Le Lapin

The other day I was washing the plants, both the ones growing in soil, and then the plastic stemmed ones. In my head, I always called them fake flowers. That was acceptable. Or so I thought until I witnessed the world go in uproar over the flippant use of the words: real and fake. Moreover, the maelstrom of rhetoric created so much un-ease or dis-ease, the ability to access wholeness felt more difficult. So some drifted off, tuned-out, or shut-down. These are our choices many thought.

There are so many ways through though…

Fake flowers and real flowers. That day, it occurred to me how vague the word fake was. The faux flowers were actually made of silk or acyclic. And while the blossoms could only smell of dust, soap, or whatever perfume or oil sprayed with, would appear similar to the “real” flowers.

I began to see how volatile my spirit and emotional body has become to the use of the words fake or real. And I often wonder, what is it that people really mean to achieve by using them. If someone is aiming to validate or invalidate through the use of words, I can feel that in my body; do you?

This week’s cookie is perhaps a little half-baked, but I feel this time of blossoming is important to open-up, and unlearn to relearn that everyone’s reality is real and if there is an aspect that is unpleasant, sometimes it cannot always be changed right away. Yet when the reality as experienced is accepted, the space for choice arises. In those spaces, the choice that aligns with personal values and principles, that has time for reflection and respect for difference. ← Acceptable differences seems to be the key in the real and fake dilemma here.

Phenomena of life is. We can see how things are with our senses. The key maybe in allowing ourselves to say our truth, in a way that acknowledges difference. The work probably won’t be revolutionary but maybe done quietly yesterday, a little here and there. Such as tending the silk flowers, or watering those which will live and pass back to the earth.

As for those who seek more…it’s also here. There are many zones and densities of awareness your subtle body is waiting for your attunement to. And if it sounds esoteric, perhaps the only reason I can see as to why, is that I cannot ever tell you what reality totally is, because you are a divining agent in your vessel now. I cannot teach anything. Simply pass this message along and wish you grace.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lelapin.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lelapin.substack.com/subscribe

Photojournalism and art have historically remained separate entities. Photography gained acceptance as an art form during the 1940’s (Corydon Ireland). Meanwhile, the art world has pictured itself as a separate entity from photographic art, and unto Arthur Danto’s views, a realm made into its own ends. On the other axis, photographic art can seek distinction from the rest of the art world as well.

Art posturing aside, the differences defined within fields of observation: on the one end, a visual documentation forming the basis of photojournalism, and with art, based on Danto’s conception, a representation of the immaterial made material. The ability to discern and make distinctions instead of lumping things together rely on the viewers’ embodied cognition, or sense of knowing with the body, of difference when encountering a readymade art piece and a made object in the market. The key discerning markers rely on the knowledge and ability to connect the signifiers of being made intentionally by self-aware will and choice, whether that be through machine fabrication or by representation through observation; the combined intention can often lean on socially constructed context. So it is not only the work that presents as art or document but also the viewer doing the looking. Essentially, the way someone sees creates or destroys through the act of re-imaging or reimagining.

Danto’s concepts around the end art itself in the context of art photography has found a new intersection in meaning during the age of technology. His ideas find themselves at a level of complexity due to the ubiquity of images within media.

One begs to question, if Danto’s conception of art spells its own end through self-referencing solipsism, then what purpose does the divide between observation or of knowing in a visual medium such as photography serve? To look into the material implications of a theoretical medium such as art, can be useful to apply one of Einstein’s concepts, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Here can be found two important features of Danto’s theory. A generally accepted notion within art is that the world of art is somehow above photojournalism. The tell-tale marker of meaning can often be found within the phrasing of “what is art” and what is “just photojournalism?” The presence of the word “just,” signifies an assessment of value of which a person either carries within them knowledge, often on the methods of production enabling a conversation about the production of the image itself, or conversations surrounding representation and aesthetic values. The other feature has been widely opened up by new aspects of image technology today.

Entering the Art World Today

By looking deeper into the notion of meaning within photojournalism and the art world, the implication of knowing or not knowing versus observing states or conditions that exist around the production of images, becomes the signifiers of the difference between art and photojournalism today. As more people become aware of the way images come to be, and the issues surrounding their production, Danto’s art theory, or the notion of difference between art world and non-artworld based on ideas, serves the process of assessing the divide of the world and art-world itself.

