This way

I realized something interesting about French and its use of masculine and feminine for objects and titles. For a poet, there are a plentitude of subjects and objects to explore when considering the sexifying of nouns literally. My favourite one so far (I know, how predictable!): "la façon", meaning "the way" is feminine. I haven't met a Frenchhuman yet who knows why certain things are considered linguistically as masculine and others feminine, and nobody seems to care. It's just the way it is. I asked if it has been an issue for feminists, and the only answer I have received so far is that no, they overlook it. Poets, philosophers, why is "the way" feminine in the French language (and undoubtedly all other latin-based languages)? Well, the obvious answer is that the ancient Latini tribe from modern day Lazio judged it feminine, and French derived at least partially from their ancient language Latin. So why did the Latini think of femininity when they contemplated a way, a fashion to do a certain thing or be a certain way? Chinese philosophers referred to the Tao "often translated as the Way" as feminine, passive, generative. But the French word façon refers to "the way" in the way that it is generally used, for example "the way you bake a pie" or "the way it is in winter" or "the way the Parisians are". So I just thought it would be an interesting case study in epistemology to assume all sexualization of latin words literal and from there contemplate how these things which the words represent are feminine or masculine. I imagine one could gain some insight into the subtler nature of some things, and some insight into the way human minds worked in ancient times.


If we tried to use language differently, more literally and contextually, and then tried to apply this frame to describing someone's attention, it would be interesting! For example, for those workaholics who get their jollies from counting their earnings, perhaps their story would read like this: "got a good parking spot close to the door...double double...check stock market online...emails...check online bank account...respond to an email...check memos...double double...call potential client...respond to another email...visit boss to ask for overtime...check stock market again...lunch/check stock profolio/swallow coffee/turn on stereo/think about possibility of familial reponsibilities this week that may interfere with overtime/think about checking budget...triple triple...call client...call client...respond to last email...open budget program...input all the coffee purchases and the pre-wrapped tuna sandwich and the calculation of the gas bill for the week's commute...double double...close office door, close blinds.flick on the best porn sight and whack one off quickly..."


For the meth addict or the nympho it could have many more ...s, which represent gaps in awareness. I bet there would be many ...s if we considered the world's working class: everyone ...ing to get home or to the club or the dinner date after work. Everyone "living" inbetween work shifts. If you have 168 hours in a week, and you work 40, and you sleep 50, that leaves you with less than half of your life between ages 16 and 65 (well for us younger ones more likely 75 or death). And that assumes you are mindful during your leisure time and meals. The first bite of a tasty morcel of food is often with mindfulness, and then at about the third bite you look at how much of this is left on your plate, then you look at how much is left in the pot, perhaps in the fridge, and then you notice the taste again for a split second and the pleasurable emotions and then your mind takes off onto something else.

How many …s are in your day ? How many etc .’s ? How about now, did you notice your body doing something ? How about now ? And if we applied to to a senior person exploring their memory, it could look like this : « graduation…first date…first drive in first car…first fuck…first hit…best fuck…best hit…proposal…marriage…birth of first child…second…divorce…first drive in first BMW…trip to Tahiti…retirement…first cruise ship trip… »

For any of you who have started to develop the habit of mindfulness, have you noticed how your perception of time and emotional relation to time has transformed ? For me, starting a big new something used to feel like starting a new book, or a new chapter. I imagined myself and the way things were different before this beginning. When something big came to an end (my first breakup, for example), it felt like the end of a book or the end of the chapter. It was significant, and things were different. Time was like a dotted line.

Now it seems more and more like i’m in a book with no chapters, and huge runon sentences and obese paragraphs. Things weren’t different  before and I don’t feel things will be different after in the same way as before. It is not so impactful, leaving University, leaving the farm, coming to France. There is a place in my mind, always within reach like a shadow on June 21st near the Arctic Circle would be, a place where it feels always the same. It is like the central bolt on a wheel, like a small country village, like those unfound tribes in the Amazon rainforest. Time feels like a line which has bigger segments and smaller gaps, a line which if it would be painted on a road, some drivers might be confused as to the legality of crossing that line.

There was this old drawing softwareprogram on the computer, I think it was by Crayola. One artistic function made it so that when you clicked somewhere on the page and held down the mouse button, all these shapes jumbled all around it , creating quite a mess around that central click. You can drag the mouse pointer all over the page and fill it with jumbledeegook. I was reminded of this at some point when contemplating the effect of meditation, raising energy and unblocking blockages. The jumbling is like how the background stars streak by rapidly when a spaceship goes into hyperdrive. It is an accelerating of things, and at the same time a blank spot, slowly growing outwards from the middle of the mouse pointer, surrounded by the jumbling.

I have witnessed a real relative absence of fearful reactions in my consciousness this year sofar. Even before, when hanging from a ladder in –20 windchill for 5 hours straight, scraping away the ice from the wooden deck to create a stable footing for the 32 foot ladder to hold my 190 pound body in the right place. Not to mention the wind. And to dive headfirst into meeting Stephanie’s parents, jumping through all the bureaucratic hoops, studying French every day and going to classes. In a while I will dive right into a 10 day Vipassana sit. It is like building a callus towards emotional reactions and experiencing less frequent and softer emotional reactions simultaneously.

I wouldn’t cry : NO FEAR ! , but maybe FEAR IS OKAY, DON’T SWEAT IT!

Cheers,
Maurizio