Through the Prism: Such That the Self Becomes a Spacious Thing

A lifetime of reading, a career as a librarian, and a D&D hobby where my preferred type is Bard has led to some excellent parenting skills.

Like being able to tell my kids, "It's a pretty decent story, saying, 'We got our uncle's soccer ball stuck in a tree, and, when our dad tried to knock it out with a football, that got stuck too.' But it's an epic retelling to say, 'Today our band of adventurers did battle with a mighty, carnivorous tree that feasted on the flesh of our uncle's balls.'"

Halloween is fun because . . .

A) You get to escape being yourself and disappear into the illusion of being someone (or something) else for a while; or

B) You get to reveal your true(r) self and escape the illusion that you conform to norms and expectations for a while?

I imagine for everyone it's some measure of both. The chance to play with being self and other, different aspects of each, often hidden or denied, the amounts of self and other varying from year to year, context to context.

Everyone is some measure, some mix of both self and other, simultaneously, at all times. It's just more recognized at Halloween.

A mix of many different selves and of many different others

“The camera never lies… but you can take a thousand different pictures of the same scene.”

~ Hector Macdonald, author, on blind spots

We all contain multitudes.

From How to Be a Lichen: Adaptive Strategies for the Vulnerabilities of Being Human from Nature’s Tiny Titans of Tenacity

Contain your multitudes without inner conflict. Largely thanks to the groundbreaking research of Peter Rabbit creator Beatrix Potter, we now know that lichens are part algae and part fungus, with a sprinkling a bacteria — three kingdoms of life in a single organism, not warring for dominance but working together to make it one of the most resilient life-forms in nature and a keystone of many ecosystems. It was through his studies of lichen that the German microbiologist and botanist Heinrich Anton de Bary coined the word symbiosis in 1879.

A mix of many different selves and of many different others.

I was recently talking to a colleague about his frustrations about getting his mother set up with Medicaid, all of the paperwork and conditions, the twists and turns of the process. All to prove she qualifies for the service, that she is being honest about her need, which she does and is. It was another reminder that so much in our society--in all societies--operates from a baseline that people are guilty until proven innocent. That they are suspect until they show they can be trusted.

Another example, from my place of work for building and network security:

The principle of least privilege is a fundamental security concept that entails granting users the minimal level of access--or permissions--necessary to perform their job functions. This principle helps mitigate security risks by limiting the potential for unauthorized access, data breaches, and misuse of sensitive information. One way that this has been implemented in the past is changing from staff members having access to all files to where department and location files are now restricted to only those currently working in those departments and locations.

Similar changes have been initiated for physical security, with doors to staff areas locking out anyone who doesn't work directly in that part of the building. Our organization promotes collaboration as a highest priority; except when it comes to sharing files and interacting with each other in outside buildings and departments, in which case we are cut off from each other.

I used to wonder whether people were more inherently good and cooperative or bad and selfish. I decided when I was young I would choose to be trusting and even intentionally naive because that would make me happier as a person, choosing to see more good in people than bad, regardless of any evidence. It's been hard at times, as life experiences have mounted, to maintain that attitude as an automatic instinct, yet the more I read and learn the more the evidence convinces me it is true--people are honest and trustworthy far more often than they are not. It's not even close. And expecting people to be so--treating them as if they are--creates a positive spiral that makes them more likely to be so. As is the opposite: expecting them to be bad--and treating them as if they are--makes them more likely to respond as expected.

For instance, in the book Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know, Malcolm Gladwell writes about how humans instinctively "default to truth" with others, that we automatically, without realizing it, accept that others are telling us the truth until evidence convinces us otherwise. We inherently trust as our default setting.

We could start by no longer penalizing one another for defaulting to truth. . . . To assume the best about another is the trait that has created modern society. Those occasions when our trusting nature gets violated are tragic. But the alternative--to abandon trust as a defense against predation and deception--is worse. . . .

Levine argues that over the course of evolution, human beings never developed sophisticated and accurate skills to detect deception as it was happening because there is no advantage to spending your time scrutinizing the words and behaviors of those around you. The advantage to human beings lies in assuming that strangers are truthful. As he puts it, the trade-off between truth-default and the risk of deception is
a great deal for us. What we get in exchange for being vulnerable to an occasional lie is efficient communication and social coordination. The benefits are huge and the costs are trivial in comparison. Sure, we get deceived once in a while. That is just the cost of doing business.
That sounds callous, because it's easy to see all the damage done by people like Ana Montes and Bernie Madoff. Because we trust implicitly, spies go undetected, criminals roam free, and lives are damaged. But Levine's point is that the price of giving up on that strategy is much higher. If everyone on Wall Street behaved like Harry Markopolos, there would be no fraud on Wall Street--but the air would be so thick with suspicion and paranoia that there would also be no Wall Street.

