Lie to Me

I always had a problem with the subconscious – not my own so much (at least not for the purposes of this discussion); rather the notion: the notion that there lies within our minds a hidden – an entirely autonomous – subterranean mantel from which raw material erupts when it reaches a critical mass. I think my problem lies with the idea that the “subconscious” often forms an uneasy synonymity with the “unconscious” – uneasy for there is a certain asymmetry between the respective concepts: the “subconscious” functionally coexists alongside consciousness, while the “unconscious” suggest the higher functioning of consciousness has somehow slipped off-line. The oddity about both is that there is the residual suspicion that there is something – some thread – that connects both the “subconscious” and “unconscious” and with consciousness. When we say someone is “unconscious”, we don't necessary mean they are no longer sentient in the manner of, say, a rock, rather, that is kind of suspended availability; a lack off formal access; not necessarily that they are comatose, but they are not picking up on something; they are unaware. Similarly with “subconscious”, there is also the suggestion of a certain type of restricted access or, at least, an access that is triggered by more unconventional means. In other words, on closer inspection, the prefixes “sub” and “un” do not denote a total absence of consciousness, rather different states of its being. Take the notion of “self-deception” - there's an implication in some people's mind that there is a fully analogous process at work with when we deceive ourselves as with other people. When we deceive other people, we are hiding something from them, be that by means of slight-of-hand-distraction – hiding and / or lying – employing the various arts of deception. The problem with self-deception or, more precisely, comparing self-deception to the deception of a third party (or parties), is that, in that case of the self, one can at best avoid a truth one intends to deceive oneself about, for the hand of concealment isn't hidden from you – it is yours: the left hand cannot be separated from the doings of the right hand and vice versa, as every good politician knows; however, they also know that the truth can be hidden behind the ideologies of left and right.

As Above, So Below

The etymological derivation of the word “understand”, if memory holds true, derives – quite simply – from, “to stand under”; therefore, it would appear to be merely a contraction of sorts; however, the further question posed – or at least implied – by such an exposition, distils to the obvious: “under what?” Let me rewind for a moment and furnish the circumstance from which inspiration forged the grounds by which I now expound forth upon. Whilst I live close to the centre of a largish city, the street lighting is intermittent and stretches of unlit open spaces – mostly by virtue of historical inheritance in the form of Victorian planned parks or the abandoned topological relics of demolished once cathedral-like expanses of industrial premises – permit the observation of the circling celestial bodies wedged in the gravitational firmament of the void, especially during the winter months, when a crystal night bestows: the heavens, theologically speaking: the very same silent light show viewed across the civilised stage of space and time. To stand, one presumes, is to do so upon grounds of sufficient surety such that one may, at least momentarily, rest assured, but what inverse logic of perversity would have us root – again, at least metaphorically – our epistemic knowledge – the confidence to be found therein – in what lies in the distant stellar atrium above us and from which we ought draw down upon? Space in the abstract has or up nor down.

The Entropy Garden

What time I had entered the Garden I could not say. Time would come later, in a manner of speaking, but so would the allied matter of from whence-forth, since, an entrance usually implies an exit, as well as a timing. Such things, as I have already suggested, were not an early concern and I had not - until my partner had persuaded me also to listen to the sibilant wisdom of the sickle-eyed serpent and only then, as the event horizon of experience expanded and swallowed me whole - noticed, that for every tiny ordering I introduced into the chaos, I had somehow added to the overall increase in disorder. The Garden was, is and will be time. What let it be, let it go and remains without the hand of measure and, upon that, the snake was silent.

SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUSH!