Alisonunderland

The rests

2006-05-04T14:59:00.000-07:00

Then it was the study abroad program. I knew that I would enjoy taking some Political Science classes in Norway. Heck, who wouldn't? I now recall the Human Rights class that spurred the Take Responsibility Initiative. It was through this class that the Ethical Purchasing Policy change, Jessica Hamer and I and two others, who have since moved on, continue to work on. It could have also been the Mobilization for Global Justice group that I was a part of in Halifax, it could have also been that I was realizing that to be in an urban environment and feign apolitical is ridiculous. Everything is a political matter because laws and rules are nearly omnipresent in the urban life.

These invisible rules contort our possibilities, and turn us against ourselves. We are not able to make the choices that make us free of rules, because as far as our minds are concerned, those choices don't exist. We are convinced. The existentialist may say that the essence of anarchy is alive and well in each human, and thus, waiting - behind every moment- to come into existence. Perhaps it is through the enactment of this natural anarchy, this entropy, this tendency to resist the pressures of modern urbanity, to feel irritated at the friction of lives lived at less than perfect speed - rubbing against our tender finger tips-, that facilitates the blind pursuit. It is through these sensitivities that one uncovers the flow but not the direction.

The direction is what we choose; this is where I admit that the term anarchy is just that: a term. It is a word for a thing that we think about but terminate by using a term to describe it. The truest anarchy is without the end or the begining that language requires, it is in the absense, or the space between these things that one is undecided, drawn. Then, through the attempt to manifest this gravity, we terminate the chaos, we introduce ourselves to it: we say Hello, and create in it a response. Our living is the response, our will is a huge part of that, in fact it is as big as we are - if indeed quanitfiers are a reality in something like will; it could be that will is a binary system that is commanded upon by a quanitiy of situations. On- off, open --close, depending upon the weather.

I guess this weather is what I am attempting to talk about in both my pottery and my political studies: I think that we are affected by the weather and that we affect the weather. The weather is the context within which we live. It is not only the condition of the world around us, but also the state of mind and need that we are in when we are recieving it. If I need the rain, then the rain has a positive effect, and to an extent, even if I am not needing the rain, then I can still choose to have a positive response to this, but not as easily. I may need encouragement, I may need something else in my world that helps my mind remember that rain may not be what I want now, but - to coin a Jane Siberry song (I believe) from The Crow - "It wont rain all the time"; and one could follow that up with, it wont be sunny all the time either. I would follow it up with, "It won't always be anything except me".

Is it clear yet how my wires got crossed and I decided that I needed to know both languages? I need to train myself to speak the invisible: the rules and the life. For me, the life is the clay, and the rules are the game. I am a little bound up in a place where I think that they both are equally important. People cannot realize that the invisible world of rules is the same world of aesthetic possibilities. Both choices are made from the same place: you. We house the invisible, and live in a world of invisibility along with that which we share as material. I think about Art and Politics as equals in determining the direction of the subject. The more possibilities we are open to, the more ways of solving problems we have; the more rules we have, the more structures we work within to find solutions. My perception of it is a bit messy, but I hope to make it clearer. To sum: The subjective experience is only the possibilities we entertain, be them creative or restricted.

Thanks for sticking this one out.

How did I get into Political Science?

2006-05-04T12:51:00.000-07:00

I guess a few factors lead me to that department. I only wonder now because I looked back on my transcript and found my GPA being sustained by my philosophy marks. Imagine that. I've also been told that I belonged in Information and Communication all along - it was the subject acronym that threw me off: ICS, I thought it had something to do with Computer Science, and clearly that is not nearly as grandious as POLITical Science.

I was in a class with Dr. Dartnell, a fine and interdisciplinarian Political Scientist - doesn't that sound grand? A Political Scientist. Dartnell is a tight and surgical instructor, engaging and demanding. I took Communication and International Relations and was hooked. We were talking about things that I could relate to. I had not - and still have not- taken any lower level POLs classes, yet I am graduating in just a coupla weeks. I had no idea what part of the picture I was missing. Perhaps I underestimate myself, perhaps not.

