Le Lapin

Twilight Sheets, 2020-2022, Keeping flowers alive a little longer through early and late frosts, my parents would dress plants in worn bedsheets for protection. I worried the weight of the cotton would break the stems.

Instead the plants taught me their intelligence in bowing to accommodate the weight of protection. Dappled in twilight dew, the new appli…

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Though the availability of dictionaries has reached greater numbers of people than ever in the past, including the history of those words in etymological dictionaries, the use of words remains a contention within certain psyches.

This has always puzzled me, as someone painfully aware of her ignorgance, sought to find out, learn, and while at it, continue to find the truth. Just because something is obscured or challenging to comprehend or understand doesn’t mean it cannot be done. And in the loss of illusions, the pain of traumatic experience has created an illumination from within. This type of personal alchemy formed the basis of the Enlightenment, the notion of “the way”, and situates itself at the heart of biased sources of opinions and news and facts.

Though there is a greater volume of information in peoples’ pocket computers, the plethora of voices points to a similar fact of life and buttholes. That’s right; we all have them. So if we are to distinguish bogus from real, falseness from bonafied, this is why I don’t rely on news sources or social media. For one, the main reason I am not a journalist is because I do not want the authority to tell people what or how to think. For another, journals and peer-reviewed journals also have possies with people who can be bribed or fearful of speaking against “their tribe,” but are closer to reporting documented information without a conclusion jumped to. With all the emphasis on NOW circuiting at the same time of “watch out for this invisible thing or that possible outcome”, the energy put into those dissonant tracts doesn’t alleviate the need we have for sovereignty or inner peace. I cannot pretend to know what will, because I managed to regulate a lot of internal body processes with breathing and focus, but seeing where in medical and government systems, even social groups, who or what I could actually trust has been nearly an 8 year long process.

So I really wonder why anyone would want to frown upon vocabulary choices, when the caverns of the mind can be painted with greater specificity? Labs and imaging have greater sophistication in showing us the parts too small to see, and psychologists or good friends can ask questions instead of telling us what to think or do (that’s a best case scenario too, as even psychologists get trained with cues to encourage individualism.) We no longer envision in 2-colour or stick drawings, though those are still trending, the ability to envision in holographic space has emerged.

In this vision space, the parietal space also reveals the subliminal space. Jung isn’t that mysterious still today is he? Of course in some contexts, yes. I mean, what lay under a shroud anyway? a corpse or an livened body? This is what makes the internet such a schizoid place; the contexts are overlapping. In grad school I called it intercontextuality, a concept I don’t think I made up, but somehow drew diagrams that made sense, still at this time. Our different reality layers mesh in alignment or clash, making areas of harmony and areas of dischord. Of course the fastest solution is to shut off the resource, but then it’s to find shared literacy with language and pictures, desires and visions all over again. Where is that space aside from the grandiose space (and i mean outer space) orientation?

I tend to notice a sense of fatigue around media and communication lately. The bore of the projecting, the hunger for relating, the nausea of another self-development workshop. So I went to church tonight, in Paris, because there wasn’t a line to get in. What I got there was a similar thing I could at a workshop; there was song, there was spacious air, and everyone just being present together around some words and symbolic rituals.

To shroud anything in mystery is to toy with someone’s time, and therefore waste their life fooling them of the inevitability of death. Perhaps this way of thinking is how I avoided cults and can entertain interest in nearly any kind of story: because there is always something to learn, even if it’s a bit dry or spicier than preferred.

So when it comes to decoding languages and signs, and making sure when it is understood when I say “parietal or temporal” interests, I mean that: the space inside the brain and the sense of time. Is the parietal area of your brain feeling like a pretzel? a headache? or clear and focused? Even if you and I stood before a tree and saw different parts about that tree, don’t you think we could both acknowledge the tree exists, so therefore it seems obvious to me: existential quandaries are more about subjectivities than actualisations.

As I express my sense of time having been hijacked, I hear others say the same. This isn’t ordinary sense of shift in temporality but a more wide-spread liquification, which I logically attributed to the loss of delegated labor. Our pocket computers were in some places nearly forced into acquisition. Without a mobile GPS device, which mind you, my Google maps worked the other day when my 4G service was randomly not working, we are confined to what is known or forced to learn to navigate with other devices (a compass, landmarks, street names). And as the phone enabled more people to find out for themselves, the orobouros grew.

At a certain point, there will be no space or body for the snake to continue to eat. There will be a lump, an sort of butthole mass. And in this case, I am not talking about church mass, though horrific histories of people watching christ be strewn up on a cross under the lie of his death forgiving everyone else’s wrongs, is really what we look at today as governments choose a well known figure to punish for the behavior matched by his or her own, to show others to dare not seek the truth or risk persecution. And now employers and institutions are doing this: do as I say or else you’re out.

