The moment when you realize that the bird poop on your table is actually a little bit of spilled blueberry parfait is a nice moment. You relax into your body a little more, feeling even better about your table choice than you did before, in the empty courtyard in which you could have chosen any one of forty tables. And good choices beget more good choices. Confidence follows confidence. That’s why I spiral, slingshotting off of gravity wells as the most effective form of acceleration. For great confidence cannot be built by obvious choices on obviously good days. It’s built by marginal choices on questionable days. So insulate me not from the margins, from the questions. I’m a bare wire, and while I spark and crackle in the rain, I soak up the extra electrons from the sun inexplicably. Or are they photons? I’m not entirely sure. I think my writing about physics would make a physicist be a little sick. But physicists make me a little sick. Their certainty and approval is a temptation that I may never release. But my desire for validation from the most certain is a quality that I am not in love with. I’d like to accept a validation vacuum without needing to arm wrestle myself all the way to the ground, believing that valid is already permanently stamped on my cards and checks. That way I can show up anywhere and not be asking with my whole face and body, “Is this valid?”. It seems better to not ask, because there’s only one answer I’d accept anyway.
There’s a pedagogical conversation happening across the courtyard from me now. And of course Robin Dunbar is involved. Everyone is looking for someone certain to learn from and be seen by. That’s why I read, often. It might be why I’m writing. But that downward inflection of certainty, of the amateur’s desire to be seen and heard, it seems off if it is meant to instruct. Instruction requires a path that can be written down and communicated, that to “educate” people onto a certain path is the way. I couldn’t believe in this much less than I do. But I accept that many will take this project on. I’ll be over here, not using any recipes to cook.
I like seeing peoples’ eyes over their masks. I feel that eyes alone communicate much more in implied meaning than when they are accompanied in their performance by the mouth. The mouth is often confused, a late-to-the-party player in this game of communication. The eyes are not so separate, in the mind-body separation sense. Now my neighbors are talking about Spinoza. And Aristotle. I can’t hear any of the words, just the authoritatively spoken words of the philosophers. And I cannot help but think about overhearing as a practice. And how one can overhear in a way that is loving, that sees the best possible conversation that could be happening. And Robin Wright! And accessibility to the general public! These are full-on intellectuals next to me. How might I join their conversation? I suppose I already have. I’m a fuller participant than I could be if I were sitting at the same table. We’ve read several of the same books. Psychology, though. And Darwin. Maybe if I glance over with a knowing smile, they will see a fellow explorer of the contemporary public intellectual milieu? Maybe it’s rather an opportunity for me to recognize what it looks like when my “please the teacher” instinct comes up in me, and I want to write in such a way to trigger pleased responses from the oldest authority in the room. And these beards. They might be professors, but the topics are quite rambling. Where does this come from, my desire to please? Father’s Day was two days ago now.
My card is valid, even if I don’t read another book the rest of my life. And it’s valid for nothing more than I can feel and see and hear and touch. Direct experience. There are accessible books about direct experience, but they do not intermediate direct experience. That’s the thing about books: the reading and writing of them are direct experiences, direct experiences with words. Libraries are the storehouses of these word-direct experiences, as my courtyard companions are discussing. And rhubarb. I’m in Wisconsin. It’s the second or third or fourth day of summer. This listening is a direct experience. With words and inflections and voices. Against a backdrop of birdsong and a Mediterranean-looking courtyard. I love trees in the sun in a courtyard, even if I have to squint to see the words that I write. I’d like my vision to take a less prominent role in my sense experience. Sometimes I close my eyes while I’m riding my bike for 5, 6, 7, 8 seconds. I try to feel and see and hear and remember where I am and where I’m going. And I usually drift a little, but I haven’t crashed yet. The birds and the music come through most clearly when I cannot see, when I’m not intermediating my direct experience with words.
Roman Ryan 