I started in university as an inner response to a few circumstances that befell me: I was living in the forest building a kiln with a person that did not love me. I was making pots that I wanted to say more than I was capable of forming words around. Though I was living in isolation, I wanted to make sure that I was helping people to feel what a hand made object does to bring back the sense of being human, of being human to another human. Perhaps I wanted that because my situation in the forest was slightly less that human, more animal and primal, less civilized. I was all of a sudden seeking escape in books, feeling like there was a world that could appreciate me, that I could appreciate anew, since my sojourn, since my heart break, since my altered state, since my new fate befell me and I fell out of the woods onto a cliff next to the sea.

Making Pots, that is a universally important feature of my being, to be sure, and not just ones that are useul in the traditional sense, but also ones that break open windows, or tap on them lightly and ask to be let in, or are just seen in the yard collecting rain, housing snails.

I wanted to say more, and I wonder what I am saying now that I could not before. I wonder what I was and where I have been. I wonder what it means, all that I have seen. It has been said that it only makes sense once we 'go home' to meet our maker, or that we can only make sense of segments at a time, but really, is it because a half written book is without the consciousness neccessary to make a thorough reflection? I cannot reflect, because the pieces, the peaces are incomplete, I see what I want to. I self authorize.

Perhaps the reason I got into political science is becuase I knew I could get the Sandra Irving Schoolarship, or that I knew that I could speak the language of this presumed authority. I know I want to stick up to the man for the fellow little people, and to explain how to mobilize. To be honest, it made more sense when I thought about it before, and now I see that it is way more complicated and not formulated to be changing. It is the anticatalyst, this systemic legacy. It's like some sort of perpetual forced intercourse or dialogue that people are born into, this political economic system. The resistence does make it more painful, but still I believe that people can collectively dismess the mess and work together, but that is the rub. The working together part is the rub, rather than the resistance.

I wanted to figure out what brings us all together, what makes us all human. I wanted to craft a way out of this sleepy system into a realized and respectful resistence.

I still do, more and more.........................

imagination:theunderland

2006-04-26T17:13:00.000-07:00

I m A g I n A t I o N ........................exerpts.........phil o mind.......

One can wonder what possibilities are available in the world as one knows it. One can create ways of understanding the world as well as inventing ways to make the world different. People are sometimes like barometers, responding to societal, cultural pressure; people are sometimes like artists and philosophers, constantly innovating and exercising our faculty of imagination. Our capacity to build a world of possibilities among the facts is our imagination. Imagination is the faculty of thought that builds possibilities and creates solutions...........................................................................................
People can believe what they want, imagine what they want, have different mental images for each word than anyone else, and think in totally different ways, but we are all still people and are subject to the pressures of society, culture, material privilege and mental capacities. Belief is not an empirical process; one can doubt or believe, but one cannot believe more or better than another, like one can have more knowledge about something.................................................................................
At first I thought of our behaviour as manifestations of the immaterial, but that thought is still anchored to dualism. We can be understood by others according to what criteria we make available, the criteria we manifest without realizing we are doing it, and also by the interpretations of the observers. One may walk down a long road and sprinkle a fine gold dusting behind them. To the subject, this dust is to help remember where they have been, but to another, this act is mysterious; the intent could be construed in many ways. Perhaps the true intention could never be described by other’s observation, though the true intention does not change, what the subject has done is what can be understood.
Setting aside all thoughts on the differing stages of a soul’s journey, what is left to talk about is the life of a being. Wittgenstein said, “one may say this: if one sees the behaviour of a living being, one sees its soul”. What grace this thinker wielded. What other criteria for manifestations of the immaterial could one regard? Of course this is more dualism. What I mean is: what else can we know about a person than how they behave? We can’t even thoroughly know the history of their behaviour, we can only imagine what the other person’s experience of life is like. ....................

floating clouds

2006-04-26T08:24:00.000-07:00

managemental
conversational
gold dust bridge
windy
desert cold
experiments
molds
temporal folds
open clear paths

where do I start?