Friend, writer, librarian and supporter of my work had said this among other things that stuck with me: no one is as evil as all of us. I not only lamented but challenged that thought with WE CAN DO BETTER and we have every tool at our disposal to learn how to free ourselves from the violence of our own ignorance. Self-flaggelation is not doing better; self-love can also turn just as foul as in the proliferation of me-first always attitudes. When it some to social psychology, placing the power on a sign or symbol OUTSIDE of our body immediately makes us subjects instead of agents. The thing about becoming an agent is responsibility, and that’s the part I’m not sure anyone wants.

When it comes to every argument or misunderstanding under the sun and moon I have felt, heard, or witnessed, there was usually two people with personal bias describing reality in a way that either placed themselves or the other as higher or lower than the other. Instead of understanding the other, there was dominance, or in the case of someone like me assuming people wanted understanding, beauty, intelligence, love, and harmony, a sort of stomping on- a kind of glee only childish bullies seem to reach for.

And with that, I’m careful with this assertion on art, because I’m not policing what is out there, simply describing from a bias that I think a bunch of other folks are also wondering: WHAT IS WITH ALL THE PILES. Go to any exhibition in the last year or see any photos and you are sure to find piles or heaps of anything: clothes, candy, and people saying there are only copies of copies of copies…well yeah if you just keep doing that, then sure. But have you thought about what really matters to you? Instead of therapeutically making your life a hero or victim in the world, be so bold as to do something quirky or loving, sincere or even cheesy as it becomes the closest to what makes your own life feel meaningful?

I ask myself these things daily; so that is the only reason I feel comfortable asking you: do you think these piles are asks for poetry? Because I had to look up this word while on the Trélex Poetry residency…what the …

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Original lyrics written in 2022, recorded 15 mars 2023 at: Musée du Quai Branly Jacques Chirac Jardin.

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RESPLENDENCE, 2012- 2023, film photography. The images invite the viewer into meditative contemplation on the relationships between place and motivation. Amongst the etheric, material, and afferent impressions the landforms invite transcending into realms within. The dramatic landscapes convey a reverent sense of quiet tension between magnanimous notions of nature and the role of individual human lives. The existentialist vision of nuance weaves emotion and cognition through the performative apparatus of photography. Focusing congruent fields and reflexively impressing their forms through sight into the human body, the exposures lend themselves to questions on life, particularly the roles time and light have in generating Place. Questions of subjectivity looks into the formation of latent images. Rarely, if ever, a 1:1 relation, the memories and codes within the viewer are woven with the perceptions of Resplendence. Where and how does the land out-there form the inner landscapes to dominate or acquiesce? Considering layers of densities in perception, the images paid sensitivity to ways those spaces and forms are accessible or subliminally shielded, psychologically coded, and culturally deemed real and verifiable. While the north shore of Chicago, California, and primarily Norway, including Østlandet, Trøndelag, and Nordland are represented, instead of actual geographic locations, Resplendence focuses on contributing to opening up and inviting viewers into the field of imagination in a time where such places may seem forbidden. 

A book dummy was made in 2023 alongside Albumen Gallery’s exhibition. The spreads are designed to flow, creating a sense of subtle movement within the reader. Saal Digital printed the first book with an acrylic cover and leather like binding. Request a special edition or inquire about publishing at: [email protected]

Further background:  Remembering invites pause to consider where beliefs around the way nature is or works, can reveal a logic proported as one thing, performing as an entirely different function. The foundational motives in authoritarian psyches are based more in vision of nature instead of nature itself. The nature has often been coopted as an alibi for human behavior, and continues to be our field of dreams, projections, martyr, savior, triangulated reason for accepting or rejecting social narratives. As one of several examples, follied beliefs drove forced labor at Vemork Kraftverk during WWII.  Workers resisted orders and broke small parts of the heavy water production. Due to resistance, the advancement of nuclear technology was thwarted under the hate and dominating motivations of the reich. Later on, heavy water is not needed to procure nuclear chain reactions to generate energy. The heavy water manufactured under Hitler's regime was sunk to the bottom of the nearby body of water in Vemork. Insofar as we know about the states of water, there are several forms producing subtle variations in our ability to perceive through sense and what makes sense. And in that sense, of the way things go, resistance aligns with an ode to the season often most feared or misunderstood. All that falls becomes transmuted through the earth under the weight of Winter. The Resplendence series was formerly several different collections Vereri, Heavy Water, and Landscape Psychologies. Throughout the evolution of the project created through intuitive and existential processes, was later found to have congruent motivations. Vereri, to have respect for, can also be found out through conflict, such as in the etymological roots of wær, or war. In a prayer for truth, may all that is revealed in these images living with and through them today, be proof the truth is remembered and found in love.