Historically, art photography has often imposed a requisite in the posing or planning; the image that was constructed. The photo or image that floats between both document and art, arguably, has increased in occurrence as artists and photographers share internet media, or the realm of ideas within social media. The ubiquitous nature of the image today can be related to the methods of Warhol’s mirroring of production. To reverence Danto’s assessment of Andy Warhol’s Brillo Pad boxes:

My sense is that, is there are no visible differences, there had to have been invisible differences — not invisible like the Brillo pads packed in the Brillo boxes, but properties that were always invisible. I’ve proposed two such properties are invisible in their nature. In my first book on the philosophy of art I thought that works of art were about something, and I decided that works of art accordingly had meaning. We infer meaning or grasp meaning, but meanings are not at all material. I then thought that meanings were embodied in the object that had them. I then declared that works of art are embodied meanings. (Arthur Danto)

In the age where internet and technology are often readily available, or quite literally in hand held devices, the embodiment of meaning could be considered as those who know without handheld access to an internet, and those who observe on the basis of the internet, often at the end of their hands. The viewer can come to see the differences by assessing the experience of the image in their personal bodies. As certain images become familiar, pattern recognition emerges. From patterns, boredom, immediate identification, and other aspects of the conceptual realm flatten and make ubiquitous the image whether made on purpose or documented through observation. Enter the questions of aesthetics, morals, and ethics, and the art-world which previously claimed to be free from such responsibilities becomes confronted with the methods of production. Deflection of responsibility of the means of production, then becomes within the hands of the many.

During the current age of technology, Danto’s assertion the art world had ended upon itself influenced the rise in attention to the choices made in representation. The eternally ephemeral qualities of the image become acknowledged in an increasingly aware, perhaps eros and fantasy possessed user. Whether the image on the screen is constructed or observed again falls to the user being able to know through embodied meaning the difference visual entities are being signified as within a performative art world and the documented world itself.

This increase of nuance diametrically drives the spectrum of the end of the art world through self-conscious solipsism to the opening up of a deeper level of looking at the machinations of production. This refinement being the defining factor between the “look of” art as often passed around on imaging media today, and the rarified encounter of an actual encounter of art on screen or in reality. As the screen itself replaces reproduction and becomes a new layer of meaning in the discernment of art and photojournalistic documentation, morals and ethics come to face a holoscopic spectrum of responsibility.

The art world and photojournalistic relationships to ethics and morals have also come to witness a shift in the forums the conversations take place. There are the sites within academia, the forum, the realm of paid and unpaid publishing, and the sites of the everyday person discussing over dinner, a glass of wine, or undocumented during an art exhibition. The realm of the psyche grows increasingly fluid, and the boundaries for these discussions that once ran against each other, catalyzed to open each other up.

Where days the art world’s post-modernist ideas once opened up the concept of representation as a space of non-judgment and observation yet attempted to hold itself separate from or different from photojournalism are gone. Clinging to the older ideas about art world today are akin to the fondness for romanticism within the larger genre photography often fulfills. The historic ideas of differences have dissolved in the advent of Instagram, where the world of commerce and politics reemerges within the users act of recapitulating an observation.

The hierarchy of the art world and photojournalism in the age of internet technology dissolve into each other, making the separate entities, as mental structures within people subject to rhetoric of thought, dispersed freely amongst the internet.

As Arthur Danto described the end of art in through ideas about the thing itself …

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lelapin.substack.com/subscribe

Navigating life today was supposed to become easier with technology. Yet finding the way really isn’t always easy. Generalised life advice without a clear context and knowledge of situations might suggest something like: simply go from point A to point B, or just shift your internal energy then everything around you will just change, or if any challenges are arising, everything in your life is up to you to do something about. The use of everything in those notions is one of the more extreme forms of socially isolating attitudes accepted today. The belief business has become so popularised and accepted, such familiar phrases sound as if an A.I. bot were formulating the responses out of very different mouths. Nuance and context have to be considered by at least another engaged consciousness present, and not half-tuned out, to form a true relational connection. Our human lives are relational, as we also find in nature, living organisms are not found existing in a vacuum. Therefore some belief business spiritualists use suffering as a means to create dust, perhaps having others “eat their dust” on the way to some kind of economic top.

Even if you have built all the internal resources to manage new territories and find ways, there are times such as the one we are living in now that indeed seem paradoxical through incongruences between what something is promised to be and how things really are.

For example, there have been several instances I witnessed amazing cultural work that was not valued and other instances grand sums supported results that were posing as great but everyone could see lacked some element of spirit and feeling. As Tom Wolfe wrote in The Painted Word a look on contemporary art being in a similar situation to The Emperor Has No Clothes. Few people want to be the first one to point out the obvious because they may receive some kind of attack. The invisible double bind few willingly acknowledge makes a taboo out of describing reality carefully and really makes a lot of not-so-funny, funny business possible. Then there are ideas such as if everyone loves it, it must be really good, or something can only be good if the access to the right people exists.

That last bit veers towards a bit of a sociopathic ethos and leans into muddied areas that are not necessarily true. So when people say things are complicated, I have often found that to mean a few things including: submission to a kind of pathos accepted in systems and structures, and the way perception plays into how someone or something is looked at. The vision one sees the world or other people with is often coloured by the nature of desire, and with the internet another layer of fantasy.

The appearance is one thing and then the reality isn’t necessarily a symptom of a superficial culture but rather a reenactment of The Emperor having no clothes. While we do not have an emperor ruling the taste of people, there are the academies which do not always reflect reality as well. Instead, these places have planted canons of discourse. I am pretty sure we all know what canons are used for!

