Charla's space

subjectivity

I hear the leaves, brittle on the ground.
I feel the bark, smoothly wrapped around a core.
I watch the roots stretch, reach out.

My heart arches like that branch.
I'm moving in the sunlight, a silent dance of nature
transcending time and frames.

Charla Givans

According to quantum mechanics there is no such thing as objectivity.

We cannot eliminate ourselves from the picture. We are a part of nature, and when we study nature there is no way around the fact that nature is studying itself. Physics has become a branch of psychology, or perhaps the other way around.

Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters

He treats his mother, the earth, and his brother, the sky, as things to be bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright beads. His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind only a desert. This we know. The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to earth. This we know. All things are connected like blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

Chief Seattle, 1894

iShuffle

I travel with my new iPod shuffle.* I myself shuffle, dance, and stream along the avenues of my life with a soundtrack amplifying my movements and thoughts, lighting everything I pass or touch. Everything I come towards, circle around, or see fleeting from the sides of my eyes—shapes, images, colours, flying scarves, laughing faces, lonely eyes—become sparks, pods of energy.

And I love humanity. I tingle. My aura expands and stretches. And most of all, most beautiful of all, I created this little world that whirls and sweeps around me in colours as bright as autumn blazing and as delicate as spring. I chose the music and I chose the poetry and books and stories that seem to live en potentia in my body, resonate in my skeleton, rousing my heart to song.

The tiny instrument jumbles the tracks, shakes a synchronistic die. I carry this creation into the world with me, and it reminds me how creative we can all be. How technology is making it possible for each of us to manifest the artistry that runs in our veins. One day maybe we won't need the gadgets (as wonderful as some of them are); maybe we will have learned how to believe in our amazing powers and our capacity to influence the energy around us, and to connect with each other.

It's as if technology is our practice playground in the sense that it makes it more possible to imagine and experience leaps like invisibles and instantaneous energy transfer (isn't that partly what the Internet represents and emulates?). Some technology reminds us of our energy, our connectedness to each other and the universe (like the Native American image of the web of life).

The Internet is maybe a map of sorts, a re-membering or gathering back together the seeming fragments of our modern world. If we can first imagine and experience our historic connectedness in the visible world, maybe we can believe in the invisibles, the magic; the unexplainable, spontaneous, mercurial workings of the universe.

Or maybe we can simply listen to music and smile. Certainly the workings come with a fabulously enticing mixed soundtrack.

*thank you my love

abstract

mix paints
play
capture something with light

measure sensations
with colours

feel your way
with butterflies

that flutter in pain
in love

in sunlight, in rage, in joy.

the body speaks
in abstract tenses

mixing times,
delicate rusted palette.