Jonathan: I look forward to a visit to High Acres Farm and offer in return a stay at my farm at Bradshaw Vineyards. Your work in the early 2000s caught my developing eye not just for the data viz—but for the social science meets humanity / humanities behind your work. To see you not only evolve to this place as a writer, thinker, mystic (if that's a comfortable term, noticing you use it now and again)—but to also have a homestead from which to share with others as they find their version of a Fragments journey. It's nothing short of beautiful, breath-giving, and action-inspiring. Thank you for shining your light. -Leslie
The perspective of ongoing observation seems more sustainable with life, rather than the state of conclusion. Could process be the climbing ladder for the mystic? They usually say the mystic kicks the ladder after climbing it but from what I observe it depends how you are and where you are going. Maybe somewhere in time the ladder was constantly kicked... and maybe no one could see it was a ladder. Maybe the ladder was a stone and you were a geese. Maybe I was a cow that wanted to fly like a geese and that’s how a ladder climbed out of the stone and the bird out of the cow. Maybe process is the constant access that reveals our world to us. For some that world is underground, in a basement with no windows and for some on the top of mountains. Maybe the process of reaching out those edges and climbing through points is a state of resistance? (Like the shoots of grass through concrete)? The process of observing what isn’t, in order to see; The process of claiming what is, in order to sleep;... you have long arms to fly & swim, that’s why, you see?
Yes, I think so. It seems that any state of finality will only be temporary, soon exposed as incomplete. As a former therapist used to like to tell me: "We're in tall grass. Every now and then, we come to a clearing. Perhaps we find some other people gathered there. And then it's back into the tall grass."
I, like Leslie, have been a witness to your art, a participant at times, for nearly two decades. I am the better for it. I loved watching the film -- in three sittings, straight through the second, and now this, with words. I think I like this one the best, though it may just be that I have finally noticed enough that the words just make more sense, but I think it's more that by adding those stories -- tangential, elemental, necessary -- as well as explanations and tiny wonderful things-I-hadn't-a-clue-about and ideas and observations and quotations and, now, another lake -- you've allowed us in deeper.
That takes courage. It takes focus and effort and energy and skill. And, of course, the idea to begin with. All done right.
Thank you. I, too, look forward to seeing you sometime. Sometime our paths cross again. We're a stone's throw after all.
Be well. And, again, thank you for doing this, in this way, and in all the other ways. We are lucky, we here.
Hi Geoff — thank you for your sweet and thoughtful comments. I'm so glad you've found the weekly writings to be illuminating. Yes, there are so many different parts and pieces to this project that it takes a lot of perseverance to get the whole shape of it. I feel that it could still benefit from some kind of simple inviting doorway — a good New Yorker article, a brief 6-minute film with commentary, something like that. Anyway, something to consider for the future...
Jonathan: I look forward to a visit to High Acres Farm and offer in return a stay at my farm at Bradshaw Vineyards. Your work in the early 2000s caught my developing eye not just for the data viz—but for the social science meets humanity / humanities behind your work. To see you not only evolve to this place as a writer, thinker, mystic (if that's a comfortable term, noticing you use it now and again)—but to also have a homestead from which to share with others as they find their version of a Fragments journey. It's nothing short of beautiful, breath-giving, and action-inspiring. Thank you for shining your light. -Leslie
Thank you so much, Leslie! Hope to have the chance to visit your family's vineyard someday. Best wishes from Vermont.
The perspective of ongoing observation seems more sustainable with life, rather than the state of conclusion. Could process be the climbing ladder for the mystic? They usually say the mystic kicks the ladder after climbing it but from what I observe it depends how you are and where you are going. Maybe somewhere in time the ladder was constantly kicked... and maybe no one could see it was a ladder. Maybe the ladder was a stone and you were a geese. Maybe I was a cow that wanted to fly like a geese and that’s how a ladder climbed out of the stone and the bird out of the cow. Maybe process is the constant access that reveals our world to us. For some that world is underground, in a basement with no windows and for some on the top of mountains. Maybe the process of reaching out those edges and climbing through points is a state of resistance? (Like the shoots of grass through concrete)? The process of observing what isn’t, in order to see; The process of claiming what is, in order to sleep;... you have long arms to fly & swim, that’s why, you see?
Yes, I think so. It seems that any state of finality will only be temporary, soon exposed as incomplete. As a former therapist used to like to tell me: "We're in tall grass. Every now and then, we come to a clearing. Perhaps we find some other people gathered there. And then it's back into the tall grass."
Unless you are a goose :)
Or a quack
Jonathan,
I, like Leslie, have been a witness to your art, a participant at times, for nearly two decades. I am the better for it. I loved watching the film -- in three sittings, straight through the second, and now this, with words. I think I like this one the best, though it may just be that I have finally noticed enough that the words just make more sense, but I think it's more that by adding those stories -- tangential, elemental, necessary -- as well as explanations and tiny wonderful things-I-hadn't-a-clue-about and ideas and observations and quotations and, now, another lake -- you've allowed us in deeper.
That takes courage. It takes focus and effort and energy and skill. And, of course, the idea to begin with. All done right.
Thank you. I, too, look forward to seeing you sometime. Sometime our paths cross again. We're a stone's throw after all.
Be well. And, again, thank you for doing this, in this way, and in all the other ways. We are lucky, we here.
gg
Hi Geoff — thank you for your sweet and thoughtful comments. I'm so glad you've found the weekly writings to be illuminating. Yes, there are so many different parts and pieces to this project that it takes a lot of perseverance to get the whole shape of it. I feel that it could still benefit from some kind of simple inviting doorway — a good New Yorker article, a brief 6-minute film with commentary, something like that. Anyway, something to consider for the future...
Yep...Entitlement
With a dead rat...
https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/10/6131833/flying-dead-rat-dutch
The peak of human civilization!