The time we are looking at involves conflicts of visions, grouped by opinions that are supposed to tolerate differences in values, yet systemically through economics rise up or push down using concepts of virtue while silencing or denying voices or visions. And while there are no bad notes in music, there are tones which can only be sustained together until the dischord becomes intolerable. Who will be the odd one in the crowd to stand up and ask the question, sometimes silenced by misunderstanding the action to be attention seeking and projected as additional disruption when in reality the dissonance is just too much to take. In this way, the principle of allowing free-speech and open air sharing is what technology was again supposed to be promised for and the level of cognitive dissonance relative to channels of media create a situation where people may start to stand up and walk out “of the show”.

My dear, good-hearted friend, Tracy Goodheart, runs a company called Socially Authentic. Her mission is to carve space and encourage people and businesses to be who they really are on social media. This was strange to me at first because I had assumed everyone, and even myself, was being totally “me” online. All the things I have experienced, really did occur. But yet the whole truth is truly difficult to fit into some of these mediums. By including various perspectives, not just my own, the sharing can become long and then clipped off either by the format or by shorter attention spans. The loss of nuance, expected speed of delivery, or ability of moving through the world, often gets blamed on technology. I cannot see this as being technology’s fault, but rather a reliance on it being less fallible than humans and the denial of the realities people are facing on the other side of the screen. Perhaps this kind of mentalisation through image and video fatigue pushes a certain kind of human focus that may bring people to spaces of accepting more automation, more digitisation, less human contact, less real empathy and more fuzzy or projected empathy. The root of these questions ties into trust. Basic trust, a concept I was recently revisiting is formed in our earliest relationships, perhaps even before language.

In addition to accessing the memories that can afford personal insight to basic trust, there is the issue of objectification on the internet. Eros is a funny subject to bring up, particularly between the sexes as some engage in defensiveness or seediness right away. Experimenting is par for the course, in the sense not much can replace lived experience. Any taboos around Eros are still, quite often conflated with blame. “It was her dress that made me behave that way.” And finding out what is true, because that can be subjectively true, but relationally strained. In that several cultures have supposedly given more permission around choice and exposure, would the consequence of such choices then be to accept “that’s how it is?” Would it not be possible for complete respect and appreciation without coveting or taking certain liberties be possible? I would think, communication could solve everything! And we have more ways to communicate.

What’s quite strange about achieving philosophical liquidity and understanding is people don’t always seem to know if that is a trustable person to be around. As people begin to move again in the world, the cultural meeting points have a demand on the development of internal arts practices. The level of emotional intelligence needed of liquid societies is quite high. And in the absence of such development, indeed, certain complexes arise. One of the trends occurring in the handling of such complexes are ritualisations and ceremonies. Humans seem to ache for something the cocoa ceremonies, full-moon gatherings are sold for. A pursuit of connection, which is completely possible and accessible every single day, in even the most banal task is now another marketed product. The marketing of spirit is what I mean by the belief business. And even as people balk and critique the churches, the impulses are still there. Some of these gatherings are less freeing. The spaces people seek safety in, can become double binds. There are countless stories of unethical scenarios, getting covered up, denied, and because there is an appearance of good, the silencing and isolating effect on someone that speaks up can really do the opposite of nourishing ones spirit. This also happens when non-profit board members seek to overthrow or take over something someone else built.

I would not beg to wonder where the social justice marches are for that, but why are these patterns continuing when the elephant in the room can be called out, the dust in the rug can be washed out, and the energy of our social lives can become clear by our own actions.

There’s no wrong t…

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lelapin.substack.com/subscribe

Sitting with it. Standing with it. Such phrases refer to a thingliness of being. Then there’s the figuring it out. So if a figure must be sorted out, then did it come from within?

“Hey girlie, you think too much,” is a phrase I’ve heard more times than …would you expect to read or hear hands or toes to count on? or having more bills or dimes for each time someone said? Even the process of writing itself has become unwittingly predictable, even tragic news has a stale stench of half-molded bread. A little sour, a bit of bitter, such flavours never hurt anyone all at once, yet if neglected, such as dust in the rug, droughted forests, soaked clothes without a fire, the impact of cosmic whiplash stings.

So if history repeats itself, would not someone want to think that through, and try to pick out patterns that were missed the last round? Does thinking too much really mean to simply try not to figure out how to do something different, since it was not working out well before?

Perhaps the invite to think less has to do with labor. Sweeping and counting on hands can be seen or audibly digested. But thinking isn’t always a furrowed brow, but more of a focused line to a network of disguised details.

Time… | cursor blink… | cursor blink. There, not, there, there, not there, why not care about every fiber under the tree to tune more deeply into its being and becoming? There’s only more gained from wondering instead of severing off the thinking.

Another thing I’ve noticed about thinking is the ability to self-sooth through any kind of emotion and not disassociate but relate with my individual perception vessel as if having a birds eye view. From that view, which sounds high up must also consider the birds being eaten by the forest floor. Birds eyes go many places, apparently into some housecats licked paws.

