Wednesday, October 26, 2005
BEATING THE BOUNDS
Reality is a cut-up
We inhabit the world of dreams not just when we sleep. Perhaps as an unconscious defensive mechanism we elide what we see with snatches of random reverie. Trains of association are set off by a particular colour, or the cut of some ones suit or perhaps the way a particular person walks. The world is transformed by our minds into a blizzard of subliminal malfeasance, everything being malleable. What this means is that reality is endlessly reconfigured by memory and chance and fear and bravado & c into something that mirrors our fractured and impulsive selves. However much we try to inhabit a rational, Descartian place the world will insist on intruding, until the boundaries between us and ‘it’ become all but meaningless. Each journey is a leap in the dark. Anything can happen and one way of dealing with this is to pad ourselves with habit and ritual, so that the chances of being led astray are lessened. Of course this survival mechanism can work against us, as we block out the world to the point where new and potentially fruitful experiences are routinely self-censored.
Smash habit!
In walking a landscape we trace paths that quickly become habitual, inscribing the world with our bodies. This process is the beginning of the internalisation of the places we inhabit. It’s messy. We don’t make linear, rational decisions about our environment and our place within it, this process is an amalgam of subjective misrepresentation, prejudice, irrational urges, dreams and the interface between what we think we know about a place and the realities of that place. Add to this the mass of misinformation, cajoling, wheedling, and down right lies fed to us by our consumer-based society and you end up with an infinitely complex weltanschaung that lies somewhere beyond the boundaries of the explicable.
Wake up!
In light of this we owe it to ourselves to occasionally shake off the this self-imposed handicap. Rather than allow blind habit to lead us by the nose we can lift our eyes from the pavement and let the rush of unmediated sensation wash over us. With an effort of will the slough of ‘ordinary’ consciousness can be momentarily swept away allowing us to wake up to the world, seeing it as if for the first time.
Reality is a cut-up
We inhabit the world of dreams not just when we sleep. Perhaps as an unconscious defensive mechanism we elide what we see with snatches of random reverie. Trains of association are set off by a particular colour, or the cut of some ones suit or perhaps the way a particular person walks. The world is transformed by our minds into a blizzard of subliminal malfeasance, everything being malleable. What this means is that reality is endlessly reconfigured by memory and chance and fear and bravado & c into something that mirrors our fractured and impulsive selves. However much we try to inhabit a rational, Descartian place the world will insist on intruding, until the boundaries between us and ‘it’ become all but meaningless. Each journey is a leap in the dark. Anything can happen and one way of dealing with this is to pad ourselves with habit and ritual, so that the chances of being led astray are lessened. Of course this survival mechanism can work against us, as we block out the world to the point where new and potentially fruitful experiences are routinely self-censored.
Smash habit!
In walking a landscape we trace paths that quickly become habitual, inscribing the world with our bodies. This process is the beginning of the internalisation of the places we inhabit. It’s messy. We don’t make linear, rational decisions about our environment and our place within it, this process is an amalgam of subjective misrepresentation, prejudice, irrational urges, dreams and the interface between what we think we know about a place and the realities of that place. Add to this the mass of misinformation, cajoling, wheedling, and down right lies fed to us by our consumer-based society and you end up with an infinitely complex weltanschaung that lies somewhere beyond the boundaries of the explicable.
Wake up!
In light of this we owe it to ourselves to occasionally shake off the this self-imposed handicap. Rather than allow blind habit to lead us by the nose we can lift our eyes from the pavement and let the rush of unmediated sensation wash over us. With an effort of will the slough of ‘ordinary’ consciousness can be momentarily swept away allowing us to wake up to the world, seeing it as if for the first time.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
MOTHS: SUGAR TRAPS AND WINE ROPES
Sugaring: half pint of beer or bottle of cheap red
1kg brown sugar/molasses sugar
0.5kg dark treacle
simmer for 5 minutes then cool. chuck in a jar. paint on likely spots i.e. posts
Wine ropes: immerse strips of cloth/rope in the solution and drape about the place.
Happy Hunting!
Sugaring: half pint of beer or bottle of cheap red
1kg brown sugar/molasses sugar
0.5kg dark treacle
simmer for 5 minutes then cool. chuck in a jar. paint on likely spots i.e. posts
Wine ropes: immerse strips of cloth/rope in the solution and drape about the place.
Happy Hunting!
