05-11-2011, 12:00 AM
Crazy radio synchro:
This morning I'm in a conference...several academics hob-nobbing about after the main lecture. I'm not involved in the immediate fray...conversations pointed elsewhere while I'm pleasantly forgotten...free to disengage and take in the din as something detached from social expecatations. Something still clings at me though....like a tether of sorts requiring my involvement in the little pools of conversation here and there even though I'm not even remotely involved. Maybe there's something of a subtle anxiety that nags about being thought of as detached...like my reflection of an awareness that observes me on the periphery of these conversations...keeping an eye out for the "outlyer". In that moment, I put a question...more of a directed feeling of sorts that kind of implied a question that, if verbalized, might go something like this..."How do I navigate this...this kind of situation here? How to solve this comlex, fluid dynamic riddle of groups of people and social enmeshment while still being amongst them? How to detach without denial?" All this encapsulated in a single moment of query-feeling. And then, I listened to the whole of the din once more....and a single word rose up, clear and distinct, above the ambient conversational noise. Someone said "abstract"..and then resorted to further conversation which I could not distinguish. My feeling query gathered a little more energy because, really...I knew exactly what was being said...a whole body of knowledge contained in that single, clear word...which doesn't seem clear at all in its meaning. My further query-feeling, once again if put forth into words, might have gone like this..."Is that it? Is it possible? To abstract this seemingly cumbersome social involvement that I am up to my eyeballs in? Career? Family with kids? And all the considerations that whirl around the whole motif?" And in response...in that very instant of putting forth the final question....and abstraction in itself...as if to prove a point: a bright white spot flashed right in front of me on the wall....bright as an ember from a magnesium flare.
No doubt
The path lies within
irregardless
This morning I'm in a conference...several academics hob-nobbing about after the main lecture. I'm not involved in the immediate fray...conversations pointed elsewhere while I'm pleasantly forgotten...free to disengage and take in the din as something detached from social expecatations. Something still clings at me though....like a tether of sorts requiring my involvement in the little pools of conversation here and there even though I'm not even remotely involved. Maybe there's something of a subtle anxiety that nags about being thought of as detached...like my reflection of an awareness that observes me on the periphery of these conversations...keeping an eye out for the "outlyer". In that moment, I put a question...more of a directed feeling of sorts that kind of implied a question that, if verbalized, might go something like this..."How do I navigate this...this kind of situation here? How to solve this comlex, fluid dynamic riddle of groups of people and social enmeshment while still being amongst them? How to detach without denial?" All this encapsulated in a single moment of query-feeling. And then, I listened to the whole of the din once more....and a single word rose up, clear and distinct, above the ambient conversational noise. Someone said "abstract"..and then resorted to further conversation which I could not distinguish. My feeling query gathered a little more energy because, really...I knew exactly what was being said...a whole body of knowledge contained in that single, clear word...which doesn't seem clear at all in its meaning. My further query-feeling, once again if put forth into words, might have gone like this..."Is that it? Is it possible? To abstract this seemingly cumbersome social involvement that I am up to my eyeballs in? Career? Family with kids? And all the considerations that whirl around the whole motif?" And in response...in that very instant of putting forth the final question....and abstraction in itself...as if to prove a point: a bright white spot flashed right in front of me on the wall....bright as an ember from a magnesium flare.
No doubt
The path lies within
irregardless