For the week of 8.9 - 8.15.21
Today’s dispatch is different from the rest. When I opened the inbox yesterday, I found no new submissions. I sat with this for a while, weighing my options. I don’t want to present something that isn’t, as this project is a reflection of our collective weekly zeitgeist.
But I do believe in holding space for presence and doing so with consistency.
Rather than skip a week, I’ll pass you a note with a quote from my current read.
Ideas do not represent nature, but nature represents ideas in the clogging vesture of material stuff. Hence what is possible and unimaginable in nature is possible in idea—as that the positive may be separated permanently from polarity with the negative, and joy from interdependence with sorrow. In short, purely verbal possibility is considered as having a higher reality that physical possibility. It is hard not to feel that this is the power of thought running away with itself and getting out of hand, and defending itself against the charge of nonsense by asserting that its own reality is primordial and nature but its clumsy copy.
Things are separable in words which are inseparable in nature because words are counters and classifiers which can be arranged in any order. The word “being” is formally separate from the word “nothing” as “pleasure” from ”pain”. But in nature being and nothing or solid and space constitute a relationship as inseparable as back and front. In the same way, the formally static character of our words for feeling conceals the fact (or better, the event) that our feelings are directions rather than states and that in the realm of directions there is no North without South.
— Alan Watts, Nature, Man and Woman
This pinpoints for me why we feel so whole when immersed in nature. It embraces every aspect of this experience. Nature is our greatest teacher and most generous mirror. Our world is so reliant on words and often they are insufficient descriptors, reinforcing old boundaries rather than opening new doors.
All that being said, I hope you have a lovely week.
If in your daily comings and goings you stumble across a moment of absolute presence, document with either a photo or short description. Send it to me at momentsfornow@gmail.com — all submissions will be shared anonymously.
xx,
James
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