2006-04-25T11:42:00.000-07:00

I suppose we are seamless, aside from the navel. Ultimatley - and do we ever really know what that means?- it seems like we have no boundaries, no layers, no matter to compare our minds to, no bottles, no order when we look back.
Perhaps even the differences between us are symbolic and aesthetic when all is said and done. I imagine that you and I are one already, in anticipation of it. I imagine that you and I are not anticipating it but experiencing. I imagine that we live here and there and in all places at once in all phases of morphose to manifest the gradations and curves and splashes that make the loudest silence: being. But still, where do I start, what is not historic?

Hook, line and sinker

2006-04-14T12:43:00.000-07:00

Have you ever been caught with your guard down?

Have you ever been sort of lightly waking across the ground, then get a look at something strange and get consumed by it? Imagine stumbling over a secret door in the ground; imagine walking like a swan, then all of a sudden you're in ostrich posture, then you're a gopher, then you're a fish..... and you don't even know how to swim, or what swimming even is.

Then, the best part, after all this effort for trying to understand what was once completely outside of your nature, thirst strikes like lightening, like nothing you've ever wanted so much. What is in this underworld to placate this longing? You are immersed in water, for the first time ever and you thirst. That is what some things feel like to me: thirst under water.

The things there is no words for, the things there are entire worlds for, the things that have no name but consume an entire plain; these things are the thirsts with no arrow to direct one's pursuit, since you are immersed in the satisfaction of it, with one's mouth closed.

Opening one's mouth to utter a complaint would even be enough, but the stiffling holds the thrist firmly in place. Smiles would even allow the cure to seep into one's face.

It's because I am frozen that these things do not occur to me. The water, once a life and a world are brought solidly before the sun and colmnally become a core. Icy branches spread tips so crispy clear, yet at the center the stillness of a being not being heard, turned hard, and hard to be around, has eyes open and mouth down.

A five minute clip

2006-04-07T10:28:00.000-07:00

smaller moments

composed of fine,

graduated cylinders

smaller congruencies

wrapping finger prints over time tables

something thoughtless

others annotated

positions formed over

again and again

there are

divided moments

two eyes

again

audience

2006-04-07T06:19:00.000-07:00

So, I have come to a very slight epiphany. It has been my struggle, with writing, to discover who my audience is. It is not useful for me to think about my professors as the audience, because we talk about the subject at length and they are often already an authority; I tend to leave important explanations out because, to me, they already know.

If I think about my audience as people like yourself, who I have given no prior information to, perhaps it would be of some use to composing an elaborate, yet 'generous' line of reasoning.

On a lighter note....

My friend Phil sent me a package in the mail. (Would working at the post office not be the best job ever? It's prolly even better than working at an ice cream shop, though the extreme seasonal demand of the ICE could over shadow the consistent excitement of delivering packages; but wait, think of all the holidays). I was so friggin happy! So upon ripping the bubblevelope I uncovered a 'subtle' t-shirt http://www.anticon.com/. Also two CD's (one bullfrog - a kidkoala - http://www.kidkoala.com side project, " We've got news for all you beautiful people: there are a lot more of us than there are of you"- and the recent subtle release!!!!!), a mixed tape - I have yet to listen to- and a picture of him and his boyfriend. Phil is doing something western to his facial hair, and he looks so happy!!!! He is in Vancouver, and come to think of it I once thought it would be best for him to get a job as a post man, for reasons I mentioned earlier - now I also think about people getting bills and how they may not like that- and because he could go around with huge ear phones listening to something earth breaking, wearing aviator shades and smiling this awesome smile that is a preclude to one of the most sought after laughs ever, while strutting from home to home sprinkling the latest message.

Phil and I have been friends since I lived in the woods. We would take weekend trips to Halifax and he would familliarate me with the latest hip hopular creations he had run across. I love his taste in music, and things in general actually - full disclosure, he loves my pottery. It is unclear how else he could arrive at such high thoughts on life except for perhaps a naturally discerning sense. He is a chef. I last saw him on my way to Japan in 2004. I miss him, we can relate to one another in a certain way. We walked their dog together in Stanley Park and he gave me his - now my- favortite jeans. I gave him a sushi set I made.

