And this is why physical matters. Put two people together physically and love could happen.
Nations.
Groups.
A nation does indeed exist as abstracta.
Species
- poems
- Essays
Philippine society is too noisy both in person and online you need to tear yourself from it to hear yourself.
The connection we feel online or with an author of the book is a relationship we have with our minds. These are all mental stuff contacting mental stuff. No physical to mental reactions that touch on platonic abstractions, the objective glue.
This is the reason why no matter how great a picture we have painted in our minds of someone we have met online, our feelings could instantly change when we are with them. This is chemistry. Relationships can occur but these are incomplete and by virtue of their incompleteness they will be weaker than relationships with physical components.
How to be in a relationship with place?
I like how Jack Gilbert does it. His poems are almost vignettes. And they could easily be vignettes seen outdoors.
- Sharpen your grasp of existentialism
- Sharpen your knowledge of ways to execute existential language
- Sharpen your observation skills and mindfulness
- Walk and catch existential images outdoors
These walks are meant to be rewalked. These words are maps of these places in story-form. When words are not enough, images take their place.
Dirt path around Pili Drive
A hundred years ago, somebody else was walking these paths. There might even be no paths. These may all have been trees, weeds, or who knows, just a wide long piece of dirt. But from this vantage point, that walker would have been looking at the same structure in the sky. The mountains have changed throughout the years but they were there. On this part of the path the walker would’ve also felt nostalgic. He would’ve pondered about who may have walked here hundred years before him, what he was thinking. Would that third walker be as curious as us. Or would the walker be a woman running away from the village into this one big tree, grieving the freedom she just lost from a marriage with a man she doesn’t love.
I smell daing
I never knew I’ll ever do this but listening to Steve a while ago and doing this afternoon walk, made me feel the importance of public spaces, of having a public life. I often value being in private, solitary, far from people. But without contact, relationships are impossible. No matter what political stand we hold, the truth is that we are stuck to each other. And being stuck in a nation, being stuck in this space and place, means I need to be with others. And there is a better way of being with others, which is really being around them, really understanding them.
In a way, CM’s work is existential. Anthropology is existential.
Process
- Walk + collect seeds
- Do initial cultivation in diary
- Plant the seedlings from diary to Obsidian
- Publish to share to the world
Even if walking is only methodology, it brings out other issues, issues relevant to enacting the method. How are our public spaces? Are they safe? Who occupies them? Are they designed in favor of one group and not of another? How can we create more inclusive public spaces?