Out of the Blue
There’s still two weeks before the story is due,
and I haven’t been able to shake the feeling
that more can be gotten out of this month’s exercise,
so have decided to write another story
inside the theme “One Room Story”.
So—I’m writing another story.
This time, it needed to be different. Abstract.
But abstraction without purpose becomes noise.
If there’s no reason for it, there’s no reason for it.
So the story must be abstract with a reason. That thought looped for days.
Until yesterday on my way to work,
I was listening to a YouTube “Big Think” video
about how consciousness might have a more fundamental place in our universe,
more like gravity,
and an idea started to form.
The room became a person’s consciousness.
Their life. Their memories. Their aggregate of experience.
The idea bounced around until this morning.
It’s just after 4am now,
and I’ve just finished two pages of automatic writing on the subject.
I’m using it as a guide for this post.
The Urn
I remember this place; it’s changed a lot. There are parts I’d rather forget, or rather there’s parts I have forgotten.
What are you making?
Oh, I’m not sure yet. Something for the kids.
How do you do that, make something from nothing?
It’s not from nothing, it’s from everything. The big helps the small sing their song.
But there’s nothing in here.
There’s plenty to use outside. Take a look outside. Hands move the clay into a cylinder cone of mud. It smells of a riverbed, silt and little creatures moving about.
Other gets up and looks out onto a vista of memories. Bees etc. Waves of memories.
They talk further and the end reveals what the person is making.
Well, Well, Well...
Not very long yet, and I’m not going to say what they are making—but I know.
This whole thing has been brewing for a while now, and just this morning, it has come to a place where it can become real. Be born.
I didn’t wait for the idea to form. I actively sought order. Because the phoenix can fly only when its feathers are grown.
Now begins the job of setting it out in a coherent fashion. This could take a while.
I’ll work on it at lunch and whenever I can. It will not evolve if I don’t make an effort to help it.
The Next Day
It’s just after 4am now, and I’ve finished two pages of automatic writing on the subject. I’m using it as a guide for this post.
The first page solidified the story for me. The second became this post.
NB: I went to bed with this question in my mind, intending to get up and do this all along. Not magic. It’s work.
Dream Fragment I woke from a dream: The Beatles rehearsing with others on a stage.
The line that stuck: “The big helps the little sing their song.”
That phrase followed me into the day.
Abstraction is the process of simplifying complex reality by focusing on essential qualities and leaving out unnecessary details. It allows us to think, communicate, and create using generalized concepts rather than specific instances.
Feilds of Refraction
Abstraction is a coping mechanism. When the mixture is too rich, we project what we have into metaphor in an attempt to understand and explain.
Metaphor is abstraction. Religion is abstraction. There are as many sects of Christianity as there are Christians. Each facet of a diamond refracts its own version of the same light.
Little pin-lights of time, smudged in moments of experience, throw insight into waking life, and onto the page. This concoction, sour and sweet, imbues meaning into consciousness.
It builds bridges from concept to concrete, revealing hidden patterns.
Outwardly fixed – Inwardly open.