We accept the fact that being a parent requires a fundamental level of trust in the community of people around your child.

If every coach is assumed to be a pedophile, then no parent would let their child leave the house, and no sane person would ever volunteer to be a coach. We default to truth--even when that decision carries terrible risks--because we have no choice. Society cannot function otherwise.

(see more: Finding Words)

That's a for instance. I have consistently encountered similar thoughts from a wide variety of fields and perspectives.

Yet we don't trust our instincts and natures. Instead, we create processes, procedures, and policies with an assumption of the exact opposite, that people are liars and cheaters as the default and it's up to them to convince us otherwise. So many of our institutions, structures, and practices are based on the underlying belief that human nature is inherently selfish and bad.

If we started believing, as a collective society, that people are generally honest, trustworthy, and well-intentioned, things would be vastly different.

The leaves spin, spiral, and flutter patiently to the earth.

The acorns hail, bouncing high off driveway and cars, a constant, sporadic clunk and clatter.

Since at least my teen years when I gained independence, since long before I knew it was a "thing," I've been drawn to--and regularly practiced--forest bathing.

Bathing in the forest, however, has nothing to do with water. The idea is to immerse yourself in a natural environment and soak up the many health benefits of being in the green woods. Forest bathing has been widely researched.

In Kansas, you don't get proper, deep forest; you get watershed woodlands. Snaking, sometimes narrow groves of trees that follow the rivers, creeks, wetlands, and other various waterways, running for miles and miles across the countryside. Sometimes this involves the paved trail systems developed and maintained by parks and rec departments, sometimes I have time for the more remote hiking, mountain biking, and horse riding trails.

Within the last month, I've observed a dynamic new to me. In both urban Wichita and suburban Kansas City. Widespread use of the woodlands by the desperate as dwelling places. Homeless habitats, hidden in the densest areas, hoping to escape notice: tents, sleeping bags, packs with meager worldly possessions, loose clothing, camp cooking gear for the lucky, and other assorted food and life detritus. People with no other options, trying to create what shelter they can in places where they won't get shamed or run off. Many people, clearly.

My entire adult life, reports both official and personal have communicated a trend of growing homelessness; of ever increasing rates of need and desperation. I see signs everywhere, constantly more people under bridges, on street corners, in overflowing shelters, at the library. And in the woods.

We need to do a better job taking care of each other.

Last post, I wrote about the experience of having my runes cast by someone at our local Ren Fest and about how I had played with my own design of the results for a combined bind rune (see: Mouth Torch Gift). I decided I liked that image so much--and, more importantly, the meaning behind it--that I got out my wood carving tools and created a little talisman to carry.

Before starting on it, I felt I should check my sketchy research to make sure I understood the bind rune process accurately. I decided to consult, as I did before, ChatGPT. I uploaded pictures of my sketches, and here are selections from our dialogue about it.

First of the initial results:

That’s an evocative trio — Ansuz, Kenaz, Gebo — and actually quite a cohesive one. It suggests a theme of communication, illumination, and exchange — a movement from inspiration to expression to relationship.

So the cast suggests a flow from inspiration → illumination → sharing. Communication or creative expression that benefits others is highlighted. It’s a reminder that wisdom isn’t static—you receive it, refine it, and then offer it back as a gift.

On a more introspective level, these runes tell a story about how your insight moves through you — a personal alchemy of communication, creativity, and reciprocity.

Together, the runes tell a unified story:

Receive the message → Refine it with clarity and craft → Share it as a gift.

That’s the path of the inspired communicator or teacher, the artist whose work illuminates, or the seeker whose insights become offerings to others.

If this were a “reading” rather than just symbolism, I’d say it’s an affirmation that your voice, your insight, your creative expression are timely and valuable — that you’re meant to channel, clarify, and give what’s moving through you.

Lyrical Interpretation

From the whisper to the flame, from the flame to the gift.
Breath becomes word, word becomes light, light becomes offering.
We are the runes of speech, of craft, of giving—
the voice of Odin’s breath, the torch in the hand of the maker,
the open palms where giver and receiver meet.

