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Screenshots of Greenland
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Images
- Hits: 1082
Yeah, BRRRR, don't think I'm gonna be doing any prospecting there for the next 20 years or so...
Unraveling a Tangled Ball of Yarn
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Creative
- Hits: 1202
It's like I'm in a dark room attempting to unravel a tangled ball of yarn. This creative blockage, it's gone on long enough - 2 trivial projects to be completed, only 2 in the immediacy - 2 short fucking little projects. Squibs.
The kind of stuff Shelley would barf up in an afternoon just trying to get lucky. Worse even, I mean, my bar is nowhere near that high, (there are disadvantages to this, I'm striving for a planiloquence that doesn't demand too much tongue-twisting or mental agility).
Pull them up on the computer, 1 at a time. Stare at them. Read through them, find the holes, there are holes, lots of holes, childrens rhyming verse, rhymes that fall flat, too complex, don't ring true, don't even rhyme, don't, don't, don't, and the beginning, "In the beginning", fuck, I hate it, how to start, how to start...
Ten thousand little don'ts. But there are occasionally those little gems, short verses, stanzas even, that are perfect, or close enough to, and I'm trying to build around them.
A 32 page project - tops, 1 stanza per page - maybe 6-8 lines on average. And I print it off because I can never grasp the scope just looking at a single page, now 40 pages of printed notes, words, rubbish, ideas, repetitive, the same note made a dozen times, it's fallen by the wayside, or like a hedge grown all thorny and overgrown and I can't find the shape of it...
Or I draw the shape of it, but can't fill in the words, the shape of the verse a cup waiting, I rattle letters, rhymes, jostle them together but nothing seems to fit, it's making me crazy, I've fallen, fallen into very bad habits. It's never been this bad.
Write it all out now, untangling the printed words with pen and paper, sort, make it clear in my head, break to meditate, try and try again, juggle, mix, shake, it's not coming together...go for a walk, pace, pace, this, these projects, they've made me a neurotic, restive, infected me with a hundred nervous tics, this - and this is the worst - is I know it is a simple thing, it should be struck from my pen like a grocery list or a scratchy-Bill-Paid, somewhere in my head my little genii's playing "hide and seek", and I'm going a bit crazy trying to find him...
Time for a break. I'm gonna try and sell off some more shit on Kijiji.
Screenshots of the Sahara
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Images
- Hits: 1081
Cold weather making me a little restless, virtual prospecting the Sahara. Some amazing Satellite Imagery that whets the curiosity...
I could do this all day, but it's time to get back to work...
Cognitive Filters
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 1413
The idea of a Cognitive Filter is that we all - consciously but more usually unconsciously, view and experience the world through our own unique perceptual framework which often reinforces our established points of views. We are all guilty of it.
The best way to imagine a Cognitive Filter is a 2X4 jutting out of our forehead, from which we hang countless prejudices, prisms, bits of colored glass, polarizing filters, ornaments, whatever prior experiences we have had in life. Not only do we hang things, but for a great part of our lives - think childhood, think politics, news, education, friends and family - we allow other people to hang things there as well. Very often this 2X4 becomes so cluttered with "filters" that our vision is obscured unto blindness.
The funny thing about Cognitive Filters is that while none of us can see our own, or very often even the world past our own, we for some reason think we are able to see others. For example, we all recognize bigots, racists, homophobia, we can all look at our friends and say "this is your problem...", and our advice very often is good - we can see their problem, we've swung our own 2X4 far enough out of the way to take a clear look at theirs. Not always, and never as well as we think, but often enough. And often we can see a filter on their 2X4 - the same one we've hung on our own - and out of embarrassment refuse to observe it - Alcoholics, for example, generally out of politeness or a matter of form won't acknowledge that another person is an alcoholic - it's easier to ignore that filter and instead put their problems down to one of a thousand other filters hanging down from the 2X4, or we might recognize a filter on another and realizing we have the same one on ourselves flatter or congratulate the wearer - think of religion, politics, nationality, any number of clubs or organizations.
The point of all this meditation - "All This" so far rarely adds up to 30 minutes a day and never even a minute of true mind(ful)(less)ness - is to see past the cognitive filters and get back to an unencumbered view of the world.
...Or maybe I'm understanding it wrong...
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