Grounded Flight

It is approaching Spring in South Africa and in Pretoria buds and blossoms are beginning to appear here and there.  The general impression when looking at the landscape, however, is still one of dryness. 

When we lived in Germany and returned to South Africa for a visit, the first thing our children commented on at the time was the soil. They noticed that in their opinion South African soil is red while German soil is brown! 

Reminded of that while driving through to Pretoria recently, I wondered how many of us even notice the color of the soil in the area we live. Habits blend us into our surroundings. Surroundings reinforce habits. Perspectives become limited unless consciously challenged. Horizons are narrow unless broadened by awareness.

Returning home to a town once lived in, things never noticed before, suddenly glare at one.   Nothing has changed except the viewer who has gained distance not only physically, but emotionally as well.

Distance lends enchantment to the view, the saying goes but that I feel is only one side of the story.  Distance also enables one to see perspectives not visible from within a particular environment.

In the past, such distance could only be gained by physically moving away.  This was the privilege of a minority and so cultural habits and beliefs were reinforced from one generation to the next.

Today modern travel but more especially technology, has blasted this all apart.  People of different cultural backgrounds can meet online, beliefs are suddenly challenged, new ways of doing things become apparent. 

If I so wish, I can look at pictures of soil in Germany or soil in South Africa, or soil in wherever, read about it or even chat to personages knowledgeable in that field.  

The challenge, however, is two-fold. Perspectives need to be broadened, but at the same time we need to be grounded.

We need to feel the soil beneath our feet, if not barefoot, then through mindful awareness of the sensation of connecting with the ground as we walk. We need to be aware of where we are at and where we are coming from, especially when online where the temptation could be to escape.

As we realize that the other is not so other as always imagined - similarities outweigh our differences; we all want to be happy; we all wish to be freed from suffering; soil may vary but it is still soil - we open ourselves to new dimensions of being. 

here2here offers such dimensions. We meet here, are here together, but at the same time are each somewhere else. 

In such a “place”, in such a “space”, perspectives can only broaden. More importantly, however, mutual acceptance and hospitality allow the collective, meeting here2here, to be grounded in a dimension invisible to the physical eye, sometimes visible to the eye of contemplation, but definitely visible to the eye of Spirit. 

Collective consciousness, shared participation, shared responsibility and shared innovation are soils rich in potential, waiting to be stepped into, holding out gifts of creativity in ways unimagined before.

Let's feel the soil beneath our feet as we take off!

Draw Mindful

“true beauty results from that repose which the mind feels when the eye, the intellect, and the affections are satisfied from the absence of any want”. Owen Jones

Yesterday’s activities included a visit to the exhibition “Reconnecting East and West” which “traces the groundbreaking documentation of Islamic ornament and design by European scholars, artists and architects who traveled to the Middle East in the 19th century”.

Captivated by the magnificent color lithographs from Owen Jones’ “Grammar of Ornament”, I was reminded how much I am fascinated by Islamic patterns. The repetition of certain forms and patterns lends itself to a feeling of spaciousness, ongoing possibility and all encompassing beauty. Pattern in Islamic Art is a website with some beautiful examples of this art form.

A book of Geometric Patterns in an art shop had been “jumping out” at me for a while now, so after the exhibition the book was duly purchased. I came home, chose a pattern and decided to color it in as an exercise in mindfulness. 

To begin the process I chose colors simply on their appeal to me but noticed that later I had to take note of placement and harmony. It was interesting to observe how at first I kept wanting to go back to perfect sections. Instead I simply moved on, reminding myself that I could only focus on the section in front of me. The past ones were past, the next ones still to come. After some time, conversations started to play themselves out in my head. I noted them then returned to the drawing.  Memories popped up - back to the drawing! After a while the shading had a peaceful, calming effect. 

It is my intention to continue this practice with all the 11 remaining cards in the booklet. I will put the results up on Twitter with the hashtag #drawmindful, as well as put them into a gallery on #here2here. (Suggestions for names for each piece will be welcomed). 

My love for this form of design started back in the late 1970s when we visited England and I came across a book entitled, “Altair Design Book 1”. Unaware of this at the time, I later discovered that these designs were based on a unique and unusual Islamic design which consisted of the arrangement of close packing circles of various sizes. 

Upon our return to South Africa I made use of these designs in my Mathematics classes.  Every week I would hand out a design to each pupil. They had one week to color in the design if they so wished. Some of the pupils were in their final year of high school, but even they participated. The resulting creativity was amazing and these works of art were proudly displayed on the classroom walls. 