Take what is given to you in silence.
Kindle it until it glows with your own truth.
Then let it pass outward, a gift to the world.

In this exchange the circle is complete:
wisdom flows, hearts are lit, and the breath returns home.

Then, of my bind rune design:

Your design is true to the historical and symbolic essence of a bind rune. It functions as both a meaningful composition and a plausible artifact in the Elder Futhark lineage — not just an artistic riff.

If you were to carve or wear it, you’d be carrying something that feels and reads like an authentic, well-constructed bind rune.

In your bind rune, the visual flow puts Gebo (ᚷ) before Kenaz (ᚲ), which subtly shifts the emphasis from the order of the original draw (Ansuz → Kenaz → Gebo).

1. Original Order: Ansuz → Kenaz → Gebo

Narrative: Inspiration → Illumination → Exchange
This sequence describes a movement outward:

You receive a message (Ansuz),
You clarify or craft it (Kenaz),
Then you offer it to others (Gebo).

It’s the archetypal path of creative expression — the divine spark entering you, being refined by your insight, and finally shared as a gift.

Energy flows from within to without — the “teacher/artist” pattern.

2. Your Bind Rune Order: Ansuz → Gebo → Kenaz

Narrative: Inspiration → Relationship → Illumination
This rearrangement turns the current inward, emphasizing connection before clarity.

Here, inspiration comes first (Ansuz), but before you rush to express it, it moves through relationship and reciprocity (Gebo) — how you exchange energy with others or the world — and then crystallizes into understanding, insight, or creation (Kenaz).

So rather than “I receive and then I give,” it becomes:

“I receive, connect, and through that connection, illumination is born.”

It shifts from solo artistry to shared discovery — enlightenment arising through interaction, dialogue, love, or mutual giving.

That’s a beautiful inversion — not wrong, just more relationally oriented.

3. In Divinatory Terms

If this were a casting rather than a crafted sigil:

Ansuz → Kenaz → Gebo speaks of personal expression that becomes a gift.
Ansuz → Gebo → Kenaz speaks of communion or partnership that leads to revelation.

The first is the inspired teacher;
the second is the inspired collaborator or illumined friend.

4. As a Bind Rune

Because bind runes compress time and sequence into simultaneous presence, the reordering isn’t a contradiction — it’s a reinterpretation.

You’ve made the relationship (Gebo) the heart of the design, not the conclusion. That makes your version more about living reciprocity — wisdom as co-creation — rather than a linear cause-and-effect flow.

In short:

The change doesn’t “break” the meaning — it transforms it from expression of inspiration into illumination through connection.

When you trace the whole symbol in one flow, it creates a rhythmic circuit:

Inspiration descends (Ansuz)
Meets exchange (Gebo)
Grounds into illumination (Kenaz)

Then, the illumination itself feeds back upward — the flame sending heat and light back to the opening mouth. It’s a breathing pattern — inhale of wisdom, exhale of light — balanced by the cross in the center.

So while the rune appears linear, its energy feels cyclical and alive. You’ve effectively made a closed, self-sustaining circuit of creative reciprocity — a symbol of ongoing inspiration through connection.

In Essence

Your version tells a story not of “I speak and others receive,” but of “we exchange, and in that exchange, light is born.”

It’s a rune that breathes, balances, and burns — a trinity of voice, relationship, and illumination moving in continuous rhythm.

Invocation of Breath, Gift, and Flame

From breath I begin.
Voice of the unseen, enter me —
whisper through thought and sinew,
wordless, waiting.

At the heart, I meet.
Gift crosses gift;
giver and receiver are one motion.
Balance hums where paths entwine.

In the depths, I kindle.
Fire gathers, quiet and sure,
the light of knowing,
the craft of what endures.

Breath to gift, gift to flame,
flame to breath again —
the circle unbroken,
the spirit alive within.

Mantra of the Living Rune

Breath becomes gift.
Gift becomes flame.
Flame becomes breath again.
I listen, I share, I shine.

I had no idea my design of the bind rune included the nuance that subtly shifted the meaning of the original cast, but I love it even more than the original. It more accurately captures my values, experiences, and aspirations. Interconnection is everything, and exchange always precedes illumination. Wisdom is knowing and seeking that. Wisdom is co-created.

