Dendrites

For every step away we need to take as many back

to here,

now.

 

and yet, dendrite connections below the surface search for openings, build structures that may someday break through.

 

We must produce things,

of course,

but only with the knowledge that they are merely devices that we can put our mind around in order to produce change.

Mental levers

and pulleys

pulling on the structure giving them reality,

defining possibility until it breaks.

Or is abandoned.

We take each to the end of the line, where it crushes back in

on itself.

 

If we can see the structure of the self, get a glimpse

of this self construction,

then the borders become malleable.

Of course, the borders are malleable anyway,

but to become aware of this

is the difference between

openings

and orthodoxies.

 

So we have to look at the membranes.

Membranes defining

self/other,

belief/landscape,

object/space.

And therefore at their construction.

How they are put together. How we restore them daily. How we push and pull on them.

 

We zoom in on the porous link-separators.

We expose the limitations of each of freedom’s constructions,

and search for a way out.

The paradox is that we expose the construction of freedom as impossible,

and yet attempt to articulate freedom.

In some ways this is only a paradox if we see art/education/research/life as

a product

rather than a process.

 

We reflect

on tactics, strategies, perceptions, processes, products, tools, vehicles, selves, others.

We appropriate. We ride the positive lines. We embrace both the theoretical and practical, the rational and artistic.

 

We overlap,

and we respect the parts that don’t. We will not speak for each other. We recognize that other is a category like the self,

capable of movement.

 

We take risks.

We have to. So we must see failure as part of the process. We don’t need more cautious success. Instead – How far out can we go? How much can we change?

 

We try out different modes,

different ways to live, different possibility sets, lateral jumps.

A thousand plateaus.

 

We bet pieces.

How deep?

How much?

How close?

 

We practice

an interaction that oscillates above and below the surface, a re-writing of the text,

a realization of self not as definition,

but as

force,

movement,

life.