Gruesome. Can it be stomached? How much more ginger tea do I need to brew to digest such unpleasant world events? I’ve begun to understand why my beloved Heraclitus was loathed. Soppy wet facilitates certain kinds of sour mold, and at the end of the day, sometimes self-expression is really conjured by focused thoughts.

Tonight I had thought of sending out the critique of the mindfulness industry, because it seems apparent to me the commodification of thinking really means another form of brainwashing, or to think the same way someone else tells you to. Such as the way a colloquial, “if I had a dollar for…” becomes an expected phrase- on one hand boring can also be comforting. I used to think it was simply shared thoughts that brought people together, but I am meeting people who manage to squeak out a new jam of words, and those differences infuse my world with a form of inviting vitality. Those difference in thought would be annihilated if everyone repeated the same mantra. It’s been written by experts that only so much difference can be tolerated, and I find that quite rubbish considering the health of ecosystems tends to strengthen with biodiversity. Of course biodiversity is much different than forced diversity, or virtue signalled diversity because the differences simply are.

Think more. Feel more. Consider thinking through the span of concreteness and inventiveness about how you and other people feel. It costs personal energy, sure, but maybe therein some new patterns are discovered, and the chaos can be reimagined by reforming the relationship to negative space.

My biggest motivation for thinking “too much” during the day is that when I lay my body down, sleep pours in and washes my brain for me. Steeping my brain with subconscious impressions, creating films to watch at night. Some of those films play out during the day, and I have to say, noticing the scripts, personal or worldly, that hurt or bring joy can become closer to elected.

Maybe that’s what John Knight meant about authoring time. Just maybe the closer more people grow towards authoring their time, the statistics on oppressed and oppressors, controlled and subjugated experiences plummets, and the hands and mouths of other humans remain their own instead of choke holds.

And while hope flows in drastically different measures depending on where you are in the world, we all have the opportunity to look within our roots, those neural networks within the body and notice what thoughts form, and seek out different ways of thinking. Nothing drastic here, even a little shift in tempo, or pattern of behavior, can indeed change the way life goes.

Perhaps that could be how meditation works, connecting the metaphysical realm through the roots of our neural networked bodies. The sea cables connecting data centers and satellites are our own attempt to make our lives as bodies as forests.

So what kind of forest would you want society to be? Please imagine and freely think about this.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lelapin.substack.com/subscribe

Time and date stamping has been a useful tool in detailing records for archives. The publishing process used to be arduous with duration and length, edited by a notion of a singular origin. Authors, artists, musicians are always working on constellations amongst groups-and this complex networking simplistically ascribed as a cooperation amongst psyches. Are the narratives measurable through the results of motives? How much can dates matter when the calendars of the Gregorian cycle are so different from the lunar calendar?

In publishing haikus, I wrote on creme coloured paper, in a red covered, staple bound, Fabriano notebook, in 2015. What details matter? Do they all matter? Ken Lum, is an artist out for my heart working to reveal what I have always felt in my bones: Everything matters.

I have been incessantly reminded of the vulgarity of the time and date stamping mechanism on the internet. While publishing poems on my blog, with mistranslations to Norwegian, then I select some poems and post them on twitter. I doubt the small number of followers notice-because how can someone notice things amongst the pounding flood of information seeking to connect with attention? Machine learning and computer programs are supposed to scan the internet to visualise patterns, but do those machines pick up on the same random nuances a human does?

And when it comes to love, matters of our embodied lives, these moral and ethical issues of trust touch us deeply. The lines between acceptable and abuse, confinement and contentment, nurture and acceptance are all in play when it comes to the open field of trust, and, of course, the internet.

Now, I have come to understand the attitude toward first person positions as having less weight, value, or significance in the field of scientific data gathering. The individual, or anecdotal stories, and messages are often written off as errant data sets, yet anomalies have points. And each point, such as a stone in the water…matters. Those ripples go somewhere.

Proclaimed clarity, however, is something I came to distrust as a given-particularly because I have noticed how easy it is to fabricate times and dates. Fabrications are inherently creations, and they are formed not from a slow orgasmic organising of biological processes, but expedited through our technocratic means. So I am reaching into this chasm between the biological and technological and wondering what logical links can be formed.

Meanwhile, incessantly puzzled by the inherent acceptance of dating systems, tending to privilege physical exchanges, versus abstract lines — for example differences between carbon dating versus a Gregorian calendar. Without veering into totalitarian ideas of date systems, I only mention these things, as they are parts of a confluence of world views and narratives that have apparently given energy to harboured distrust.

This condition has become apparent because of the relative verbal assaults and accusations popular in social media and published forms of communication. If distrust had a form, perhaps it would appear to our bodied lives as craters, rifts, divides, and traumas.

