Done with the dead coconut tree, I turn to a small,
live one as my next target. Rubycon helps my imagination see the coconut tree growing. I
envision the heart unfurling new leaves, the leaves sucking sunlight, water and earth to
solidify the dance of life in the long stem of hard dense wood reaching up into the blue
tropical sky. It would be great if I could capture the
movement of coconut leaves. I take out my little reality scope. Its nest of lenses and
mirrors kaleidoscope the fronds of a young coconut tree. The wind stirs them and the
symmetrical images of the leaves is awesome. The field of triangular images, each a mirror
reversal of the adjacent, creates another kind of moiré' pattern: different from the
superimposition of Rubycon's rhythm on the rhythm of my perception and unlike moiré'
patterns of curves and straight lines overlying each other to make a third image. It is
more like the two fields of view of each eye creating the startling third dimension of
perspective.
The kaleidoscope image shifts awareness into another kind of
perspective of motion. My little brass reality scope breaks up the visual field of
preconceived notions and allows perception of deeper levels of meaning in the observed
movement. The right-left tapestry of images interlock to form another dimension of motion.
Not right, left, up or down, to or from but into and out of. A fourth dimension. And in
this 4th dimension the coconut leaves seem to talk with the wind. I don't mean talk to the
wind or talk in the wind. I really mean talk with the wind.
I beach-amble down to the edge of the water and kneel down, focus
the reality scope on the small breaking waves. Sea discourses with land and air and I
kneel there, lip reading what the three say through the reality scope. They talk in
whispers of foam and sand and movements so delicate and complex their lips look like
snowflakes forming.
Right at the start of the movie, I need a reality scoped picture of
Sea. The script will say, "We alter our field of perception, become new patterns of
behavior." The image will show Sea flowing into itself where the kaleidoscope images
intersect. Later, in the second half of the film I'll repeat the sequence with coconut
leaves. Showing how the pattern of behavior of the leaves alters so drastically with a
shift in the observer's field of perception.
Freddy is packing up the left overs from lunch when I return to
base. She wraps her body up in a blue silk pareo with hand painted dolphins on it. I walk
her back to Zod. "Come back about 4 or 5, OK? I have to make a quick trip to
photograph the coral tip growing and want to do some shots of you with the tide in."
"OK," she kisses me and hops into the inflatable. I pass
her the basket and she motors slowly out into the Yachtus rookery, waving at people
of other yachts as she goes.
Back at the foot of my tripod I open up the Log of the Moira and
make some notes about the coconut dance, write down the time of day and number of the next
film cartridge for the Olympus. It's about due for a change. Then I page through the
scribbling of the past days rereading the odd melange of Magic Sea ideas I've recorded.
There is something I want to think about and now is the perfect
time. Alone on the beach with the Olympus camera, plenty of time to think. It has to do
with two patterns interacting to make something brand new and different. Like the moiré'
patterns I've been perceiving today. It goes back to the central question, "Is Sea
alive?" - but not directly. Although it's easy to give the question a flip answer -
either yes or no depending on your perspective - dealing with it in a formal way is not so
simple.
I look up. Sea is slowly, imperceptibly, creeping over the vast sand
flats toward me. I'll go out there at low tide tonight and see what shells and things are
creeping around in the moonlight.
I flip through some more pages in the log book. There are lots of
comments about mind and perception and patterns interacting. Lots of repetition as if by
saying it again and again I'll eventually get it straight. Here, On August 1st, Freddy's
birthday.
"What we perceive is the difference between expected cyclic
behavior and the true position of self. There is always an error, a divergence from the
expected because all things move relative to each other and are never twice aligned
exactly the same." I skim over the rest of the page which says the same thing in
different terms.
"Evolution is the accumulation of anticipations of this
error."
Here is part linked to today's subject. "As our
perception-ability increases - as our age old memories accumulate - as we widen our
perceptions by the interaction of many selves, we awaken. The universe resolves from a
great nothingness where even photons could not align. Through the white hot discovery of
selves, atoms form stars form stellar systems form ever expanding galaxies. A spectrum of
behavior." I flop over onto my belly, propped up on my elbows, absorbed in the
resolution of the universe via perception.