RESPLENDENCE POEM

a placide horizon feigns a twilight

promising entryway toward oblivion

enumerating plurality as everyone

a toy mountain within sight

precipatory shores impose upon

a horizon hidden behind spines

of mountains hawthorned by

meteorological phenomenon

a yolked encourvature

reaching to kiss the moss lake enclosure

spatters a light upon

a placide reservoir

with stillness emphatically elusive

metallic refraction evocative

respite pool of heavens

graces barrens of resplendence

magenta hues are foretold to be

silvery kisses of hope in a fog laden landscape

penetrated by a few golden slices

feeding forest paths underfoot

begging my bones a curvature to rest upon

a geologically stabilising curvature

kissed by long afternoons’ horizon

placated by the winds’ dappled whimsy

through a darkened underbrush a cloudscape

beckons my footsteps towards a solace

of promise

and barren mirroring

a longing nearly here

emptied vessel in wait

pinnacle in demand

the rivers go rushing toward

a meadow blossoming

and skies threatening

only an equalising, ever lapping horizon.

-RW, March 2023, Paris, France

Photography, 2014-2021, Norway, Copyright Rachel Wolfe, All Rights Reserved.

Prints and exhibition on view at Albumen Gallery

un horizon placide feint un crépuscule

porte d'entrée prometteuse vers l'oubli

énumérant la pluralité comme tout le monde

une montagne de jouets à portée de vue

les rivages précipitants imposent à

un horizon caché derrière les épines

de montagnes aubépines

phénomène météorologique

une courbure jaune

atteignant pour embrasser l'enceinte du lac de mousse

projette une lumière sur

un réservoir placide

avec une immobilité emphatiquement insaisissable

réfraction métallique évocatrice

piscine de répit des cieux

grâces landes de splendeur

les teintes magenta sont prédites

baisers argentés d'espoir dans un paysage chargé de brouillard

pénétré de quelques tranches dorées

alimentation des sentiers forestiers sous les pieds

implorant mes os une courbure sur laquelle reposer

une courbure géologiquement stabilisatrice

embrassée par l'horizon des longs après-midi

apaisé par la fantaisie tachetée des vents

à travers un sous-bois sombre un paysage nuageux

fait signe à mes pas vers un réconfort

de promesse

et miroir stérile

un désir presque ici

navire vidé en attente

sommet de la demande

les rivières se précipitent vers

une prairie en fleurs

et le ciel menaçant

seulement un horizon d'égalisation, toujours clapotis

-RW, mars 2023, Paris, France

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for that which people deem trite or cliché

allow me to tell you this isn’t my first poem

and for those who deem freely formed verse

or spoken word absurd

then be sure to steer around Chicago’s Green Mill

permitting peaceful warriors backup band and

the reciprocal space of witness I felt 13 years ago

and may be yesterday’s excuse for

denying my truth

and so if you allow me to

I want to share in earnest with you

this morning’s thoughts on life

because I did not get handed lemons, I bought them

I drank the juice and used the flesh to do the dishes

prone, as a result of taking bad advice, I have a bit of it to give here:

take a walk under the clouds

pretend you’re in Paris

imagine the photograph at the onset of this post was made there

even though I assure you it wasn’t

remember why a blanketed sky proves more romantic than sun

that is if you want to have a view of what you love

instead of being blinded

having inadvertently torn corneas

I would not advise having to adapt

to not having what you once had

so while I reach into yesterday’s sunshine memory

of which I am not complaining

because my bones loved every minute of soaking in light

instead of shivering to generate heat

the euphoria of pedestrians moving around as Monet brushstrokes

still warned me summer waits patiently

so while spring taunts

buy cheap flowers because expensive ones die too

and you’ll have the spare change for cheese

later on the extra energy to grow a garden

if you so choose

and own the privilege of giving flowers away

so that was some of what I told my friend today

when I asked if he wanted to know how I choose friends

he didn’t care to find out really

as so often is the case

but I told him anyway:

dooers and lovers are for me

not because I love Sartre this decade and may not the next

but because I noticed the people who are busy cooperating with life

getting on with what they can do rarely dare haunt me

those who come back regretting, as if they all read the same script

retrospectively noticing a sincere foolhardy diligence to pursue the truth

and telling it to the best of my ability

saw their inverted saga for what it always was

because for worse aimed at getting better

I am what I am, and do as I say I’ll do

unless life changes course

life made sure to teach me to never fight with it

so words are not nearly hot air alone, I suggest we keep our cool

I used to keep records and notes, but I know I’m telling the truth

so I don’t have to keep track to stay on track

which is perhaps the way of grace

that’s more than ok

because grace bestowed her compassion

many times I felt undeserving and seeking

yet grace doesn’t always delight as tulips do

but wedges space into closed logic loops

so instead of going on again, instead of being bossy

I’ll tell you what I do and see how it fits for you

I donate money I don’t have to donate

yet if I have some then I have some to give

making less for me but others have some too

and we all can make more or less out of a little

resources are responsibilities

we don’t have to save the world

careful of those pretending to

demystifying life enough

made figuring out how to blend paint colours readied

to create routes with greater clarity in their course

an orientation less shy of the most desired direction

I thought could be easy enough

until I met those who love to make shade

to ensure that which could grow, would rot

so their roots and vision could proclaim

popularity as best instead of letting all the rest

feed their roots too

as life cycles through seasons of rebirth and growth

in digesting the consequences of creating

now with more caution

to not bite into lies people believe about themselves

the lies perpetuating hell

and that’s the tell

who I make friends with or not

those who are doing the work and not tipping the boat

content with keeping their hands to themselves

or having and extra set to hold be more than enough

not feigning but overflowing

contented trust maintaining and going, growing

not punching holes in hulls while I’m busy bailing out water

such futility knows only its own sorrows

now this part I do not advise

yet having jumped from those types of ships

though worn out I became a good swimmer

for having been so afraid of water

there were docks that became doors

opening to even a stranger such as me

exploring where open doors lead has been terrifying

yet not in the least I continue imagining a we-

as some say the other is a part of ourselves already

creating an orbit generating a home, which for me requires a specificity

I do make demands and not leave my day up to fate or prophets

for oh whatever god is

what else can earth be here for

but learning how to create more life

from the bounty of what is given to grow.

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Six years ago I was gifted the experience of art with my parents in Denver, Colorado. We saw HER PARIS during the Christmastime, just days before the vision in my right eye would go blurry for approximately 36 hours and then clear up. The doctors couldn’t find any explanation, though ischemia was likely the cause. The challenge on my heart and nervous system the last years has been challenging to say the least. Perhaps most challenging and also most healing was the demand to cultivate relationships which had the emotional and spiritual intelligence to love and offer, not judgement, but support for the discernment I lacked due to heavy reliance (and insistence) on my values for family, harmony, reconciliation, and continuation.

I rarely, ahem, never believe in the “just cut them out and move on,” or “you owe no one an explanation” attitude that reeks of unearned entitlement. Born in 1984, I’m between generations and see the slippery sides of each of the Alpine peaks our civilisation assumes to see out from. On one side we cascade back into bodied and sense driven stone age, and the other the intense abyss of utopian tyranny ameliorated from the body (ack). Pardon me while I do not cover my mouth at the disgust for the desire of plastique machine bodies over cellular intelligence being shoved down our throats by whoever can afford to ensure sincerity remains suspect and the death cult seems more cool….

Digressions make concessions to the soil benefitting from the snow melt under the sun, so they are relevant if we want to continue life here on Earth. Therefore, the woman crossing the street today, in the right of the green light telling us both it was ok to walk, was nearly run over by a damned scooter AND moped. No one else seemed to notice, but I did. And if I had to, would have chased the dude down for nearly running over her. Alas, it seemed as if no one else noticed, and she was clearly uncertain of what happened. Despite our language and age difference, I dug into my stone age spirit pocket and make some kinds of sounds and gestures to assure her I saw what happened, that it was in fact NOT ok, outrageous, and I would take the hit so she could cross the street. There is no need for thanks in this action; it is not heroism, it is basic decency. It is not courage, it is simply presence.

And yet cowardice in reality supplants the virtue signalling not only in virtual realms but in boardrooms these days. Doing the right thing when no one else is looking is not goodie-two-shoeing, it is extending a relational hand to a fellow human being that could on any day have-been or could-be-you. The golden rule is the furthest thing from tyranny or assholery, it could be the very thing tethering our eyes to work in unison together, ensuring we get to the other side of the street or circuit around the sun.

By the way; the image below is not the cross walk in question. I didn’t have my phone (or rather portable computer device) out then. Far as I can tell there were no a******s to be found at this intersection, only excessive silk flowers that boasted of their defiance of seasons to ensure the ambiance of summer no matter what the temperature.

