The Picture that Emerges
...the thing that connects the things
Given the slow but steady growth in subscribership here, it’s probably time to remind (or maybe inform) readers of the core intentions driving these writings.
It might seem, if you look at recent essays like “Kimchi Econ 101” and “…that much of a missile” versus poetry like “Mother of Pearl World” that basically the channel is just a bunch of random writings thrown together. Maybe nice writing, but mostly unrelated. There’s some truth in that, but underneath it all, I suggest that there is also a unity.
When I first created this channel, Substack required me to write a short description of the publication. Here’s what I entered in the text box: “Experimental prose and poetry about inner worlds, outer worlds, and the connections between them.”
Granted it’s a broad mission, and that means it’s got a lot of territory to cover, but it’s also a highly specific mission, motivated by a highly specific sense of what’s most needed in the world at this time. The reason is pretty simple: In my observation many and probably most people these days are under considerable stress. When people are under stress, whether it’s long-term, grinding stress or acute stress in the form of trauma (or, most commonly, both of these things, layered on top of one another), the connection between our inner lives and our outer lives often gets compromised. In basic terms, why look inside ourselves when that’s where the pain is? And how could we dare look anywhere but outside of ourselves when it seems that’s where the next blow, the next threat, the next danger may be coming from?
In such a state, after a while, the whole culture can shift to a point where people in general start feeling like there’s not much reason to focus on inner life at all, as if the inner life may be largely disregarded, maybe a luxury or possibly even a costly distraction. In such a cultural context, statements like “You’re dreaming!” or “In your dreams!” suggest pretty strongly that if we dream, we’re not tuned in to anything real, and we’re probably wasting our time.
Think about that.
Thus we might start to believe and behave as though the elements of our inner life, including our dreams, thoughts, feelings, what have you, are not even real.
Now, humans live in groups. Because of this, through our speech and other interactions, people can synchronize around the partly conscious but mostly unconscious belief that anything that really matters is happening in the externalized world of the five senses. Thus do we arrive at a strange place in culture where the gifts and promise of objectivity and paying attention to things that were revived in the era of the Renaissance are inverted. In such a scenario, unlike Galileo or Leonardo da Vinci, we tend not to awaken through our externally focused senses but instead to fall asleep within them. Of course, everyone is to various degrees entranced by the ongoing hubbub, the flickering images on the screen, the words on the device. We are also powerfully guided and seduced by the mouse-mazes of physical and social infrastructure, and further entranced by the threat of the next industrialized, mass-marketed affront or atrocity on the one hand and by the promise of the latest industrialized, mass-marketed versions of salvation on the other.
To the extent this happens, we become enslaved. On the other hand, to the extent we embrace our wholeness and let our inner lives inform our outer lives and vice versa — in other words, by in all ways allowing ourselves to breathe in and breathe out — our experience is immediately enriched. Life becomes fuller, deeper, more meaningful, more magical and more fun.
That’s my deeper goal. Therefore, in my postings here on Substack I do what I can to encourage this inner/outer connection.
The strategy is twofold.
The first main strategy I employ is to invite readers to make inner connections, to encourage movement toward a recognition of the primacy of feeling, to validate by example the capacity for inner vision, to emphasize the relevance and importance of memory, dreams, and all the inner dimensions and reflections of human experience. Often the writings in this category take the form of poetry, stories and some of my more experimental, nonlinear essays. Such pieces of writing emerge from a special kind of inner/outer dialog within the author, and for this reason a corresponding inner/outer dialog among readers will be helpful in their interpretation.
So when for example I share in a poem that “…the earth is a spherical lens where day and night bring focus to one another,” I’m making a pretty big statement in a very compact piece of language. Only by taking it in and feeling it out, letting such a statement gestate and develop in its natural ramifications, and by seeing how it applies in life as it is lived will the fullness of it really be graspable. I mention this one in particular because in some ways the poem neatly encapsulates the overall unifying theme of this whole publication.
The magic of poetry exists only insofar as it engages the poetic faculties of the reader. So today — this very day — as the sun sets and the light changes, you might notice how your nighttime self informs, nourishes, and helps to define your daytime self. Then again, perhaps, as the sun rises tomorrow, your daytime self, which emerges in you with all of your daytime sensibilities, priorities and faculties, has in turn enormous gifts to offer to the aspect of self that steps forward in the very different light of night. We can notice that, and we can live into that noticing. Each 24-hour cycle is like a long breath of inward and outward focus.
Pardon me if I go on. Point is, that’s an example of strategy number one: An invitation to recognize and immerse ourselves in the inner focus that helps inform our outer focus.
The second part of my overall publication strategy here has been to shed light on the various cultural mechanisms and culturally reinforced habits of mind that are involved in the loss of awareness of the inner dimensions of our being and all that these inner dimensions have to offer us. That’s what I’m often doing in my essays.
As an example in this category, lately I’ve been thinking in particular about a piece published here last November titled “The Displacement of Spiritual Impulses”. Here I suggest that spiritual impulses are innate and universal, and that the current widespread loss of awareness of the spiritual dimensions of human experience (or the compartmentalizing of these dimensions, which has similar effects) can result in the attachment of this human capacity to less-than-worthy objects. What do you suppose happens when the realm of the spirit — call it what you will — long understood to be part of the inner life of humanity, is largely dismissed, effaced, ignored or derided as mere superstition or irrelevant fantasy? I see a risk in this trend. To the extent that we withdraw our attention and awareness from this level of our being — again, perhaps encouraged by living in a culture where many others seem to be doing the same — this withdrawal creates a beachhead for parasitical and colonizing forces to gain access to us and divert that energy toward their own ends. Next thing you know, people are worshipping Hollywood idols and making offerings to corporate logos.
Meanwhile, there sits the piece of writing that explores this. It’s nine months old now, just one among the 93 pieces of writing in the sequence. Taken together, all of this has become a significant body of work, piece by piece.
What I’m gesturing toward in this posting is the connecting theme, the motivation and purpose behind it all, “the thing that connects the things”. My hope is that by bringing awareness to this larger interpretive framework, the apparent hodgepodge in scope, style and content of the pieces published here can resolve into a higher and more meaningful level of coherence.
Exploring inner worlds, outer worlds, and the connections between them — I do my best to stay true to this original mission. Hopefully now you have a better idea why I feel this is worth pursuing.