Empirical experience, I was there, this is what I found, doesn’t seem so bad does it now. I often wonder if the distrust of an individual position, was born of an orchestration, playing a tune under our noses we all started to dance to without question. When communication becomes about points, sharp ends, and objects, the deeper flowing meaning of communing, coming together becomes lost.

So who becomes the anointed one, the Heraclitus of our time, to point out the loss? Does individual negligence to loss relate to the abdication of responsibility? the loss is not worth noticing (as so I have witnessed and heart in horror as if the other densities of reality were not actually there). In denying the ineffable, do more individual voices fear to speak up? And does this fear give rise to the violent voices gaining more attention than peaceful ones?

What is the point?

I often ask why does there need to be a point unless we are at war? So when it comes to date and time stamping, trust, is what is at stake: don’t you think? where are our choices and actions, complicit or conscious, leading?

The image above this block of text, requires closer (ideally in person) viewing. The brownish spots are roaming bison. Nearby my childhood home, the Nachusa Grasslands have been a conservation effort to recover and heal histories that occurred on those Illinoisian fields. When I tell friends there are bison roaming beneath nuclear power cooling towers, it sounds like I’m reading from a science fiction novel. But it’s not. It’s real, because people put it there.

I want to do something about the hysteria I’ve witnessed lately-and at times experienced in my body as well, but I don’t always know what is the right thing to do.

Only 8 years ago, did I set out to undo myths, to understand the signs, subjects, and find the truth about how world histories are transposed, how records and people are manipulated to believe. Belief- is something I had sought to live without which seemed to negate the meaning of words themselves. But it was a logical fallacy, you see. I can still use these small words, with the aid of a dictionary, and the source of 1000s of books to realise, every choice and action can be traced to a motive.

In my artistic practice, I work with the nature of desire. And I look for the desires which are real and which are not. Ideologically these questions are not merely but rather philosophically impossible to locate because desire not influenced by media is almost rare (if not impossible) to touch. Every word, image, impression, and story becomes the next generations’ material to base their future off of. And so if we can make up dates, times, events, I worry and understand why there the lack of trust proliferates our internet-of-things lives.

What is my point anyway? The point, as I wrote in another essay, is to not have a point unless I needed to hunt to survive. But I don’t because I live in a city with grocery stores that annihilates a memory of a hunger so strong to kill for. I gratefully, was raised with a hunter of deer and was offered the insight to think about such things, so I don’t panic at the onset of hunger nor worry if I felt such pangs.

To call the aspirations humans are lunging for a utopia, seem to inherently call upon the grounds that we can refer to as trust. And in the absense of belief, we have reality. Reality being that which exists regardless of what is thought.

So while we are connected on illuminated screen-boxes and through our individual motives, nascent desires are not longer considered sinful because the result of restrait tends to bring about hedonism otherwise known as pulling back the ordained to reveal the underlying chaos.

Looking at what was, time or date stamp aside, maybe the film can still show something true-when there are values such as regrowing a prairie, understanding eco-systemic thinking, and looking at how time and date stamps inform or disarm the future.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lelapin.substack.com/subscribe

Testing…testing…hello? nervous system? wowza!

There are some things in life that last a long time and don’t stay a long time, and then there are some things that don’t last very long, yet remain with you a very long time.

The burning pain of swollen red nuggets at the end of scorched, fire-building palms paled in comparison to the first time the word awesome really met its sensory match. Sure, I was just out to get some extra toilet paper, an everyday errand, and this turned into a quick tur (short for walk) toward the ocean. I had promised myself to visit the ocean daily, something my former landlocked Midwestern self always longed for. In my aim to greet the ocean at least one time a day, I received a much higher reward.

Gazing across the black-on-black horizon smattered with glow from Munkholmen, the island of monks in the Trondheimsfjord, there it was: the nighttime rainbow. A wash of green haze spread across the night. And so I stood in gratitude and awe.

Breathtaking….beauty. As forewarned by a friend days earlier about the increased solar activity, I had also noticed my dreams were more vivid, sleep deeper. Though I had given up on seeing the lights as they were not showing up as forecasted, alas, just as I let go of expecting and veered intuitively out to greet the promises made past, my present was met with a familiar faint glow.

Over the next half an hour, the lights would dance, gently, and so I said, that was enough of a gift. Deciding to head back thinking that was an amazing show, and in all, of course there would be more in store.

Standing on the bridge, appreciating the recent fresh coat of paint over obnoxious adolescent graffiti, the night lights came back on again. This time, stronger, deeper, more dramatic in formation. Tears formed at the corners of my wind whipped eyes. My heart fluttering made holding my phone, which is really a portable camera with multi-channel communication device, I could share this sight for more eyes to see.

Proof right there, life isn’t just some hologram we are hallucinating. Whether or not I was standing there, the rest of the people smiling and scooting on their scooters toward where I had walked from, was comforting. Everyone else could see the glee in my face as I smiled and nodded back at them knowingly. We were getting the best show the night has to offer, for merely the cost of time and parkas on our backs most of which can be found in second-hand stores; the northern lights are something of a massive gift to see first-hand.

