On Learning

2.15.17
Blue Resonant Night

Some people say to learn and become educated you must study the works of other learned people, read their writings, pour over their style of painting, and all this will get you ‘there’ faster. At the essence of this way of learning is imitation and absorption; with the hope that you’ll find your own style while you build skill and technique on the bones of their work.

There is truth to this, yet this way of learning does not pull me in, draw me with attraction, nor does it resonate for this is what interests me and holds magnetic force, irresistible and alluring::

the studied-people mostly did not come to become who they were through absorption and imitation, they came to be through experimentation, deep diving, engagement with their experiences, practice practice and more practice, sheets tossed crumpled and burned while they fed their fire and unfolded from the inside out and outside in, churning with a ferocity that is inherently accessible all the time.

How do I know this without having studied them? It’s true, I’m not a woman of great learning as far as information, facts, and study goes, nor do I retain information that comes my way. Indeed, I barely recall words I’ve written myself, yet they are my words and I’ll always have access to their wisdom even when I cannot quote myself or an other. So how do I know without studying the ‘greats’ how they came to become? Because I play hide and seek, and enjoy it, especially in the dark. Because Crow told me, it is so, Crow said, Should all the libraries and books and paintings and histories and information and schools universities and artifacts in the whole world burn, there would still be educated people, learned people, knowledge able people; for while these places and objects serve, in their absence all would not be lost for they are merely convenient containers of what was discovered and thought and figured out, indeed created, by human intelligence which came long before the containers were filled through and with the content of a human mind engaged in the universe, completely integrated and absorbed with self as the vessel to vast undiscovered shores.

The thing is this, because it is universally accessible, voyagers discover others along the way who are tapping into the same core place of knowing, often they know the same things and that’s what makes it marvelous! This is how I know though I don’t quote and spout information from other’s journeys without making the trip myself, and even when I have, I’m not inclined to quote. And so this studied study-people way does not captivate myself, the truth is I find it abhorrent, repellent, vile, for it makes itself an insidious invader that seeks to conquer the sea of self, bereaving it of that primal urge to discover the unfolding and become; it is a short cut that short changes humanity into being small, short on dignity, shorn, over time it renders the world torn.

3.12.17 Full Moon
Yellow Rythmic Star

The voyage I’m talking about is not the same as collective agreements or collusion, for in truth the ‘collective’ cannot be anything short of desirable when it’s formed on the very fabric excavated from the bones of other people’s journeys, grave digging, toward something taller than ‘collective’ collaboration built on unstable ground.

Give me collective agreements between people forming the culture who have, like sourdough starter, caught the yeasts and microbes and invisible bacterium unto themselves and fermented over time; what have they ripened into and become? That piques my curiousity, rouses my interest, inspires, motivates me to walk a few miles in my own shoes alongside of them walking in their own shoes . . . or barefoot, soles on ground . . . together, even though it may be fearsome at first!

I seek something deeper than being a little teapot with a spout that spills forth the tea brewed to the specifications of another without tasting it to feel that on my tongue, in my throat, sliding down into my stomach where my gut knows if the tea is for me or not, no matter how populous and tried and tested, how does it resonate inside this body? Does it taste delicious, are its effects beneficious? It has to be tested against my fabric, then it doesn’t matter where the recipe came from, more so than it works, personally, or it doesn’t; in which case I create one that does and from this point comes creative-i-tea, you see, from this point, this dot, comes creating, creation, the sweetest tea of all!

Give me eloquence in expression; give me integrated thought, feeling, and words bespoken. Give me teachers like Crow, and the ability to love and know myself enough to be grounded and clear when others are near who think they know what they do not is their idea of what should be or could be in my pot, that I may not be muddled and puddled by their thinking! That I may engage in congress and conversation openly with them and it be however it is and I be able to navigate my way through it stable, with my wits about me to nudge, Put the blinders on for now, sometimes that’s how a Horse must run! Humor does it, laughing lungs are happy lungs, filled with air they make for good deep sea diving.

Though I may have to hold my breath for a long while to get to the bottom, it’s alright, it’s worth it, and that’s what I’m after: treasure that’s mine, that I swam for, sweated for, exerted myself for, cried and laughed for, knowing that every effort is part of the becoming, trusting it to the core, and this is all that interests me as far as learning goes from the greats of before: our shared commonality as adventurers though we may not go far in miles, what I’m speaking of is immeasurable and unquantifiable, it defies gravity though it acknowledges the presence of this force all the same.

Then, what comes after? Is there an after? Is learning ever over, ever after? Or is it a continuum, the point changing, and flexibility being the key upon which one pivots with the point, even as the learning and engagement happen, they are not separate from anything else but a folding in of pecans, carrots, and pineapple into carrot cake to bake something delicious to share::the point being or not being, depending on who one is, an opportunity to create, to share the creation, to give, and then in the contraction and emptiness afterward in the empty dishes and pans, the open space to continue . . . . .