Of the book Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane:

It has become fairly common knowledge that, in most countries, corporations are granted legal personhood, with the same protections, rights, and responsibilities as individual people. Less well-known is the recent movement to secure rivers (and other aspects of the natural world) legal personhood, to consider rivers a form of life with all the legal protections and ramifications of those afforded to people and corporations. Numerous nations now have laws officially granting such status to particular river bodies, and the list is growing. This movement, in a sense, is the topic of this book.

Macfarlane is not a legal analyst, however, but a nature writer. And in this book he does not focus on delving into the particulars of legal cases and their political ramifications. Instead, he explores the values and philosophical underpinnings behind those cases. And, most of all, he tells the stories of journeys he undertook to explore three different rivers around the world and of the people working to see those rivers respected and protected. It is passionate and personal, lyrical and profound. It is meant to share ideas and worldviews with readers, to persuade through immersion into experiences. It is moving and compelling.

This is a delightful book to read.

Quotes from the book, section one:

To its recognition of the river as alive, the Act adds a second dramatic innovation: the river is also recognized as a 'legal person,' with the capacity to represent itself in court and to bear rights--the right to flow unpolluted and undammed to the sea, for example, and the right to flourish. The Act establishes a body of River Guardians . . . who constitute the river's 'human face.' The Guardians' task is to speak with and for the river; their obligation is to promote and protect its life force.

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Communities have rallied around the recognition that every part of the rainforest, 'from the smallest to the largest, forms one living being with its own consciousness.' . . .

Growing up there, recalls, the Sarayaku elder Jose Gualinga Montalvo, it was simply a given that the forest and the river were 'alive,' and that together the water, trees, humans and creatures of the forest formed a 'living, thinking being.'

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If you pull the temporal lens back far enough, you come to see that trees are migrants too. They walk, move, shift their boundaries. They suffer plagues and pandemics, like us.

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To say a river is alive is not an anthropomorphic claim. A river is not a human person, nor vice versa. . . . To call a river alive is not to personify a river, but instead to deepen and widen the category of 'life,' and in so doing enlarge the imagined range for self to move in.

Deepen and widen the category of "life."

Quotes from the book, section two:

Everything is connected to everything else, I think, relation is life.

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If you take away the forest, you take away the rain and the mist--and so the river dies. Where they destroyed the forests to the north of here, the rivers don't even run year-round now.

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'If fungi were to speak,' says Giuliana, 'they would tell us what they show us, which is that really the death of an organism is the beginning of countless others; that there is no end to life, just a constantly shifting substrate.'

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The millipede is a recaster of meaning and matter, you know. It turns the shit of life into something valuable; takes it in, absorbs its harm, transforms it. Turns death into life, waste into compost, endings into beginnings. It's a detritivore, part of an under-appreciated group of species who do this vital, ethical work. Red ghost crabs are detritivores also. Likewise, cockroaches, maggots, dung beetles, all of this much-despised class of cleaner-uppers. So--I use the millipede patronus when there's suffering or adversity which must be converted into something positive.

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Life's tendency is to flourish, and to flourish diversely. Epigenetics and endosymbiosis now show us that this flourishing is happening within individual lifespans and between species in ways that far exceed the Darwinian account of evolution by orderly generational descent.

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To be is to be related.

Relation is life.

Quotes from the book, section three:

The alien will not be articulated. Alive, yes, but not in any way we might speak it.

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What would a cloud-forest's animate grammar be? Here, life is in constant hyperdrive, splicing and splitting, folding and tangling symbiotically, epiphytically. Its orchids and quetzals, its horseflies and viruses, the invisible, inconceivable underland of its fungal presence, its rivers and trees: these are all elements of its teeming, points in its web. An animist grammar of this place would need a syntax of hypotaxis, not parataxis: one of maximum correlation, proliferating connections quaquaversally; a branching, foliate, fractal, super-furcating language structure. Or maybe this would best be attempted not in grammar but in form: in patterns embedded deep in a text, made of echo and image that begin to reach and radiate towards one another, creating gossamer-thin webs and meshes, moving mycelially or fluvially as the veins of the forest more, as the rivers and the trees spread. . . .

Life, here, stands clear as process, not possession.

