11. Always On The Move

A human being is always on the move. Sometimes we move to accomplish an important task. Sometimes we move around frenetically, without purpose or intention. Sometimes we move in order to feel ourselves moving.

Movement does not necessarily mean moving through the physical world. We can be physically stationary and still moving. Sitting in quiet reflection does not mean you are not moving.

Real movement is change. It is vital, it is transformational, and it means growth. If you are in quiet reflection then you are engaged in this kind of movement. False movement is repetition. It is mechanical, it is sameness, and it means stagnation. To move in this way is mindless, and the body is abandoned to its own devices. Such activity not always harmful, but it cannot sustain a life. To live we must be moving, and so we must also be changing. Stagnation means death.

10. One Word And Not Another

Judgments can limit the scope of my awareness. If I rush to judge everything I see, then I cut myself off from the opportunity to experience it fully. I have to open myself up and allow everything in as it is. I have to be sensitive to nuances and complexities. I have to hold my judgments at a distance and consider their opposites. I have to allow myself to see even those things I judge to be bad or wrong or ugly.

9. Senseless Language

Language and reason are deeply intertwined. Words are connected through rules we call grammar. For these rules to function they must fit together coherently — they must be for the most part logical. The rules can be bent and even changed, but they cannot be completely eliminated. A language without rules could not communicate anything at all. It is because you and I agree on the rules of grammar that you can read this sentence and it has a meaning for you. We can change our agreement at any time, but we must still agree. The rules we have agreed on are the reasons why our sentences take one particular form and not another.

8. A Smile Is A Question

Sometimes when I wander, I see you. You are absorbed in your existence, in all of the things you perceive and feel and think. This is the whole of your experience; it is everything for you. That I too am here, living a separate experience, is not evident to you, for you have not noticed me.

But then you look up. Your eyes meet mine and your experience changes, and my experience changes, and the two become one: this moment becomes our experience. This new shared experience, this previously non-existent entity, is a powerful one. It arrives sharply and with a surprising intensity. How could this thing that did not even exist a moment ago have us so firmly in its grasp?

7. The World Also Changes

To be open to the world is to embrace all of its parts. It is to accept these parts not as separate possessions but as new components of my own being. Everything I allow to live in me also lives through me. I grow with every new addition. I am transformed into something other than what I already am.

I am no longer one, but many. I am a fragmented entity, made up of the parts I have embraced. The fragments that are me are not in harmony with each other, and this means there is tension. Tension arises internally, in the shifting entanglement of the various parts alive inside me, and externally, in my interactions with other people. There are limitations to what I can become because I cannot abandon my responsibility to others. I cannot allow myself to become a monster.

6. Neither Blue Nor Purple

The subject wants to hide. You want to say something without me knowing that it came from you. You want me to believe you are not here, that the words you speak have a meaning or value beyond what they have for you or me.

You obscure your “I” by speaking in a voice that pretends to come from nowhere. “The sky is blue,” you say. There is no “I” here. Your sentence claims to report an observation about the world with no reference to an observer. Perhaps you want me to believe the claim is true in some incontrovertible way, as though it were an objective fact. Really what you’re telling me is that the sky appears blue to you, and so the truth of your claim depends entirely on the observer, on the subject who is hidden, on you.

5. A Sense Of Precarity

A work of art is finished when the artist says it is finished. Whether the work is then displayed or published or just left in a drawer, the artist will not change it from that point on. When shown, an artwork usually does not come with an announcement or declaration that it is complete. The audience assumes the work must be complete because it is on display.

What if someone were to show a work that was purposely unfinished? The incompleteness would become part of the work. People would view it with the expectation that it might be revised in the future. What if someone went even further and declared that nothing they create is ever finished, that anything shown could change at any moment? The audience might then feel a sense of precarity about the work they are viewing. They might want to take photos or videos of it, to freeze it in time, to capture the different stages of its existence. But insofar as these secondary media are not the artwork itself, they will never fully replicate it.

4. To Hear Only The Silence

The forest at dusk. The blue-green air envelops me in a bright chill. The scent of foliage, soil, and rain and the taste of life itself. With each breath, I fill myself with more life. The cold air revives and invigorates parts of me that have not felt the touch of life in so long. It reminds me that my body is alive, all of it, the parts and the whole. I find myself in possession of an excess of energy beyond any need. I look up and notice the treetops have turned from green to a muddy orange. What is left of the sunlight cannot reach me — the trees gather up what little remains. With each step along the forest path, there is a muted crunch as the fibres bearing me give way. I am a substantial being — an animal with weight. Are there other animals here with me? If there are, I cannot hear them or see them. When I pause to listen, the silence is so profound that there is nothing of it my mind can grasp. How can any place be so quiet? The only source of noise is me, even when I try to be as still as the trees. I hear the sounds of my breath, of my living body. But the noise is also more than this. It comes from inside me. It is the ceaseless chatter of my mind. I do not just absorb the world around me, I also process, analyze, and evaluate it. I must abandon these compulsions. I must match my mind to this great silence. I must allow myself to be as free and clear as the forest. To see only the greens and browns, to hear only the silence, to be like wind through the leaves, a gust that comes and then goes.

3. One More Piece

I want to put everything together into a single, unified narrative.

I want reasons that make sense of all that has happened and will happen.

I want to understand how each piece relates to the others and to the whole.

I want to know the full story — the story that completely explains and justifies the world.

Despite these desires, I am always discovering new pieces that resist explanation, that refuse to fit into the story. I am continually forced to revise the story or to create an entirely new one. Even then, there are pieces I must leave out to maintain the story’s coherence. Pieces that lack justification or are propped up by flimsy or fraught reasons. Pieces that do not seem to fit anywhere. Pieces that resist the very idea that a unified story is possible.