9:24pm December 7, 2011

I wish I was a better writer, poet, and/or painter

Because there’s some experiences I really want to share with people but unless they’re enough like me to get the gist and fill in the rest, it just doesn’t much get across.

Ever since going over those redwood pictures, and finding that video and book that told me about iteration (when a redwood tree grows out of the branch of another redwood tree) and the first explorers of the tops of redwoods, I’ve been experiencing something amazing that is completely curing the homesickness caused by thinking about redwoods.

Some background…

I’m really good at getting the feel of places and people. Much better than getting and retaining any other information about them. Unfortunately I have very few words for what I mean by the “feel” or “sense” of something. I can say that it is not in the least bit abstract. But it’s not just the sound or appearance either(although it can express itself in visual or auditory or etc. metaphors… or something). It’s something that I remember being able to do before I had concepts and before language, and has remained dominant throughout my life even after getting language and concept.

Most of my paintings are about this kind of “feel” and they are the only way I have ever discovered how to convey “feel” in an even remotely accurate way. (Some of my more freeform songs approach it too.)

Additionally, my memory works best in this area as well. Sometimes it’s literally the only memory of something that I’ve got. Just about always it is the most dominant and most accurate part of memory for me (and the hardest to explain). Which is one among many reasons that when I recount past events I usually recount this concrete underlayer of what happened, rather than the abstract outer layer that most people tend to see and get confused by.

Anyway, since I started thinking about this, the memory of the feel of this tree has become very intense. In all important ways it is as off I am there curling up among its roots and experiencing the full depths of its personality that a human can feel. It is a very strong sensation yet polite – it doesn’t cross any boundaries it ought not to.

I’ve long done things sort of like this. It’s become especially common since I’ve been in bed all the time. I’ve immersed myself in the feel of skiing, lying on a hot granite rock in the mountains in the sun, all kinds of things. And it doesn’t feel like daydreaming. It doesn’t obscure reality, it enhances it. Rather than making something up in my mind it feels more like connecting directly to another point in time and space in the real world. Daydreams make me feel bad in the long run, this doesn’t.

But this is much more intense than my usual experience. And it’s crystal clear. And there is so much depth, clarity, layers, etc. But I can barely even begin to describe a single one of them. It’s like the tree’s personality is with me.

But the personality of a tree is almost nothing like the personality of a human or any other animal. So there are very few parts of English even made for this sort of description.

People have accused me of anthropomorphism a lot, because I see plants as having personalities and objects as alive in their own way. To me the whole world is alive. At least, alive is the best word I have for it. But to call that anthropomorphism is insulting. I don’t see plants and objects in terms of human qualities unless there’s overlap there. The aliveness of a rock has little in common with the aliveness of a human. It’s got uniquely rocklike qualities, and I see a rock as its own kind of thing, not a Western-style inanimate object with human-style attributes tacked on.

And the amount of people online who have approached me in various combinations of fury, outrage, and condescension, to tell me that things are just things and are not alive. That they’re obeying the physical laws of the universe rather than interacting with me. (As if that is mutually exclusive or even different things!)

They remind me of the time I was walking around with a twig for company and the cops found me “wandering” and for no good reason at all, grabbed my twig and snapped it and threw the pieces on the ground. It’s completely gratuitous and some of them seem to take a weird pleasure in trying to destroy something meaningful to a person who doesn’t think like them. Others just seem to feel superior, or simply feel as if I am wrong and need to be corrected. As if they need to explain to me – or explain me to others – why and how I reached my wrongness. The first time I tried to write about my lifelong relationship to objects, a post immediately popped up on a fellow blogger’s blog, describing anthropomorphism in excruciating detail. She didn’t mean any harm but her descriptions don’t match my experiences at all, and I was uncomfortable that she didn’t even ask what I experienced before explaining it.

There’s also this strain of thought on it that seems to be related to the idea that this is something only inferior people believe. Whether they mean cultures described as “primitive” with “animist” beliefs (explained as part of the evolution of cultures, by Westerners of course, not asking people about their beliefs), or… the attitude some people have towards me as “you’re a retard and you don’t know better, so I will explain it to you”. It’s still about inferiority either way. People are supposed to “evolve” from “primitive animism” to “modern Western rational belief” with various stages in between, and “animism” is supposed to be a cognitive error that we have now corrected.

I still can’t believe how angry people get about it though. I’ve always seen things this way and I’m far from the only family member that seems to. To me everything has something akin to “aliveness” for lack of a better word.

And so does this tree. And I very much wish I could convey it better. It’s very rich, and both simple and complex at the same time. By which I mean, it’s simple because it’s not abstract and can be taken in without brain strain, and complex because of the sheer number of layers involved. And there’s a lot of depth to it.

And I keep repeating that and repeating it won’t convey it any better. I just have no more words. I could attempt a painting but I won’t know whether I’m talented enough until I finish it.

So until then I’ll continue to be immersed in this other place and possibly other time as well. It really feels as if I’m right there.

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