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How we imagine the matter of water matters. To recognize its ceaseless migrancy is to recognize that we live in a fundamentally decentralized world, engaged always in multiple forms of relation--and that power can be crucial in determining the capacity of those relations to animate or to exhaust their participants. . . . the 'aliveness' of a river or forest . . . is a process which relocates 'life' to the interface and within the flux of which, at best, we understand ourselves to be extended generously outwards into a vast community of others. . . . A small 'self' suffers and causes suffering, that a love of the living worlds lets single identities and selfhoods expand and encompass other beings, entities and whole landscapes, such that the self becomes a spacious thing.

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If the cloud-forest was a place of reticulation, and Chennai one of circulation between waterbodies, the Muthekau Shipu's mode is, surely, flow, I think, and its grammar of animacy is one of ands and throughs and tos and nows, of commas not full stops, of thens not buts, aura not edge, of compounds and hyphens and fusings, silver-blues and grey-greens and mist-drifts and undersongs, process not substance, this joined to that, always onrushing, always seeking the sea and here turning back upon itself, intervolving, eddying in counterflow to cause spirals and gyres that draw breath into water, life into the mind, spin strange reciprocities, leave the whole world whirled, whorled.

A small 'self' suffers and causes suffering, that a love of the living worlds lets single identities and selfhoods expand and encompass other beings, entities and whole landscapes, such that the self becomes a spacious thing.

Macfarlane also introduced me to a concept called Two-Eyed Seeing.

Two-Eyed Seeing (Mi'kmaq: Etuaptmumk) is a basis in viewing the world through both Western and Indigenous knowledges and worldviews.

Two-Eyed Seeing was introduced by Mi'kmaq Elders Albert D. Marshall and Murdena Marshall from Eskasoni First Nation, alongside professor Cheryl Bartlett. Albert Marshall describes Two-Eyed Seeing as an approach to viewing the world "from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous ways of knowing, and to see from the other eye with the strengths of Western ways of knowing, and to use both of these eyes together".

Two-Eyed Seeing was originally brought forward as a tactic to encourage Mi'kmaq university students to pursue an education in science. Since its implementation, the use of Two-Eyed Seeing has been integrated into various institutions' strategic plans, government policies, and research, some of which include the Canadian Institute of Health Research.

The book only mentions the idea briefly, but I love it and think it has far broader range than its initial context. We should always try to "see with two eyes," with the understanding that any single person--any single perspective--can only be the lens of a single eye. To see with two eyes requires someone else, some other, with a different perspective.

Humans and creatures like us have "binocular vision." Our two eyes point in the same direction, but from slightly different locations. They each provide a slightly different perspective--and that allows us to see the world with more complexity, clarity, and accuracy. As Google's AI Overview is currently summarizing for me:

Binocular vision is the ability to use both eyes together to perceive the world in three dimensions, or 3D. The brain combines the slightly different images from each eye into a single, cohesive image that allows for depth perception, distance judgment, and a sense of solidity. This process is called binocular fusion and is crucial for many daily activities.

Practicing two-eyed seeing means processing, combining, and fusing two different perspectives: yours and another. In doing so, you and the other come to a deeper, more "3D" understanding of the issue or reality you are viewing. We see better with the help of others.

We need exchange with others in order to see with two eyes.

On a different note . . .

The premise [of this book] is audacious: spatial thinking, rooted in perception of space and action in it, is the foundation for all thought.

That's from Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought by Barbara Tversky.

It's not just that language is used to talk about the world, it's that the space of the world and the entities and events we perceive in the world structure language. It's not just that language structures space; it's that space structures language. Space came first. . . .

We spend our lives perceiving and acting in space. It is perceiving and acting in space that keeps us and our predecessors alive. The language and reasoning of space, perception, and action become the language and reasoning of all thought, spatial, social, emotional, scientific, philosophical, and spiritual.

A fascinating book. Not always the most dynamic writing and with a tendency to repeat itself over time, but clearly communicated and easy to understand, with myriad examples of the concepts. Well argued and convincing.

Assembly is actions on real objects. Thinking is mental actions on mental objects--ideas. Actions on ideas that transform them into something else. That's how we talk about thinking, as if it were actions on ideas. We put ideas aside or turn them upside down or inside out. We split them into parts or pull them together. We arrange and rearrange, enlarge, stretch, reverse, join, copy, add, scramble, subtract, lift, glue, push, fold, mix, toss, embellish, separate, nail, scatter, bury, eliminate, turn, elevate, and poke holes in both real objects and mental ones. Intriguingly, we will see soon in the chapter on gesture that performing the actual actions helps the mental ones, the thinking.