Thank you to the Trélex Residency and for patrons making my work possible. I literally could not be as poet in residence without your support. Therefore you are invited and gratiutitiously thanked at ever corner for making the sacrifices to venture at the edge of my comfort zones possible. If you would consider donating, sharing this post with a friend or becoming a paid subscriber, I can post more frequently with the aim it helps everyone too. Merci beaucoup <3

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Almost nothing in my life seemed like a given; it was all put there by someone before me, who had worked for it, sacrificed, endured things I couldn’t imagine, and all in all it was on purpose. There was a choice, and it was not left up to total chance or an institution to give it. The notion that things are earned was the foundation upon which we found each other as trustworthy record makers. Trust formed by choices and choices to sort out misunderstandings. These choices could be made due to something I feel is rarely given: cooperation. And lately, the ability to ask a question and have it responded to, plainly or not, but responded to instead of ignored. Do we owe that basic courtesy to each other; I would say so, but the rise of vacuous silence seems to be simultaneously growing, while at the same time complained about. So I have to wonder if people really are wanting more Catch-22’s that the strangeness of life already offers?

These words are not intended to romanticise about labor or signal labor as more virtuous than life with ease, comfort, and grace. Virtue has become appropriated ;) often misused in ways to slice and attempt to erase, force or coerce, eye-roll or shoulder shrug at someone. How on earth has doing good been coopted for such malice? And how to talk about this without tying my brain (or yours) in a pretzel, as often the virtue-signaling, grievance committees demand you do (to see everything they same way they do).

This kind of think as I think, but not for yourself, encouragement feels like a regression, and I’ve often wondered why we are permitting ourselves or each other to regress, when there was a time people encouraged each other to grow.

Such contemporary posturing feels empty of caring. Caring has always been, as a friend reminded me “the price of admission,” the antidote to the malignancy of apathy or social games, and best when it’s a two-way street. I find games tiresome, and while I appreciate playfulness I hope you can ride out the coming sentimental photographs, the next few weeks.

I have been asked to share more about the stories behind the photographs or artworks I’ve made. I have to level with you, that sharing the private stories of how the art on my website came to be, feels like turning my life into entertainment, or as people have told me, they’d love to watch a movie of my life.

Yet I had not signed up on purpose for the potentially sado-masochistic dynamics social media can afford. The way I write can confuse some, even though that is not my aim. Of course no one is forcing anyone to join social media, yet that is the very nature of social dynamics. As mammals, we understand our individual survival is interrelated to the survival of others. Unless someone is truly a die-hard solo only, antisocial type, which may have it’s own red flag(s) to carry, there is a consuming part in the nature of knowledge seeking that is inherent in life. So I do not aim to vilify or demonize, yet clarify the various fine-lines we are weaving with our media-rich culture. In this way, I get it, our eyes are the first stage of consuming a meal. And eating up something with the eyes, has become “a given”, something people are willing to share and so it is often not really SEEN, nor appreciated.

If people are willing to pay the price of a Netflix or Prime rental to be entertained, then performing any kind of role also has a price. The Cookie Jar isn’t my private journal, nor a tip jar, but it is the closest thing there might be to one. (I usually burn my journals after copying out the useful bits). A preface, to a preface, I do always welcome your feedback, which also has a value. While we both chew on what could be baking up for the future of The Cookie Jar, I can promise to share some photos that have only positive associations (for me), with the naïveté I started with a camera years ago, and that I aim to retain the ability to focus through that lens. Because if I am asking anything of someone else, then I must also ask it of myself.

These are a few statements I’ve arrived at wanting to ask you to think about:

Attacking education seems like an easy way to undermine the invisible labor of people who are interested in gaining knowledge. And while some are interested in gaining dominance, the whole lot cannot be tossed out.

Attacking those with different forms of education seems like an easy way to assert dominance to people who already did not stand a chance to gain academic knowledge. This seems to be the subconscious stream pumping up the rise of booty-culture.

Now I understand I might sound like a granny here, and that’s a risk I’m willing to make. I suppose I feel a bit tired of all the complaining going on and wonder, ok, so when are we going to organize and build railways? Get serious about the ethics in our resource usage and mining, and start to make the small correct actions instead of carrying on with our grievance committees, which leave little room for actual grieving. We might have realized our ability to live in health was in our hands all along.

