Ruffles Have Ridges
In my last post in reference to David Weinberger’s Too Big To Know I wrote:
That the world as ‘too big to know presents’ a ‘ruffle’ on the edge of knowledge, and that ruffle is interconnectedness, something bigger than knowledge.
My perceptions of the world are often tossed along this boundary— much as when asked “what is the story of your life?” I pause.There’s a real but contrived contract there to describe who I am, and a lot of the time I don’t know.
The ruffle at the edge of knowledge is very helpful in those situations, because in that ruffle is a real pleasure, the moment just prior to a release into wholeness, or into the fear of the unknown. Pleasure, fear and wholeness can better answer who am I than marks of achievement, measures of success, random social clues of meaning.
I suppose in one sense what I mean by ruffle is that there isn’t a straight line right out to the edge of knowing. For example, things get kindof messy ‘behind my face’ when I look into my mouth and throat… At that moment thoughts of digestion, of mucus and breath, of not who I am but what happens to me. If I measure this moment as a moment of data, of what could be known, my biology becomes a context of processes, of age and youth, of well cells and not. There is a fear of the unknown once I acknowledge I don’t know what I am! Even so, I can know my mouth contains 5-10,000 different kinds of bacteria and live with it.
But, this view remains rather solipsistic, self-centered. What happens when I meet someone for the first time is different— who are they? What happens when another day begins? Or, ultimately, what happens when a newborn enters my life?
Although the ruffle can upend my life, it also extends my connection with the world beyond what I can know, it enables me to embrace knowledge as a figment of something very different from knowledge. I can’t put my finger on it, but that figment is something like pleasure and fear. It could be something like will — the urge of all things to create life. Could be imagination.
At that edge is a distinction between grabbing hold and letting go, apprehending and being apprehended. Between what’s called proprioception and being taken up between one’s body cavity/self and being of human. It’s a helpful boundary. It’s a good boundary of being alive.
Ridges in the ruffles are what I’ll call “intensities”. I think ridges are formed by fears, perceived blocks, violences, shocks. They form natural resistance to being taken up, to being apprehended. They are found in the tendency to define the whole by its parts— the world by me. People who seek or hold onto control do this. Lawyers do this. Politicians are defined by the practice. Writers do this all the time.
“Our Proximity” is the working title of a book I am writing here. When it is complete, I will publish it as a collection of essays, images, video,interviews, and code. Love to know what you think here or @artsandideas