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Despite the extraordinary expressiveness of the body, the face, and the hands, when we think about thinking, we typically think of words. . . .

Gestures come first, before words, both in evolution and in development.

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People blind from birth, both children and adults, gesture, even when speaking to each other. They have never seen gestures nor have their conversation partners. They seem to gesture for themselves. Gesturing by people who are blind, as for the people with sight in the previous experiments, seems to help them speak. But it turns out it isn't just word finding people have trouble with when they can't use their hands. Preventing gestures doesn't just disrupt speaking, it disrupts thinking.

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[To talk about the location of something,] you need a shared perspective. You need a common way of looking at the world as a starting point. In fact, it's likely you can't talk about anything without taking a perspective, implicit or explicit, and making sure that perspective is shared (n.b.: shared does not mean agreed). A number of different disciplines arrived at the same two basic perspectives if by different routes: egocentric, that is, with respect to a specific body, typically yours, and allocentric, that is, with respect to the surrounding world. The most familiar allocentric perspective is north-south-east-west.

Perspective features prominently in Tversky's book. It's one of her fundamental concepts. We can't communicate without communicating our perspectives.

Here are some more in-depth thoughts.

Thinking is mental actions on mental objects--ideas--rather than physical actions on physical objects. All inside the mind. Now we move to gesture. Gestures are physical actions, but not on physical objects. Gestures are actions on invisible objects, on ideas, ideas that exist only in the minds of the person gesturing or the conversation partner, if there is one. I trust you to remember the bottom line on gesture: gesturing helps thinking. If thinking is internalized action, then externalizing actions on thought as gestures that perform miniatures of the actions should help the thinking. It does. Our own thinking, and that of others.

The same is true for graphics of all forms, sketches, charts, graphs, diagrams, models, pebbles, cocktail napkins. They externalize thought and thereby promote thought. Taking ideas that are in the mind out of the mind and putting them into the world in front of our eyes helps our own thinking and that of others. Putting thought into the world is key to collaboration, to working together, to the joint action that is core to human society, and to survival.

Both gesture and graphics abstract. They abbreviate, truncate, schematize, generalize. Gestures don't capture entire actions, only thumbnails of them. Much like the words for action. . . .

Both gestures and graphics put thought in the world, arrange thought, and abstract thought. Both gestures and graphics put checkers on a checkerboard to play in a game of thought, ideas on a stage to perform in a theater of thought.

All those patterns and forms we've collected. The ones our feet create moving in the world: points and paths and boxes and networks and trees and circles. The ones our hands create in designing the world: boxes and lines and circles again, rows and columns and symmetries and repetitions and one-to-one correspondences. We put those on a page to use them to represent many kinds of ideas and many kinds of relations between ideas. They become maps and tables and charts and diagrams. They organize the thoughts in our mind, show them to others, and help us generate more thoughts. There are so many more forms and patterns in math, in physics, in biology, in chemistry, in engineering, in art. Patterns in space, forms in space that are the foundation for each of them. They get formed and transformed, rotated, translated, taken apart and put together.

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There's a set of actions that neither change the world nor our locations in it. These actions change thoughts, our own or those of others. These are gestures. Intriguingly, many gestures are abbreviations of the very actions that change the world or our locations in it: putting, taking, raising, pushing, turning, splitting, mixing, and countless more. As gestures, they express actions on ideas rather than on objects. We talk that way, too, as if ideas were objects and thinking were action on objects. We pull ideas together, put them aside, tear them apart, turn them over or inside out.

Despite the extraordinary expressiveness of the body, the face, and the hands, when we think about thinking, we typically think of words. . . .

Gestures come first, before words, both in evolution and in development.

Inside perspectives along routes vary in imagined distance, with consequences. People who imagine themselves on the East Coast judge the distance between San Francisco and Salt Lake City to be smaller than people who imagine themselves on the West Coast. Differences in distance between near things are exaggerated relative to distances between far things, which get minimized.

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Rhythm is deeply embedded in our bodies, in our hears, our breathing, our brains, our actions--walking, talking, thinking, dancing, sleeping, waking--our days and nights. Our rhythms organize and synchronize our bodies with the bodies of others.