"But the resolution of cosmos shows no Man, no Mind, No Life,
just as the radiation from sun shows no pink. Non-primary colors are the rainbow dance of
Earth atoms with mind. Non-primary colors emerge from the flow of life through the matrix
of star/planet behavior, the resolution of to be, to change, to have direction as they
interact to learn new levels of awareness." There. Almost. I flip back a few pages.
Here, look at this.
"The evolution of mind does not show a reversal of the law of
entropy as I had supposed. It shows the entropic decline of the error of
expectation." Is it OK to reverse thinking like that? Why not? Every law must apply
to everything. If the law is actually a basic pattern of reality it must apply everywhere,
to every instance of being. And the only exception to entropy is life. Entropy is the
dissolution of patterns into chaos. Various workers have suggested life is negentropy. But
why not have chaos dissolve into awareness? Why not indeed? Nature abhors a paradox.
Last July I wrote about paradoxes, "Mind and matter, spirit and
form, one and many, destiny and free will, individual and community, community and
ecosystem are all bipolar parts of a continuum of information flow. All of them are the
difference between what is and what is expected. Between what is imagined and what is
perceived. Between what is achieved and what is desired. Mind - formed by the interaction
between polarities - focuses on the poles, never on the interaction. Never on itself.
"Mind can not focus on the interaction creating the poles of
being because it IS the interaction. This Magic Sea is invisible because it is visibility.
It is imperceptible because it is perception. It is unmemorable because it is memory. This
Magic Sea is unactionable because it is action." This is all the more effective read
in time to Rubycon.
"The big bang was not a cosmic explosion or implosion. There is
no In or Out to This Magic Sea. The Big Bang is the surprise of coming into focus: the
interval when mind begins its never ending effort to resolve itself into more and more
complex patterns of behavior. This resolution, created by reflection, in turn creates the
direction in change of awareness. It snaps This Magic Sea into symmetry, right and left,
real and imaginary, physics and metaphysics, substance and idea. Reality is mind learning
to see itself and know itself for what it is. It is not an expanding or contracting cosmos
at all, but one awakening.
"What we perceive as we peer into the outer fringes of the
resolving universe with giant radar telescopes is not an older part of reality, but one
less resolved, less organized."
"Nothing can - and does - move through This Magic Sea faster
than the speed of light. The speed of light is the interval of awareness of the cosmos,
the flicker fusion rate of electron formation, disintegration. But the definition of
shape/form/structure by being/not being exists faster than the speed of light. The shape
of the galaxy exists all at once, in every part of it, despite the millions of light years
it takes for light to travel from one end of the behavior pattern to the other. It whirls
together, defined as much by nothingness as by the boundaries of being."
"Damn!" I have 30 seconds to change the film. I snatch the
film, leap up, race over to the Olympus, rewind the film, snap open the camera back and
fumble in the new roll. I snap the back closed and advance the film three frames. The
third click is activated by the intervalometer. Whew. Got to watch the time. I look
through the viewfinder and note the center circle is still resting on the horizon, the
edge still on the distant tree. Good. Another 144 minutes before I have to change again. I
set the timer on my watch to go off in two hours and 15 minutes.
Freddy has left me a cold Pepsi wrapped in a towel. I take it out,
pop the top, and wander off down the beach. A family off one of the yachts has come ashore
and is looking at the beach. There is a man wearing cut-off jeans, a woman with long brown
hair dressed in a one-piece striped bathing suit, a little boy about 8 and his sister who
is maybe a year younger. I talk to the guy for a few minutes, pointing out the camera and
telling him about filming the tide. I want to think some more about this pattern business
and it is very distracting having other people about. There is something 'in' these stray
ideas. A pattern of a pattern of very great relevance. Back to back with the question of
the living Sea.
The little boy and girl from the yacht are screaming with an
alternating mixture of delight and pain as they try to decide if they are playing or
fighting on the beach. I put on the headphones of the walkman, crank up the volume, and
walk away.
 A
coconut on the top edge of the beach is just
poking a tiny green shoot through the sunbrown
skin of its husk. I take a shot of it from
the angle of Ruybon's second phase. The music
seems to be showing me ideas, 'The dream is
not within the seed.' The seed is a memory
bank responsive to a larger tapestry of behavior.