You see, many days at this time of year are full of dark-grey clouds. A lot like the late winter in the Midwest, the autumn in the middle part of Norway inspires hibernation. It can take clear-up until midday to start to feel awake, and so venturing out to get toilet paper a bit after 10pm really does not feel late at all.

Fully satisfied beyond all compare, I witnessed the most profound dance of rose, white, violet, green, and sublime iridescent shades express themselves across the sky in the least expected spot, right over the neighbourhood. What was dreary and grey, with all the colourful leaves fallen, earlier in the day, was now painted more ecstatically than any of the best television screens. I tried to capture that event in the camera, and failed. (see below) Was the show all for me as New Age philosophy would proport? This time, no one else was standing nearby. I looked across to the traffic street I just crossed and hoped everyone driving by was also seeing the same delight.

Heavens, I must have made the night clerks at the grocery store giggle. Beaming smiles in such banal spaces, finally checking-out with essential supplies I had set out for. I had received more food from the hour under the evening night lights than I did from anything I ate during that day. This kind of experiential, natural, energetic fuel has the ability to sustain a level of fullness beyond all measure.

After arriving home, I chucked off my sneakers and cried! more. Why was I holding back these tears of joy? This rhetorical question was quickly met realizing I won’t get to see any of these wonders when I’m past, and I won’t be able to tell anyone about it either. The most sublime joy in the world lasting just minutes at a time, stays with me so very long for weeks and years to come, because I understand that dance of light is happening whether or not we can see it. And when I say understand, I literally mean I stand under that sky.

The conditions at night welcome such displays, but the rainbows, day or night, are always there. The conditions make the everpresent perceptions emerge from the field. But that field is always there. And so even on a cloudy day, even if my sciatic nerve acts up, or I get news that challenges my hopes, expectations, or plans, the feeling of bliss and gratitude for this life annihilates sadness to the point the joy looks like sadness. But it’s not sad; it’s just so much love my heart could explode. And so my heart does, about 54 beats a minute. I would slow it all down if I could, because even in the pains and losses life is just so good, and I never want it to stop.

But for now I’ll sleep, and rest assured those lights tonight were birthing the future. As an artist paints, that sun creates with magnetic radiance, a spark with our hearts desire at a time soon to come.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lelapin.substack.com/subscribe

Being, the act of doing nothing, is horrifying. Thankfully there is walking. Walking is a splendid act of faith. The bare practice of walking illuminates the visceral tones of action and movement-the basis of the unknowable, which is experienced through being in a body. Placing a foot on a surface presumably stable enough to launch forward from, to transfer the privilege of the support of the body from one side to the other, in a continual back and forth act, walking becomes a simultaneous free-fall, moving through a multi-dimensional space.

Walking goes hand in hand with faith as serving among commonly misunderstood pursuits a human can partake in. The acts which serve basic functions for human beings are often taken for granted, or taken to serve a fashion or fad, which are ceaselessly unreliable, shifting as rampantly as thoughts or emotions. But there is a lasting quality imminent to walking that I seek.

Middle-aged men walking miniature dogs, smoking cheap cigarettes and wearing flip flops. An abandoned cereal bowl I dare not peer into sits perched atop a ledge next to a dollar store book. Sprinklers spitting vapors that smell of chlorine, form meandering estuaries on the pavement. Groups of teenagers litter the darkened corners of parking lots, pining for the liberation from simplistic acts of rebelliousness. The fragrant stench of what one hopes is an animal outpouring and not the remnants of a drunken act. Sticky lines of thread from the hind sides of spiders I talk myself into believing to be far from the scene of my entanglement. These encounters are the dancing stimulus of walking through any given evening on the Westside of Los Angeles. The apartment buildings and light fixtures are reminiscent of the copies of copies of architecture in Las Vegas. The prized symbols of achievement in Los Angeles confoundingly rest parked beneath the shabby architecture, done up by signs of dignity or class, awaiting a disaster should the next big one hit the Richter, perhaps the metal bodies would provide additional cushioning. The aura of cheap parfum masquerading in designer labels and plastic topped bottles makes the solar plexus feel woozy. The oppressive realization not a single soul cares where I am or what I am doing settles into my bones. This outward-to-in experience robs me of the splendid act of walking in an all-too-easily-overlooked faith that must be reclaimed to enact a subtle body of force exerting upon the world.

The first step to navigating this subtle space filled with immense power begins with the choice of walking at night. I move my body when I want to move, and the privilege of having that choice is something I enthusiastically drink in on these night walks. Indulging in the proof I have granted myself a most desirable existence to partake in, walking is a grounding reminder of the faith I must put into the unknown, so all I love and desire to create in life may come forth from the force I have full responsibility for, and appear on the path.