M.C. Escher was also drawn to the works of the East and incorporated their principles into his masterpieces.

In “Grammar of Ornament” Jones established 37 guiding principles for the “arrangement of form and color, in architecture and the decorative arts”.

It would be interesting to know if these principles are being applied to web illustration which should attract attention but complement not control content. 

We decorate our homes, and the arrangement and choice of furniture, ornaments and art pieces influence and reflect our inner lives. With the acquisition of online homes, we need to remember that their layout and design features will require our attention as well.  

Langu age

About twenty years ago, it was still believed that after the brain’s initial formation period, brain networks were static. Neuroscience now recognizes that the brain is shaped by experience on an ongoing basis.  Brain plasticity is the ability of the brain to rewire itself and form new networks at any age. 

The internet, and especially social media, is without a doubt affecting our reading and our writing, but what I find particularly fascinating, are the examples of brain plasticity in these areas, now slowly coming to the fore.

Without us being consciously aware of it, our brains are adapting and adjusting to the time we spend online.

The splitting of words as we type in haste, the joining of words for convenience or for use with hashtags, (a word only recently added to the Oxford dictionary), omitting letters for the sake of character limitations, and the use of numerals 4 certain words, are now everyday phenomena in cyberspace.

The very concept of cyberspace is effecting not only the way we use words but also the meaning we give to them and the way we see them. 

What if nowhere is seen as now here

Tweeps refer to everyhere not everywhere as they meet online with users from various countries simultaneously. 

The concept of an iCloud is not at all strange.

The blog u r reading right now is called here2here.

Only recently I came across this tweet:

@GammaInfinity One whole day has passed, and I remain amazed that until yesterday I had never noticed that “race car’” backwards is “race car”.

These are exciting times, for these very abilities will overflow into everyday life.  Whereas before we could look at something for years without noticing certain aspects of it, we will now begin to take new perspectives on worldviews we had never questioned before.  Outlooks conditioned by upbringing and culture will be looked at with new eyes. Reversals, splittings & combinations will see insights evolving.

As an exercise, I decided to take the word “language” and play around with it. 

Langu age, was perhaps a natural split, as we hear much about entering a new age.

Research revealed that besides being an iphone app to make the learning of Spanish and Mandarin Chinese a lot of fun, “langu” also means “my” in Swahili. 

A promoter of collaboration, I immediately looked up a translation for “our” in Swahili, only to discover that it is  “wetu” which I of course read as “we too”, appropriate I felt in an age of interconnectivity and connectedness!

Lan guage was another possiblity.

My eyes muddled up the letters in guage on first reading and I saw it as gauge.

LAN is an acronym (hard to believe that two years ago I did not know the meaning of lol!) for local area network, but as more and more of us access online space, the question of what to gauge as local becomes an interesting one. 

Let’s look at one more possibility for “language”: La ngu age.

Age keeps reoccurring, la added a French ring to the, and ngu is an acronym for never give up. The never give up age!  

My eyes, probably because I come from Africa and have many times visited the Kruger National Park, immediately saw “gnu” the first time I read la ngu age. The age of the gnu?

The gnu is a wildebeest and spends much of its life as a loner on the move. This is possibly not inappropriate when we consider how we as individuals are continuously on the move in cyberspace.  In a sense we are alone as we do this, but in another sense, this aloneness is only physical.  On an energetic level, we connect to so many others in virtual space.  The gnus are famous for their annual migrations in the Serengeti, and together we in here2here space, are making mass migrations to new ways of being.

People from the West write and read horizontally from left to right. In the East many languages are written and read vertically from bottom to top. The mass migrations we are making together in cyberspace, however, are rewiring our brains and altering the way we write and see things.  Now, for example, in the West, emoticons are written vertically :) while the Eastern smilies interestingly enough run horizontally ^_^ with most of us beginning to use them interchangeably.

In @GammaInfinity’s Flickr photostream you will find what he has entitled Luminal Butterfly. He states that in this magic fantasy, butterfly has another stage after adult, where it becomes pure light, creating beautiful displays in late summer.

Not only is language undergoing a metamorphosis, but we, both as individuals and as the collective, are undergoing one too.

As we do so the heart is opening:

heartheartheartheartheartheart is becoming 

hear the art hear the art hear the art 

_/|\_

Meeting in the gap

Yesterday, in South Africa, making my way to my boarding gate for my flight back to Dubai, I passed a little shop selling Ndebele art.

