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The Heart of Matter

Posted on Sep 19th, 2008 by Melinda : Start Here Melinda
Paul Williams wrote: "Energy flows through all things.  It rests in none."

Why does energy follow one pattern rather than another?  What determines the flow?  Or the shape (when it moves in a stable pattern)?

Perhaps there is a fundamental relatedness underlying all existence - a tendency toward pattern. And what is a pattern if not a set of relationships?

From where the relatedness?  These relationships?  Their subsequent patterns?

And how did the human heart come to be such a patterning device?
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Tagged with: Energy, Heart, Pattern

Certain Knowledge

Posted on Sep 19th, 2008 by Melinda : Start Here Melinda
Genuine authority is important.  It can save time and lives.  But it has to be justified.  What should an authority of knowledge be based upon?  Any kind of knowledge?

The authority of genuine knowing lies not in its absoluteness or finality, but rather in a deep understanding of the contingency of all forms of knowledge and knowing.  An expert or an "authority" on any subject should be able to demonstrate his/her familiarity with the limits of his own awareness and the effect of these limits on any statements or expressions of knowledge.

The trustworthiness of any real kind of knowledge lies in understanding:
  • what each item of knowledge is contingent upon;
  • at which point the basis for knowing something peters off into the unknown,
  • that everything we think we know are in fact islands of contingent certainty floating in an ocean of unknowns.

And what about the possible?
Because our thoughts can lead to real effects in concrete reality, I consider the inner lives of people (our thoughts, emotions, fantasies, reflections) to be an actual sub-category of the real along with possibility itself (whether known, unknown, or unknowable) which I consider a whole order of magnitude closer to concrete reality.
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Tagged with: Knowledge, Authority

For the Ambitious

Posted on Sep 19th, 2008 by Melinda : Start Here Melinda
Your ambitions are vast
You spoke of becoming a poet
One doesn't just "become" a poet does one?

Instead: become a worker
Learn how to place one gritty brick on top of another
 learn how to unravel fine embroidery 
 without damaging the delicate cloth
Discover how to work - one breath at a time

Go ahead:
 take lessons in breathing, eating, sleeping

And, as you do this:
don't forget your ambitions
 common as they are
for they remind you of the width
and the depth 
of your intent

Use them to see
what this is about
Then go and work

Work will be its own poetry
Then
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Tagged with: Work, Intent, Poems

What To Do With Life?

Posted on Sep 19th, 2008 by Melinda : Start Here Melinda
I want to sing the world:

To create little ecstasies
   of cloud and leaf and sun

A row of riotous buttons
   around a picture of you
   smiling at the sea

Put joy in it
   Just because
      We're here.

And later, for myself:
   All the necessary illusions.
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Tagged with: Poems