Society favors the night to disempower the body from action in the world, as if the night brought out more hazards than the day. You see, it is the day that is plump with tasteless grizzle, the masquerade appears more convincing, the tantalizing sensations more distracting, and so it is taking this first step into the darkness that is a crucial effort in maintaining an honest practice as a person and artist. Society can act like a quicksand beach, made from transporting material from another area, to give the appearance that what looks like is there, was always or will continue to be. Another favorite activity society likes to partake in is the myth the night is where inspiration strikes. Inspiration is an entity readily available in every aspect of life, material or temporal, and can be used to create whatever it is we decide worthy of making. I ascribe the conditions in the world of warfare, among discourses of economy, race, religion, governments, or any other form of difference as evidence to an insistence human beings are not yet willing to embrace the enormity of the gifts life has to offer us. And so I practice seeking a way to allowing more of the splendor of life into my experience.

Continually, I return to walking alone, in the night. The darkness or solitude is not what is essential to gaining access to the richer aspects of a walking experience, but simply that sharing in walking with another brings with it an completely different dynamic of existence, one of acceptance requiring one be securely situated within the force of Love. A companion in the night, is a high achievement to behold in this life. But a companion is not someone who fulfills a fantasy or plays a role in a dream as a companion. These conflations are easy to make, but with effort in reaching toward the richness of the act of walking, one may grow sturdy enough to allow another way of being to inhabit the most intimate spaces, those of which are most essential to the basics of living in a body. The simplicity is so gigantically confronting, the energy impulses radically dynamic, the experience can easily be horrifying and grotesque, and so the other is pushed away. The pushing can become a mindless shuffle to and from one purposed companionship to another, never gaining the real experience, because in shuffling from one to one, it is really a being alone with intermittent distractions from the abyss of splendor available in engaging fully with the simple acts of living. This makes walking a fantastic practice toward developing the tenacity to encompass the qualities essential to expanding the space within the self, to experience the splendor of the unknowable qualities of life, and share those with another.

Written in Los Angeles, California, 2015, with special thanks to Benjamin Weissman's guidance during his graduate writing course in Culver City.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lelapin.substack.com/subscribe

Another cookie with a disclaimer: this is not intended nor should be used as medical advice. This essay was originally drafted in 2015. How many years does it take to work up the nerve to openly share a curiosity? Turns out quite a many. Disclaimery done, onward, or as one of my favourite friends says “anygo”:

Birth control pills were supposed to equate to female empowerment and better life outcomes. The little dab of supposedly inconsequential hormone protected women from some consequences of intimate acts, furthered the unburdening of male contraception and responsibility. Retrospectively, it all seems even more unfair. Women (whether wishing to conceive or not) live knowing they’re responsible for life.

So no wonder the pill often sounded as a wonderful idea to a great lot of people, and still does. As arguments have the tendency to slide way right into slippery slopes of religious dogma, or far left into patriarchal hate, backed by the buttressed catapults from institutions including academies, or the appropriated science of dramatic comedies, let this article not become another stone to cast from a glass home, but an invitation to welcome individual choices despite social influences.

A phrase I kept getting snared on over the years was something like this: “We will really take our power back now.” Was the power gone? Who and where did the power really go to? and the power to what? to have or not have children? Again, the cookie in this week’s jar is not to tell anyone how or what to think, but consider the implications of engaging in intercourse void of the consequences in generating life.

The pill created a sort of false equivalence then, making the women’s body a terrain saved from the reality of conceiving. And while the false sameness was aimed to protect women from their own decisions, what ended up happening also effected men from conse-questions of decisions. As so often I have fallen face-to-face with reality from the height of idealism, the conflict between the real and ideal, ahem, is birthed right through the bio-logic.

The processes at stake by ingesting pills to alter fertility both rationally and actually impacts biological processes. The human nervous system connects with subtle, perhaps considered too subtle to matter, motives related to cognition. Popular cognition categorised as bias, as rational, as idiotic, manipulative, mythological, or at times honest. So when it comes to common sense, the ideas that move into action, quite obviously implicate subtle scent mechanisms related to attraction and behavioural motivation.

At risk of seeming fundamentalist, dominant belief does not always align with the way nature processes work. Humans, thus far, are not cars or robots to exchange parts on. How much of our psychic and mental realm impart onto the physical is a not a pseudo-science any longer. The metaphysical and material questions once reserved for esoteric seekers has breached the realm of social media influencers. I’m not sure which is spookier, individually or institutionally driven thought policing. Again, this article is not to tell anyone how to think, but rather share a reflection I’ve ruminated on and finally wondered if anyone else has wondered about the same thing.

I have never met a human who pretends to be able to reverse the consequences set forth, by the laws of entropy or others. The unfurling chaos organised by the elements of matter themselves, are not only believed to be manipulatable but are delved deeply into by the field of psychobiology.

Hormones, similar but different to minds, are manipulate-able. So of course hormones drive the body. Who we are attracted to, has so much to do with senses, and the dreaded black hole of: getting needs met.

Thankfully a friend told me to look up the meaning of need and getting. The relationship to lack was irrefutable. How many decades have passed carelessly using the word “need” when it has such a close relationship to death or demise through etymological meaning.

