BIRDS AND PEOPLE AT SEWARD PARK LAST WEEK

Birds:
Spotted towhee
Chestnut sided chickadee
Dark eyed junco
Song Sparrow
Crow
Gadwall or Wigeon, need to clarify.
Hooded merganser
Great blue heron with nesting material, first I’ve seen this year.
Red winged blackbirds
White crowned Sparrow
Common murre
Bufflehead
Grebes
Scaup
Wren
Owl
Pileated woodpeckers
Anna’s hummingbird

People:

Two separate couples where the guy was telling his girlfriend lengthy details about the characteristics of a sports player.
Angelic nature center staff guy who talks about birds and gives out free tea all weekend. I grabbed a hot tea to warm up my hands and heart against the cold and damp.

SHORT ARTSY FILM

“Ready or not, here I come!” I was struck with a sense of foreboding when a character spoke that in the beginning of this this short film.

“HIDE” explores the surreal reference frame capabilities of the human mind in a way that had an intense impact on me. The main character, a young child at play, is left alone to observe the changes of the world he left behind with nothing but his breath and the sounds of his own movement. Counting down to zero like that implies moving toward a terminal and unalterable state of death, which is a terrifying thought. Yet the mind offers the possibility that one can detach and take joy in just being a part of the cycle.  I personally relate to the idea that voluntarily taking a detached perspective can lead to both pain and joy. A person can feel that he or she is always watching and knowing intimately but is always somewhat removed. The audio effects make a motif of the spooky resonant qualities of wood. The depiction of the stillness and abrupt discontinuities of death, spreading green and lace-like from within, is a poignant artistic take. The film includes sex and masturbation in a way you’ll never see in a Marvel brand movie. “HIDE” is a truly unique and thought-provoking work of art.

MIND

I’ve been trying to reconcile the truth of the of a passage from The Power of Now by Tolle with the appealingly solidly science-grounded statement from Self Comes to Mind by Damasio in an internal debate that demonstrates the pull of emotion when making up one’s mind.

The Tolle passage goes like this:

“Please stop trying to understand Being. You have already had significant glimpses of Being, but the mind will always try to squeeze it into a little box and then put a label on it. It cannot be done. It cannot become an object of knowledge. In Being, subject and object merge into one.”

The Damasio passage goes like this:

“The contents exhibited in the image space are explicit, while the contents of the dispositional space are implicit. We can access the contents of images, if we are conscious, but we never access the contents of dispositions directly. Of necessity, the contents of dispositions are always unconscious. They exist in encrypted and dormant form.”

The Tolle passage is from a new-agey self help book. The Damasio passage is about non-conscious control of behavior.

The Tolle quote made me think of the universe knowing itself through matter, energy, complexity and change, a profound idea. Yet the passage also looked at first glance like the seemingly irrelevant exercise of offering a paradox, or something that, on its own terms, could not be resolved with analysis. Isn’t that practice irrelevant, doesn’t it fail to lead to further understanding?

The Damasio passage hints at parts of the brain and mind that are unknowable directly but that can be analyzed in other peoples’ or animals’ brains, perhaps.

I find that in learning, a contradiction or conflict soon becomes a foothold to push for greater understanding. I am grateful for the opportunity to let my mind be the arena where these staggering contradictions work their way toward resolution.

Read widely, and let your mind be a battleground of ideas.

ACQUAINTANCES

I ran into a woman who has a tattoo of a red-winged blackbird on her arm. She said she did not know where they lived in this city. I told her about a patch of cattails where she could find them and witness the classic spring territorial call of the male.

COLLEAGUES

My colleagues supply me with endless entertainment.

I think it’s driven by life’s central tension that a person will be kept in continuous, lively, and dramatic activity if they are swung between the states of wanting and of having. Yet the extremes of this cycle also include the best parts of life and should not be at all disdained.

COMMUNITY

I have been walking more and doing my bit to clean up this corner of the planet.

ABOUT THE PHOTO

It was a sunny mid-afternoon at Olympic Sculpture Park in mid-April 2023, and four friends were having a heated argument not far from two adult caregivers. They had witnessed a strange incident involving a man on a bike with a camera, but they could not agree on what exactly had happened.

The girl in the pink shirt was the most vocal. She insisted that the boy in the squid shirt had lied about seeing the man photograph a bird. She demanded that he take back his words or face the consequences.

The boy in the squid shirt was defiant. He swore that he had seen the man photograph a bird, and that the girl in the pink shirt was just jealous of his keen observation skills. He refused to retract his statement or apologize.

The girl in the black neon star shirt sided with the boy. She argued that the girl in the pink shirt was being unreasonable and unfair. She suggested that maybe the man had photographed something else or had a spotting scope, and that the boy had made an honest mistake.

The girl in the gray pony shirt was tired of the bickering. She wished they could all get along and have fun. She proposed that they take a break from arguing and enjoy the suckers that they had bought from the picnic basket. She hoped that a sweet treat would calm them down and make them forget their differences.