The tree unfolding from the coconut is the
reaction of the seed to those other outside
events; the tree is as much the wind and tide,
air and rain, as it is the memory of how to
react.
I stand looking into the rows of coconut trees, their trunks rugged
with a red fungus, leaves rustling in the wind a hundred feet above my head. The seed
probably won't make it. The beach is eroding here and the place where the nut is
attempting to root will wash away. It is not destined for this nut to live. Unless, of
course... I pick it up and walk into the plantation looking for a proper place for a young
coconut tree to grow up.
The end is not contained in the now. Sea might never carry the seed
to land, or it might take the land away. Then the tree of the coconut dream never unfolds.
Otherwise only one coconut per tree would be enough to maintain the species. We all don't
make it.
As Rubycon steps me back to the beach a sea eagle soars overhead.
It's shadow falls on me. I look up and it cocks its head and looks down at me, alerted by
my sudden motion, the focus of my eyes. Our eyes meet in exactly the same moment of
awareness, just as Rubycon pauses for a silent heart-beat. I perceive This Magic Sea so
clearly it takes my breath away. The pause, the nothing, the absence of being wherein we
resolve into To Be, To Change, To Have Direction by the interaction of awareness.
The shadow of the eagle brings back last night's dream. I dreamed
about Pegasus. It was the second time this week. In my first dream, a host of a TV show
told me, "My secret name is Pegasus." "Mine is Mercury," I shot back.
Last night I dreamed a great herd of flying horses passed over me. One came very low, its
shadow passed over me and I saw its powerful legs and hooves.
It all seemed very important so I looked up Pegasus in the
dictionary to see what the dream might be about. Webster said, "A winged horse which
sprang from the body of Medusa at her death. A stamp of his hoof caused Hippocrene, the
fountain of the Muses, to issue from Mount Helicon; hence, poetic inspiration." The
Muses are, in Greek mythology, any of 9 goddesses who preside over literature and the arts
and sciences. They are the spirit regarded as inspiring a poet or other artist.
Inspiration.
I decided the dreams meant my production of This Magic Sea must be
aimed directly at the unconscious mind.
There are patterns, harmonics, in the deeper parts of our brain;
Jung's archetypes of behavior hidden within our cellular memory, nested down in the spiral
roots of our DNA logic.
To the unconscious mind the map IS the territory. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes. There it is. Korzybski was right, the map is not the territory. The word is not the
thing described. When I think of a coconut tree there is no tree in my head. This seems an
unassailable bit of reasoning. But only to one level of perspective. Virtually every
perception takes place inside my head. The image, the sound, the taste, the smell, the
touch of Malololailai and its coconut plantation and its beach are all represented by a
sensory model inside my brain. This model is not the same thing as what is around me.
True?
Blast my brain with a bullet and this image will cease completely.
For me at any rate. Is this proof of Korzybski's idea?
No. Because my killer would still be here, standing on the island,
perceiving the coconut trees and beach and eagle and so on.
No. Because as far as my MIND is concerned the model is, indeed, an
accurate REPRESENTATION of the world around me. It does not, can not, never did, exist
without the world around me and to accept a logic system based on examining just the model
inside my brain without reference to the world around me is just plain stupid.
I bound out onto the open beach, the Eagle circles above me,
glancing down one more time and then, smiling, laughing, enjoying himself immensely, Eagle
flexes its powerful wings and lifts up higher into the Sky, shifting its awareness out
onto the rising edge of Sea.
In the clear, I walk rapidly north, my mind forming a glorious image
of white sand, delicate patterns of mangrove tree roots, blue sky, clean sweet smelling
sea air, cool breeze, greens and yellows and sparkles on the wavelets of Sea. Rubycon is
the thunder of the stamping hooves of Pegasus in the Mind of Man frightening inspiration
into view.
You can not alter the mind system through an assault on its
conscious elements because the whole system is is the interconnecting flow of
communications between both conscious and unconscious perceptions. Logic and compassion
are both required for an understanding of This Magic Sea.