Do we not all have that quality with each person? This extended certainty? I wonder if it is granted and fumbled and re thrown like a line between two ships passing, or if it is something we sew into our hearts and tug at when we want to hear their voices.

I guess this is about the opposite, this is about wondering what string in me I can pull to produce the voice that speaks to as many people as possible. That they may want to sew into their hearts at some time.

This blogging has been helpful for me. Imagine.

Alisonunderland

2006-04-06T07:08:00.000-07:00

Alisonunderland

It is hard to think that stress is a little healthy.

As I gaze longer into the fire of my life I can see each foot fall and each picture develop. Only the past is fixed and the rest is still exposing itself. I think I am mostly talking about this process of exposing; now that I am writing I can also see that I am talking about composing. A certain amount of what is happening is deliberate and another portion is unfolding at its own rate and form, it would seem as though I am suggesting that there is a clean divide between our deliberations and our experiences. I wonder how much of this can happen simultaneously. It makes little sense to think about that, since it is in constance, it is living as a human being. We think about what is happening, there is a pause about skin deep.

I think about a picture in my mind of pressing my face against another's. When I picture this, the picture includes both of us, as an image - or mirage?- and I also picture the sensation of this. I picture the warmth and I see the face from a little distance. I imagine the picture of my experience. How funny it is to think that I can observe myself in my own imagination, while imagining the sensation. There is no space in my imagination, or position. How strange.

In talking with a close friend- we were discussing the problem of internal language-I came to think that our internal dialogue is meant to come out, so that we can share our struggle. When I am suffering I cannot think that it is unique, in the world. When I have doubts about myself, I have to bring it out, even though I may look like a self doubter. We have friends who love us so that we can have a safe space to bring out our doubts. This process of exposure helps us grow.

Anxious feelings seem to be our systemic responce to change, it almost seems biological (sympathetic or parasympathetic nervous system?). When we are going through all sorts of changes it is natural to have some anxious feelings, but when they interfere with one's ability to achieve goals and make choices, it is neccesary to talk with others about it, so that one can get some outside info. We don't have to justify anything we say to ourselves. We can say anything to ourselves in our imagination and it will not be countered by anyone, since it is only the sayer that hears it. I can tell myself that I have superpowers and can with a single motion evoke feelings of compassion for any thing, even objects that are typically shewn under the category of the 'non living', or I can tell myself bad things that are hurtful to my energy. I am of the mind that I must speak to my self as a little child so that I can take refuge in my being and love as an innocent being filled with a healthy balance of kinetic and potential feelings and actions. We have to love ourselves as we would love to be loved.

What about God? God loves us in all states. I think we are closest to being with God when we are like kids, because we are without too many cares and also in a state of utter dependance; how rare it is to see this: carefree and yet dependant - am I right about that or am I too much in my bubble?-. God is always right there for us, singing messages of love, no matter where we go. It seems like we are in this together because we have things to work out in the world. We are living souls becoming, or perhaps Plato would say remembering, or perhaps the Dali Lama would say unpeeling, but I think we are where we are because we choose to be there, to an extent. My political science is seeping in, telling me about what it is to be a biased N american white girl, and what kind of choices I have compared to others. That part puzzles me too; the part where we are living on slavery.

I think it is up to us to make the most with what we've got. God is so unendlingly generous. We are generous with eachother when we listen with compassion and share without fear; in full exposure, all the lines are blown away and we are left with a clear slate. This is a metaphotographic commentary: the lines are burned away by the light, or are they turned to blackness? It depends on what we are talking about, actually. If we leave the shutter of a camera open, the film's silver is all blackened and when we try to develop the picture, by passing light through the film, the paper is left white. If we have a picture on film and leave the light on, expose it, it will eventually blacken the entire paper, regardless of the picture. I love you.

2006-04-05T09:35:00.000-07:00

Cast stone.

Director, plaster, ripples.
Imagining concepts like the bat signal without space and without source.
Our heads are in the clouds, we are covered in a multicouloured mist.