Today, 24hrs later, I had lunch in an Iranian restaurant.

 

These photos were taken within one day of each other and between them was a gap - the gap of place, the gap of time, the gap of culture.

Yet now you see them both, brought together by my sharing them with you in this here2here space where we meet. 

This space is in itself a gap between us and yet it is a gap not void of content. On the contrary, it is the space of untapped potential, the space of creativity, the meeting place of various personalities, cultures and worldviews, made possible by technology.

It is a reminder of the many gaps we encounter on a daily basis.

The beauty of communication can only be appreciated by acknowledging pauses between words, whether they be spoken or written. Music is filled with pauses between notes, gaps between movements.

There is the transition point between ending one task and beginning another, the time of waiting for a new phase in one’s life to begin, or even the time spent waiting for the lights to change while on the road. 

These gaps are not wasted spaces or wasted time. They are filled with potential when we become mindfully aware of them. 

There is always a moment between an experience and our response to it. The simple act of pausing and finding this gap is proving to have many benefits on many levels of being.

As we begin to find these gaps, inner rhythms can be acknowledged, and when necessary, alignments made with the universal rhythms present all around us. These universal rhythms have always been there, but it is as if we are only now, not only as individuals but also as a collective, beginning to hear them.  

One place these universal rhythms are to be found is in the gaps between cultures. These gaps were once thought of in a negative way, as if they were points of separation and divide. On closer inspection they are a meeting place to discover similarity, interconnectedness, unity and creativity.

Meet you in the gap!  

Light Through - Electronic Stained Glass

There are some days that seem to be filled with colour.

Last week, shortly after my return from the Liwa Desert, I visited a centre in Dubai called Wafi and experienced such a day. Camera in hand, I clicked away. When selecting a few of the images to share in a gallery, I noticed that most of those I had chosen involved light shining through glass.

I was immediately reminded of an interview I had been listening to, in which Jeremy Johnson discussed the terms “light on” and “light through” with John David Ebert. 

Light can shine on something or light can shine through something. Marshall McLuhan, a communications theorist, used the terms “light on” and “light through” to highlight the media that went hand in hand with various cultures throughout the ages.

In the west, in the Middle Ages, light had shone through.  The stained glass windows of many cathedrals are testimony to this. They told stories to the beholder and were meant to point the one looking to a Presence beyond. The dominant belief at the time was that the light of Spirit was shining through all that was taking place.  

The invention of the printing press by Gutenberg in the 15th century had ushered in the Renaissance, an age of “light on”.  The printed word had to be looked at.  Light had to be shone on the printed word so that the eye could read it.  

The digital age has once again ushered in “light through”, and the gadgets we currently use are like electronic stained glass. Their high resolution makes them luminous and beautiful, with light shining in from behind.

These gadgets make it possible for you and I to meet and exchange information immediately.  Even right now, our spaces are overlapping. We are sharing a common boundary and an exchange is taking place.

When two entities interconnect, be they systems, concepts, devices, cultures or human beings, the common boundary they share and where an exchange of information and/or energy takes place is known as an interface. 

The place where we are currently meeting, I have chosen to call here2here. In it, we are able to “interface” - which I will translate as - meet in the space between our faces. here2here is the common boundary we share right now, a space where our subtle energies meet. In this space, you somehow shine through to me and I shine through to you, with webcams and apps such as facetime providing a possible enhancement of this meeting. 

Aaron Koblin in his TED talk, quotes: “The culture of the 19th century was defined by the novel, and the 20th century by the cinema. The culture of the 21st century will be defined by the interface.”

I am of the opinion that the interface will again allow us to become aware of a special light shining through, a light symbolizing the transcendent.

Already the miracle of this is becoming apparent as, for example, interfacing is making it possible for east and west to allow light to flow through to each other. 

Special online museums are enabling us to view each other’s art and so learn more about the culture of the other. The resulting fusion is producing new masterpieces. 

The exhibition, “Through The Looking Glass” by Syrian artist, Mouteea Murad, is currently running in Dubai. When I viewed the exhibition, I was immediately reminded of stained glass, not knowing then, that this would be the topic of this blog!

I include the picture I took of one of his artworks here, because it symbolizes for me in image, that which I have attempted to say with words. 

I include too, a video featuring the music of Jon Hopkins. The piece is entitled, “Light through the veins” and the sounds and images of this video speak too, where words fail.