Com, meaning "together", and passion, "emotive desire". Genetic archetypes deep in the core of the brain govern
passions. When they come together with logic, with numbers, they generate a moiré'
pattern profound enough to elicit change.
| Wisdom is the conscious act of
allowing knowledge its fertility of non-absolutes. |
|
|
Awareness is founded on the shore
of nonabsolutes; the error of expectation is all that exists. |
| Knowledge is a tidal flow,
circulating unhindered through he portals of perception, |
|
|
rising and falling to the push and
pull of greater forces. |
But, in the end, knowledge is
created by the sideways, sliding movement of large quantities of information interacting
with the solid land of concepts: the bays and points of awareness.
Moment by moment, frame by frame, This Magic
Sea resolves itself as it becomes the great multitude of concepts of life. It is a story
of becoming, of self awareness.
|
Hot Damn! That's great! The image works for the movie and reality. I
love those two-level phrases. My mind goes into image mode again. I see the planet as a
huge sphere of bacteria resolving itself into the great multitude of life forms, the
kaleidoscoping, coming together, blending, of self-awareness.
Eagle circles by again, watching me watch it. The interplay of
consciousness could be filmed. First, a wide view of Sea Eagle, high in sky, zoom in to
slow motion telephoto of flying, come in on Eagle's eye then snap to my eye, zoom out to
wide view of terrain below Eagle.
Consciousness is communication between creatures
existing
at the same interval of awareness
Each one of us knows awareness at our own
interval of change
But we change together on many levels
at intervals too fast
too slow
for any one to know.
A population of Fiddler Crabs spreads out before me on a small
mangrove mud flat. Their little burrows riddle the black mud. The males have an enormous
bright yellow fiddle-claw. Each has his own territory marked out in the field of mud. I
can't see the lines demarcating these territories. They are, to me, invisible. Beyond the
horizons of my perception. But the crabs perceive those borders with great clarity and
interest.
They signal to each other by hoisting up the big yellow claw and
waving it vigorously up and down. Little yellow flags saying, "Here I Am" and
"I'm a sexy male" or "I'm a dangerous male" depending on who perceives
the wave. For other males the wave says "Piss off" for females the wave says,
"Well hello there, sweetheart."
Two males decide they have to renegotiate the invisible boundary
between their domains. They fight, circling each other, latching on with their big claws.
 .
Concepts struggle
in fields of conception
to match perception
to ancient recall |
I run all the way back up the beach and arrive at the
camera with 30 seconds to spare, grab a new roll of film, rewind the old film, snap open
the back, drop the film in the sand, scoop it up, blow off the sand grains, curse wildly,
thread the film, snap the back closed, advance the film one frame and it goes click. Damn.
I click another frame just to be sure, reset my watch, and make a note in the Log book.
I am panting from the long run and when I look up, the people off
the yacht are all staring at me. I flop down on the towel and ignore them. Sometime or
other they leave. The next thing I know Freddy is there and the tide is in, "Hungry?"
It's a bit late to go photograph the coral in the Bathtub so I
decide to do it in the morning instead. I position Freddy out on the sandy point and wade
out in the shallow water to take some shots of her as the sun paints the world a warm
golden hue. This is the best time of day to take photographs. Everything is glorious.
Freddy especially, her delightful curves are a golden tan against an azure sky and the
green exclamation points of the coconut trees.
 We
eat dinner on the crest of the beach as Sea
laps quietly at our feet. The tide is in and
the sand flats are gone. It is a perfect sunset,
with vibrant red clouds gradually deepening
to a glowing ruby ember and a sky full of
stars. Music from Plantation Resort belches
across the lagoon like the satisfied report
of some well fed guest. We look at each other,
our eyes asking the same question, "Why
is it tropical resort music is always so bad?" and laugh.
"You're going to get it," she growls with a threatening
voice, coming up on her hands and knees like a leopard. She stalks me in the starlight and
pounces. An armful of slippery silk and muscle lands on top of me and I am consumed.
Much later, reluctantly, Freddy returns to Moira for the night. She
does not like leaving me alone all night. It is, in fact, the first time we have not slept
together in years.
Actually, I've been looking forward to being here
on the beach alone, all night long. "Alone at last," I announce
to the night as I walk back to the camera site. Almost time for another
film change. Moonlight from the full moon is making long shadows of
the coconut trees on the beach. It's kind of fun, prowling about in
the shadows with no light. I only turn on the small flashlight to check
the camera before opening the back. I can do the rest of the film change
easily in total blackness.
|
