Me, anytime I have a cold brew coffee. Rachel has listened to an unusually large amount of talk from me this morning.
C.S. Lewis on the longaevi
Patrick Harpur, Daimonic Reality: In his book The Discarded Image, C. S. Lewis tries to depict the universe as it was seen through the eyes of a medieval person. He describes their view of the heavens, with its precise system of crystalline spheres towering like a great cathedral, vast but finite, into space. And he is just about to describe their view of Earth and its inhabitants who occupy the lower end of the Great Chain of Being, which stretches down from God and the angels, to man, animals, vegetables, and even stones, when he finds himself obliged to pause and consider an anomalous class of beings.
Lost River country
The dark chthonic waters – essentially ancestral waters – rise from the unseen land of the dead into light and become visible. This process is controlled by ancestral agency, the waters becoming a medium through which ancestral presence surfaces and circulates. (Mark Nemglan) The part of southern Indiana I belong to is characterized by karst topography, where water flows through soluble limestone and forms sinkholes and caves. Sometimes the water even disappears underground in what is called a sinking stream.
“Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad” is the key to understanding the politics of our time.
I need to get outside today. Rachel and I are going to take a walk this morning, then I’m going to doing some berry picking. Also, I’ve been thinking about the Lost River lately so I think I’ll visit the Orangeville Rise and the Wesley Chapel Gulf today.
The animism hidden behind cutting edge technology
In an echo of Bruno Latour’s “we have never been modern”, David Abram argues “we are still animist.” We have built devices that speak to us, even have conversations with us, in an attempt to find our way back to the living landscape of our ancestors. Yet these devices are not radically other; they are only extensions of human consciousness. Our living landscape is thus only ever human, thinning our experience, dulling our senses, and pushing us deeper and deeper into artificial environments.
The future is always unknowable but sometimes its impenetrability is tangible. As I plan for my mom, I have literally no idea how her life will proceed. My accountant brain wants to lay out the possibilities. Yet at every approach to the granite block of the future, it gently but firmly tells me no.
My responsibility in a full cosmos
Robinson Jeffers: As for us: We must uncenter our minds from ourselves; We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident As the rock and ocean that we were made from. How does living in a full cosmos affect my daily life? As dear old Robinson says, it unhumanizes my views a little; it de-centers me. In an empty cosmos, humans alone have agency. Humans can be acted upon by impersonal forces, certainly, but those actions are definitionally meaningless.
One week ago, at about this time of day, our lives went topsy-turvy. I took mom to the ER for treatment of a serious fall and it became clear as we’ve stayed with her this week how weak she has become. That, plus several other issues, have resulted in her qualifying for hospice care. We’ll also be moving her into assisted living in the coming days.
I’ve had so many surreal, hard conversations this week. Rachel has been amazing, pushing herself past her comfort zone in physical care and pushing me past my comfort zone in those difficult conversations.
It’s shocking how fast everything has changed. “Trust the unfolding” has become my mantra.
Fascinating visualization of the change in how 25-35 year olds use their time over the past century