I still have faith in democracy. I used a phrase in my head and caused a stir: is a truly functional democracy about delivering the desires of the lowest common denominator? Is this term loaded becuase of the vices language can squish it into - as if to say that the lowest is somehow disadvatagous place to be? Regardless, I still believe. It has now occured to me that it is only from the lowest portions of our society that we can see where there is work to be done. Perhaps this is the strangly ironic part of democracy, it is unappealing when truly inclusive, yet so often up held as some ultimately prime process of governance. It is glamorous to think that democracy functions to achieve goals for the greater good of a nation. My thoughts are being vacuumed to the pursuits of our southerly neighbours in our more distant neighbour's land to the east. What does the Bush governement hope to achieve through terrorizing their neighbours to act just like they do?

I guess this is all coming from a meeting I attended last eve, regarding the potentially proposed natural gas pipeline from the new LNG terminal, through Rockwood Park - but also through the entire Eastern seabord to Boston. The National Energy Board came to Saint John because there has been plenty of public outcry about the rumours and deals flying around this topic - I suppose they have recieved lots of letters, and other correspondence. The NEB is a federal judicial body comparable to a jury. They came to host an instructional evening, to let the people of Saint John know how to participate in the process of deliberation concerning the pipeline. People are all fired up and want to know what they can do to stop the entire thing, or get an undersea route. The thing is: there has been no application from North eastern Pipeline, so there is no way for anyone to know what is a presuasive argument in the opposite position. They don't have a formal position to oppose. The NEB, admittedly, did not have their couragous faces on. They were toeing the line: It is up to the NEB's discretion to decide what is important information to the case. They could have just said: there has been no application, only rumours and a coupla public hearings. You know that there could be an application, so get ready to defend your own position - you should even look at other cases, we have an awesome website- and worry about strategy when they apply, but no. Molly said she saw this sweet old lady on CTV say, "This is bullshit! They never answered one of our questions". That is rather true, since no one had questions they could answer.

So, back to democracy: most of the people in that room were not willing to play the game, in fact it was clear that they detest the game. I wonder if the last few years of formal education have massaged the rebel out of me, or if I see the chances of making change as better if one can brutalize the system by jumping through hoops while throwing flowers - it worked for the no sweat campaign. People, it seems, are more likely to want to just get what they want, instead of formalizing. Perhaps I am insensitive, maybe people want to work together on a grassroots level and collaborate on lobbying the larger group to do what they want. Maybe I am wrong again, and people just want to be the ones who tell everyone what they get. I think I have generalized enough for one day.

No, so what is the lowest common denominator? it is the population that divides us all up evenly, eh? It is the poorest people in our cities, if we were working in a true democracy perhaps we would be divided into people that are interested in making policies that focus on that population - in turn raising their position and ultimately the position of the entire nation- , and those that are not interested and want to continue dividing with these people left as remainders, but more like reminders that democracy can only work if everyone is playing.

2006-03-31T12:29:00.000-08:00

I am listening to 13&God, and typing this in the Baron office on a Friday afternoon. Imagine a last vestage of procrastination; I am graduating in a month. Thoughts about part time jobs, loved ones leaving and the process of making pottery, flood my mind. How does one make certain rooms for certain things? It is a construction, yes?

Two pillows.

long dark hairs spill around me still

arms, branches of thought and discussions wrap me

I think I thought I was you for a minute when I woke up, or just before.

Speak, so that I can tell the difference between us.

I don't do it because in a little way I want to remain the same:

I want to taste, see, hear, smell, feel how you do.

I do, just for a little while, so that I can.

Horses and snails

2006-03-29T13:17:00.000-08:00

I am not crying, it's raining in my mind. The rains come to sweep solids back to the ground, and leave a salty trail to mime the beautiful snails; their horses (no spelling error) on their backs. They keep houses there too, made of hard stuff from inside their softness. They make the unreal their present, and become a meta-pour, raining your softness.

I was inspired by Isaac to share this, among other things. You are all very beautiful, more than you or I can imagine. Thank God.