body, because what emerges from between in is separate is something new and of its own without the things that it came to be in between.

         That there are times when we use one time to get to the other, that there are times when we feel neither/either and/or either/or, and/or both/and. When we feel both/and/either/or, and we have reached another bend in the loop, if only because we feel like it is bending, if only because it is difficult to know and not to feel.

         We can be split, you and I, like two blue lines. We can be separate and still we, without tying our loose ends to each other---we are connected between in, incorporating each other so that you are in me, and "I" encompasses we, and then it's not losing.

         It's both.