The other risk in this cookie are the lovely cake-like kind: black and white. Thankfully such personal and sensorial choices are not split down the middle dualism. There’s a spectrum and zones of dynamics within nature we appear to exist within. Nature permits all behaviours, from calm to tempests, and subjectively individuals have a tendency to experience “karmic whiplash,” a type of ideological physics.

Since we are fully engaged in the methods of technocratic prophesying, did anyone consider whether or not it matters to the life a generation or two after, the attraction to an individual under hormonal change would be different than when unadulterated? How many women and men found themselves in bed with who was later found out to be the enemy. Could the ideologically justified manipulation of hormones become projected expectation?

The gap existing between expectation and lived experience is often closed by the practice of data. Data posing or posturing as accepted fact. What about data that conflicts with the trends? Are the errant variables made invisible for the sake of convenience? And if forcing silence is the first act of violence, who makes space for the quieter, inner voice to come forth amongst the roar of the masses?

As Ann Crittendom wrote in The Price of Motherhood, the social policy around devaluing life has been in play for 100’s of years. As history reveals, anything is not possible. Some things fail, even well intended ideals fail. The Jurassic Museum of Technology in Culver City had quite the display of all the wise-ideas humanity had before, many of which are frankly grotesque. How many of today’s popular ideas will be looked back upon with horror and wonder?

So I kept on wondering, often looking at the practice of bonsai tree growing as a metaphor: bending growth without breaking, coaxing life to grow in a particular manner. Are the gaps of fiscal wealth, arguments and finger-pointing about systems, are churches or yoga and spiritual retreats the only spaces available for matters of soul/psyche and health? Of course not, a bus ride, or walk to work offers time to consider the din of instability found in ideal-reality conflicts. The crooked bonsai trees varying in degrees of victim blaming or pity shouting, finger pointing and responsibility dodging. Reverence is not only for the faithfully pious.

Yet in our age of plenty, daily reverence can become wholly different. Perhaps the respect for being alive, graciousness in existence, to experience wonder and awe at the complexity of life, arriving through understanding: no matter how great we think we are at manipulating outcomes in life, the quiet call of intuition cannot be ignored.

Forget karma, sleeping pills, or other short cuts to spiritual peace. Life in the now is a concept that is free, yet sells so many books. Perhaps due to that which is free is also bound by responsibility, and that is where we seek guides, leaders, or maps of existence. An external object ingested, becomes a tool of empowerment, when it’s digested. The thing I’ve noticed about digestion and passing responsibility batons from one hand to another, the harder the ricochet back to reality becomes. This experience has not shown itself as a belief, but an empirical experience.

Questions are momentum sloggers, opportunities for resistance, conflict, and growth through different choices. And since the lunging forward of progress shoved many back into our proverbial cribs the last couple of years, the playground of work and shared labor does not have to remain closed off behind the screens.

The notion of Progress does not have to remain in limbo as a regressive condition. The invention of lack was not only invented, but proliferated because children (the inexperienced) and those who never stepped outside their own systems of beliefs are also prone to naïveté, and fall for beliefs, myths, and trusted institutions to guide personal, life choices.

Is Western society actually ind…

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lelapin.substack.com/subscribe

Keeping the flowers alive a little longer, my mom always used worn bed sheets to protect the plants around the house from frost. I sometimes felt the weight of the cotton would break the stems, but instead they knew how to bow to accommodate the weight of protection. Dappled in twilight dew, the sheets I had seen for decades gave me pause. Because I've had this impulse to hug what I see, and like the urge to cut a rose brings about the plants imminent death, I refrain. In pause, hanging in limbo, the sense of longing to touch, embrace, be protected, pushes me a few steps back to look. I gaze in a tearful gratitude at the sweetness of such a gesture. Studying the folds of sheet similarly to appreciating the lines formed through centuries in rocks. The patterns of the bedding mimicking the very plants they cover. Such sentiments are loathed in the artworld today, and so I hid these photos, as many others away. Occasionally tucking in projects, quietly on an internet that could power down any day, I remind myself to print these. Or draw them. Maybe paint, but why? The clinging to these ineffable moments illuminates this place behind my nose, and so it's really the scent of these bed clothes and damp plants that delivers me the present. But I'd still like to look just a little longer. In looking, I forget about fights, I forget about hunger, I forget about anything other than the sort of illuminated pleasure looking at and performing caring gestures gives. These are invisible to the world, such gestures, saved for healthcare catalogues and tending crisis made by wars. I linger longer perhaps because I hope these plentiful actions of care become more in focus in our collective psyches. Because if the psyche really means spirit, who doesn't feel caring and cared for, can't really see any reason to change. It's hard to light a protected and damp plant on fire. Perhaps putting out the fire in the minds of men would deliver the care people are crying for. https://rachelwolfe.com/twilight-sheets/

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lelapin.substack.com/subscribe