Serpent of Pleasure: Emergence and Difference in the Medieval Garden of Love

"Abstract: Set apart from the normal realm of moral judgment, the medieval garden of love is usually seen as a site that embodies the carnal and reprehensible human desires that humans must renounce in order to find God. This essay challenges that reading. It proposes instead that visual and verbal representations of the garden of love show it as a place where humans encounter the operations of emergence and difference, and through an immersion in the paradoxical condition of love discover a more vital humanity. The garden of love is a poetic and philosophical space in which humans recognize themselves as part of the complex and unpredictable systems that comprise the world. The garden places humans both within nature and in distinction from it, and its message is that human nature is to be honored not by transcending the condition of becoming, but by an immersion in the play of paradox and ambiguity that characterize it. This reading places garden-making, the first and founding practice of landscape architecture, at the forefront of contemporary rediscoveries of the role of complex adaptive systems in landscape architectural discourse."

-- From MEDIEVALISTS.NET

-- Full PDF from Landscape Journal

Philip Glass - Koyaanisqatsi - The Grid (FULL VERSION) (1998 remastered ...

WARNING

India's #FoodSafety Agency has prohibited the use of artificial coloring agents in ...food, carcinogenic impact of large amounts..coloring..

— Neurophyte (@Neurophyte) June 21, 2013

Connectomes

"What's in this picture? A cool and refreshing stream of water, you say. What else is in this picture? Do not forget that groove in the Earth called the stream bed. Without it, the water would not know in which direction to flow. And with the stream, I would like to propose a metaphor for the relationship between neural activity and connectivity. Neural activity is constantly changing. It's like the water of the stream; it never sits still. The connections of the brain's neural network determines the pathways along which neural activity flows. And so the connectome is like bed of the stream. But the metaphor is richer than that. Because it's true that the stream bed guides the flow of the water, but over long timescales, the water also reshapes the bed of the stream. And as I told you just now, neural activity can change the connectome. And if you'll allow me to ascend to metaphorical heights, I will remind you that neural activity is the physical basis -- or so neuroscientists think -- of thoughts, feelings and perceptions. And so we might even speak of the stream of consciousness. Neural activity is its water, and the connectome is its bed." -- Sebastian Seung

Freedom of Fascination

Walking through the bazaar alley

through smoke of mid-day's roasts

and sting of spice

& droning of drum,

sweat of toil

He was struck by the desert imp

again, waves propagating, chiming

visions stirring before the eye

of Within;

Unfurling theatre of What-then;

a geni's carpet, reality-woven

to carry the gaze

unto her, mirror'd memory,

painting with light

shimmering representations

of the poets' own stirring

serpent of fortuitous fire:

that which falls into the infinite

plunging deeper, always deeper

into the heart,

Within descent

the interlock rising

unity of intent & vision

collide in the art, contradiction

become contrast

And the abiding vision

of symmetrical perfection

that did slay

and stir unto mockers

Did awaken and Push

the slumbering driver

as the coach near'd the cliff...

Thus was the tale of Hugo the Hypnogogic.

Cinematic Pleasures of Epiphany

Washed upon the shores of past earth,
I came upon the low house in sand.
Therein, shelter, darkness.

Light within to see
the word written within bone
and nerve, breath moving
the frames, building
a charge of years.

Swelling with divided unions,
I came upon the sunrise afar.
Burnt star collapsing within
that low house, pulling everything

to the center,

focused, beaming,
emitting signals
not heard before.

Yet rotation of realms
about the fixed center (it too moved)

resolved the creativity of speakers
and painters upon the street, coming forth
to articulate

a genuine eidolon.

The Rune Reading in Autumn's Red

Turning, light and rush
of liquid memory caught in
my summer's end, the glances of eye
brushing with gentle lash upon the skin
of the book's pages.

Color of wheat in autumn's rain
tinges the vision, the writer of listings
listing in the seat, in vibrato of the chanting, rolling

tongues and parting lips
meeting in permutational interlock
and release, spilling the icons of action
upon the skin

of the book's pages.

From leaves coiled in leather
arises word in thought's smoke,
turning, 'volving and slipping
in upon itself and out, spreading

into voids-between

Inhaled in the upshoot,
fitting key & lock in nerves'
endless branches, alighting fires
upon the grey-floor of the ancient bonework;

The air becomes electric laughter, rising.

The View of Earth & Sol from the ISS, Nov. 22

On Navigation

Over red-iron mountains of wrought age
through tangled weed of million-years,

the mover glides and falls some.

Looking at the span
of possible permutation,
experience of other
is of utmost sacrament, no time
or space for anything less;

Choosing the collection of ports,

there are Universal Gates
to consider... each
working in context
of the individual's
unique permutations,

And thus openings create

lines of chosen action,
bifurcating, exponential,

and very possibly
aligned with the free-fall of
stars.

The mover dips and glides,
leaps and looms,
gallops, dancing,

and falls some.

Iris Unfurl

Allure through open windows drew
forth the eyes,
heavy with sand and rain
from the nights' storms;

scented wind, of dew and ion
washed within and over,
revealing
spaces without four walls.

Time, passage
through rough hewn tunnels
of memory and motion, accumulated
gestures soon called the heavy eyes

with shade
and echoes,
wordless
and primal.

To the symposium to be supposed
were not all present, but suggested;
suggestive of the internal
where union is clean, well adjusted;

An old scribe notes
and compiles, sure and ready
in communion with the regency
of enacted trials.

The work proceeds
with letters to write
and temples to quarry;
Beloved to be honoured!