And yes, that was a run on sentence. At the end of the day, is it how or what we say and call things as important as what they actually are or do? As I can see it, assuming good intent has not always served me well, but assuming malinent builds glass walls around people, making their ability to connect and relate severed or singed. Not all birds can rise from ashes, some of them never see the light again. Which is not to say everything is doomed to hell or failure. In fact, most of the people I’ve met who are convinced that is where everything is headed seem to be more interested in proving their beliefs than they are in cooperating, with what is good for life.

And finally, as promised a peek down my mori lane:

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With growing ability and ineptness, humans have rapidly, and arguably rabidly, raced towards artificiality in the last decades. The critique of progress as witness to artificiality is based in seemingly obvious discrepancies among perspectives on life. As defined as life itself: nature and ‘it’s natural’ have become nearly meaningless generalisations within contexts such as societal morays and familial structures, both of which are brutally used to justify convicted positions of either digging heels in or marching blindly toward a utopian vision, based on subjective experience. This brutal practice, as rugged as nature itself, attempts to even-out the often-called playing field. Enter the rabidly zigzagging movement of progress, propelling toward our so-called inevitable progression to life with robots, complete with off-the-grid resistance.

The concept of naturalism, though despite seeming old to some remains a relatively new concept given a certain span of time, was made accessible to the general public by French painters. The role of artists within society has often been ideological as well as imaginary. The notions of what is natural, acceptable, and beautiful were part of the artists’ labours. The attention to art was determined by who paid and also who paid attention, what was available-not terribly unlike today. Simply because the appearance of homogeneity is omnipresent, doesn’t mean it takes a great lot of doing to find something different.

Innovation and technology, having reached into the visual realm, again thank you France, for the race to birthing imaging technology, photography has advanced (or declined depending on who you ask) through our palm devices. The resources from, again, nature (and horrifying labor practices), have us all in touch with a supply chain of dangerous cobalt mining and wizzing images and ideas at faster rates. The expediency has done quite a number on our digestive systems, as well as our relationships. We can see the technology mirror back to us, every aspect of our psyches and societies, conscious or unconscious and amplified through the ideas which are considered natural. The situation reminds me a bit of the way horses were once rode into battle. They had little choice as to where the rider’s steered them. In the constructed paradigms’ of West and East ideologies, the ways the cobalt circuits connect our communication devices seem to grow a similarity through fantasies of how things are, versus actually knowing. I have to wonder who is doing the riding of the horses now, or are the horses riding us into battle?

Not so long ago, parents, meaning two people joining together through marriage or agreement, made a lifelong commitment to lives other than their own. This structure, which served humans well to increasing population has been on the decline, for awhile now. Fuelled by adolescent arguments, often described as anti-patriarchal are often reactions to limits, imagined or imposed, upon that which the societal morays and minds are deeming acceptable.

Many of those limits are clearly anger inducing with good cause. There were times, and still are places, where women are punished for reflecting back to men, their unchecked subconscious psychosocial motivations have on others. The call is to relate with each other, instead of dominate. So again, with our horses, slowing them down, is it parental limitations that are as gendered as they once were? Or as women wearing pants now becoming the patriarch they hated replaced with the M. As within the laws of physics, the closest tool we have to understanding nature, push far enough in one direction and a reactionary whiplash is bound to show up somewhere…after all, it’s only natural.

So when it comes to the human races, where is the mark, what horse are we riding in on, and what is the intention? Is it stemming from unresolved traumatic tension and the motivation is rationalized after? Or can we ease up a bit and find a more cooperative playing field? I would beg of the latter, but that is usually seen through blazing eyes as the wrong choice to make in some peoples’ vision. So I wonder, how did peace become subversive? Cooperation and love, taboo? Due to the name of such virtuous actions being used as a mask for disingenuous actions poised under the artifice of good.

And now that artifice, based upon the word artificial, which is at present defined as: made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally, especially as a copy of something natural…are defining themselves as constructs. Being artificial is implied in being fake, phony, shallow affect, and other traits typified by sociopathy. Increasing the tolerance for artificiality works in concert with the rise of behavioural pathologies and their demand to exist.

The psyche itself, prone to manipulation, self-deception, social influences, has a real conundrum in the will-to-power sense. It is as if the eros unloved, perverts upon itself, becoming stunted within a pubescent stage of development: societal narcissism. Within the presence of plenty, the increasingly individualistic society creates isolation, plus an invisible neoprene barrier to connection which shows that, not only has society stepped beyond the doormat but is living INSIDE the home, as well as inside your psyche. All the while, master-class sellers are inviting you to spend more of your money and time on acquiescing to their choice of lifestyle, instead of you choosing your own, often saddled with a legitimate query: can you even choose? Of course you can.

How did we end up so obsessed with being unfree when we have more choices? We can know the choice burden has tipped when psychic shops offer individuals the possibility for paying to give their fate to someone else. Believing we are slaves to a system, prisoners of a world, victims to our own rhetoric? The imaginary cage, tethered by a reaction to structures, however artificial they might have been, had a function, and still do: to mature the creature out of adolescence, towards adulthood. The evidence of this is how we treat our children and our elders. The hierarchy of significance is clearly weighted with a privilege to handing un-earned agency over to new life, as a reaction to “the patriarchy,” or rather the rules that were. The mistreatment and discarding of knowledge based in experience is evident in the way elders are treated in society. This reaction has become endemic in conservatives and progressives alike, but one of several ideological sites the supposedly two-opposites have in common. In efforts for excessive individuation, we ended up with teams dedicated to figuring out how to establish diversity, when the *ahem* natural diversity was residing along within us all the time. The structures which afforded excess, gave us great freedom, and with freedom comes responsibility. Freedom without responsibility is the prime breeding ground for tyrants and image makers that have little-to-no comprehension of the laws of physics.

Anyone care to remember Hitler’s frustration with not being able to master basic principles in perspective might consider the eye-brow raising of celebratory blob making as has high-culture. And this is not to police creativity, not at all, but invite a bit more consideration about our agency around resource usage. Since the technocratic funding of A.I. is likely far, far beyond my reach, the only small tools I have are representative, illustrative, and inviting for open thought. As history has also shown, not all of our ideas are good ideas. A little bit of ego pain pales in comparison to a repetition of an atomic ripple effect of galavanting toward a future without some reflexive reflection. We owe at minimum, a modicum of consideration to where popular belief leads us to go. As things look today…

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Savory Yarrow began a beautiful penpalship with me after noticing a comment I made on Rob Bresny's Free Will Astrology Page. I was disappointed by Bresny's comment as I had once looked forward to reading his astrology. He seemed to take my curious comments as a personal attack (which they were not, and I am careful to not do that), and so a new friend was born out of the passing of an ideal. Savory's poem came by Telegram on the 27th of November 2022, just hours before notice of the possible evacuation of the Island. I am often reminded of our temporary lives here and how lucky we are to be guests here on this place (wherever the place may be). Platonic agape seems to be something people have forgotten, and so I felt Savory's poem was an anthem for our generation; a salve, a medicine much as the name alludes to, so he say and whistled and then I sang. Even if it is or is not in tune...it is the touching sincerity of creation I hope this cookie digests with you all well:

When we give ourselves over

To the moment we are in,

There's a kind of being sober

From drunken self-delusion.

If that moment is what's real

And the rest is an illusion,

May we find out how we feel

And discard all our confusion.

Regardless of phase of life

Or how much we have suffered,

Release the memory of strife

In peaceful now be covered!

Who is the one who sees

That energetic glow,

Enveloped within seas

A creature of this flow?

Naked as wind-blown sand

Naked as lava chilling

Naked as a wave on land

Naked as newborn children

What is their pronoun,

The one who sees how

The world is known

In this moment now?

Is it 'I', or 'me', or 'he', or 'she'?

If it say 'you', then it is 'we'.

If it say 'we', then it is 'thee'..

How else can this eye be free?

— Poem by Savory Yarrow, Hawaii

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Orangizing chaos, was a reductively poetic phrase I learned last winter, from Theodore Barth. As may truths go, many people say them; yet some voices that have the ability to imbue letterforms and their tenants with more gravity. Gravity formed by a myriad of vehicles: vehemence, persistence which is not quite the same as insistence, but really the voice of experience has always settled differently with me than the youth. And even that, is simply a way to organize chaos, to ascribe value, virtue or valour to empiricism, versus novelty. This is all changing now, as social media allows parents to record the profound things kids say. Instead of kids saying the darndest things, they say the true things and reveal their personaes and psyches with less fear than adults wearing masks do.

In the wake of 2020, novelty is not our only societal fixation but a an incantation to call in order to the perception of chaos. As people physically do go bumping into each other, it is not that humans have become a molecular stew alone, but our mental realms have taken a higher value to the realms of others personal spaces. Though commonly blamed, the cell phone is actually controlled by a human, not the other way around. We are information addicted, but is that by being informed we feel we are correct? Good pupils? Fully dilated and wide eyed recipients? And if so, are we receiving the truth or at least both or a few of the sides reality can be seen from a single point of view? The consideration for others, honestly, can be taken on one extreme by the covert narcissistic personality as a puppet glove of control through another, and on the other extreme a glib disregard for the lives of others. As indicated by the infamous stomping baby in Frognerparken, everyone just wants to hold his hand. But no one sticks around to stand by his side.

Without a context, these words mean what exactly? The words used to describe societal conditions and social movements evoke an experience of religiosity, the very thing everyone seems to want to be escaping from. And yet these orders of conduct ascribed as virtues or sins have their connections to the realm our days are dressed up to be governed by: science and reason. These are very different things that are quickly conflated. One of the key tells in my perception of a conflated experience are the boiling over of emotions.

Mental turbulence, as DaVinci had described, was essential for the formulation of a new invention…something novel. So what is it that humans want so much? New! Neu! Neo! The one? What is wrong with what is? Our minds are glued with a kind of slick sludge of options of all the things to flaggelate ourselves with.

And yet the earth, in its eruptions, shifts, shakes, does not only tolerate but speaks to those who are listening. This voice of god phenomena is often ascribed in certain contexts as pathology as well. So if we actually do go into the nature and notice, the glass buildings are reformed deserts (silica) and the older buildings formed of clay and concrete are aggregates of sedimentary things, we can find ourselves as children pointing to duck! tree! sun! and everyday these genres are new again. Enter the nourishing wisdom of naturalists, calm and not so insular and jacked on java as the emergence of tech-bros.

The question of organizing chaos and who gets to be tasked with such dangerously subtle areas of power is indeed ripely in question. As the rise of “down with patriarchy” and every other witch or wizard burning trope of our current time, I wonder how many people think 20 years from now, where does this idea lead to? Are some of these ideas written over and over throughout time?

In a resounding yes, we do have an aggregate of evidence and organization of which conglomerate of ideas tend to go towards: serenity or chaos, or benevolence and malevolence. These are as close to opposities in their totalities as we can get. I often wonder if people think birthing a new reality is THE answer, if that is really some will to power more than a well considered creation.

I don’t know everyone, as I continue to get to know myself, but I spend years thinking about an idea before pursuing it. There are things I would love to create more than others, and I have noticed often the more I push for that creation, the further away it becomes. And yet, governments or institutional structures are not women in labor, though it often feels lately the societies and earth is hee-hee-hoo, breathing as if to birth out some new life. There are going to be certain kinds of people you will want holding your hand in the delivery room, and others who you do not. And our daily lives can be structured that way as well.

What are we getting at? reaching towards? filling ourselves in? or contributing to a functioning society? I don’t know about you, but walking mad with torches through the streets feels pretty barbaric when it results in destruction. The blatent disrespect for beautiful creations that already exist do not spell a positive outcome of chaos but a snowballing of behavior that reeks of mismanaged adolescent angst.

Yet who is allowed to say such things in public without getting egged? The school teachers were condemned by Pink Floyd, and what about the kids who actually loved to learn? I use this example because I am wanting to point to reality that often the quietness, not in the news, is running along, and inviting anyone who wants to join to be there.

Another question to lend from a friend was: what is it that you want most to create? As an organizing force, the questions open up a different way of being. What is it that you want? is about getting, and the luciferic is not only a mythological creature in the bible, but an energy sucking concept. The generating or resonating concepts are focused outwardly. As a woman in a flesh suit like most of you (as it seems) creating does indeed require the sacrifice of other choices, focus of energy, breathing particular ways, possibly pain, or as The Cookie Jar exists for…bits of other pleasures.

A funny sidenote before closing this somewhat sermon-like biscuit, The Andy Warhol Foundation picked up The Cookie Jar as a title. I was tickled by that. As I had come to title this because of a play on “cookies” from your browser stashing on your hardrive, these ideas are stashed somewhere in your attention vector of awareness, and some of them might not be sweet, some might be hard, some might taste ok, go down easy or others cause indigestion. Alas, there are more than a few cookie recipe websites called the same thing, and I already went through the rigamarole of trademarking Yoto, and understand the trademark and patenting process is slow, and costly, but also effective if one wants to fight to be the king of the snow pile of ideas. And while most people agree money is evil; I actually don’t. I think it is that kid that stands on the melting snowpile that could be…not really evil, but foolish. Because the top gives an overview of what everyone is doing, takes your breath away for a moment, but can get pretty lonely which primes people not for the richness of relating but the internal structure for self-destruction if not disciplined enough to ask this question:

The joy of creating is not in the trophy or imagined shining glory of attention, but the satisfaction of caring enough to consider what something created is done in the world. As ancient as yin/yang, good and evil, what intentions are your creations imbued with? And how much of what you think you are, is reflected in what you are doing on a daily basis? Because isn’t it those small mundane things that make life? (.…not to be pedantic about it.)

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