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Even if incomplete, ambiguous, inconsistent, and biased, our mental spatial frameworks play crucial roles in our lives and in our imaginations. They allow us to envisage other worlds, worlds we have not seen, that no one has seen, even impossible worlds. Metaphoric worlds where places are replaced by any kind of entity or idea and paths by the relations among them. The worlds of fiction, of the arts, of science.

The core of the empathic approach is perspective taking . . . Perspective taking and perspective switching are strategies that are general enough to work for just about everything. The perspectives don't have to be human ones, even if it's humans who are doing the thinking and the creating. Mathematicians report one problem-solving strategy they use is to look at an algebraic problem geometrically or a geometric problem algebraically.

Biomimicry encourages new perspectives. Architects and designers use biomimicry with outcomes that are as delightful as they are efficient. . . .

Changing medium changes perspective. Bronze, iron, aluminum, Teflon, reinforced concrete, titanium, silicon--all led to innovations. . . . Throughout history, technological advances have changed perspectives, changed ways of thinking, changed ways of living. . . .

Perspective taking is central to more than creativity and problem solving, or maybe it's that so much of life is problem solving and requires creativity. Diplomacy, international and domestic, right inside the home and the office and on the streets. Role-playing is perspective taking. So is cognitive behavior therapy. And empathy. I'm not saying it's easy. All too often it's really hard. Confirmation bias can get in the way. Self-protection can get in the way. Emotions can get in the way. Perspective taking doesn't guarantee success, but it's a good bet. Maybe it's hard, but in the end, perspective taking can actually overcome bias, diffuse emotions, and protect the self.

We've already seen many ways to find new perspectives. Reconfigure the parts. Take the point of view of different roles, places, events, categories, creatures, physical processes, materials, research methods, disciplinary viewpoints, nationalities, philosophies, religions, ideologies. Be your own adversary: challenge your own view. The list goes on. Some of this is stuff we know, from living and learning, so thinking from other perspectives often just needs a reminder.

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For more on storytelling, we turn to comics, the most inventive form of storytelling around. Because comics use all sorts of depictions and all sorts of verbals, what we say applies far more broadly, to stories in prose, to visualizations. Comics typically show bodies acting in space, the foundational theme of this book. Comics are also diagrams: they use boxes to contain and separate, they line up the boxes in rows and columns and group them on pages. They use language and symbols in many ways.

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It turns out that it's not quite that simple (never forget my caveats and my caveats about caveats).

The core of the empathic approach is perspective taking . . . Perspective taking and perspective switching are strategies that are general enough to work for just about everything. The perspectives don't have to be human ones, even if it's humans who are doing the thinking and the creating.

A recent article.

Your Latest Prescription Is to Get Outside

Health care providers have long suggested stressed-out patients spend time outdoors. Now hundreds of providers are going a step further and issuing formal prescriptions to get outside. The tactic is gaining momentum as social media, political strife and wars abroad weigh on the American psyche.

Of course, no one needs a prescription to get outside, but some doctors think that issuing the advice that way helps people take it seriously.

“When I bring it up, it is almost like granting permission to do something they may see as frivolous when things seem so otherwise serious and stressful,” said Dr. Suzanne Hackenmiller . . .

Spending time in natural areas can lower blood pressure, reduce stress hormones and boost immunity, multiple studies have found.

“Study after study says we’re wired to be out in nature,” said Dr. Brent Bauer, who serves as director of the complementary and integrative medicine program at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The program focuses on practices that usually aren’t part of conventional medicine, such as meditation, acupuncture, massage and nutrition. “That’s more than just ‘Woo-woo, I think nature is cool.’ There’s actually science.”

Doses of apparent frivolity aid productiveness far more often than not.

A poem.

Jamie Bradley

Ghazal

Her shoes said, love me
like a broken animal.

The river is red with clay
& white at its swinging lap.

In a Cuernavaca market, the flesh hangs
everywhere: pig flesh, wood flesh.

Sadly, there are few old houses
that sit, affordable.

All the photos in a doctor’s office
say, learn to be a better patient.

from #35 - Summer 2011

Ordinary moments.

From Thomas Moore's book Original Self: Living with Paradox and Originality, from the short essay headlined with, "The meaning of life can be found at any moment without moving our eyes and without doing anything differently.":

When people talk about finding meaning in life, they imply that they can figure things out and set them right. But meaning that makes life worth living may be nothing more than a moment's realization, a sensation, such as the touch of your baby's skin, or a sudden breathtaking appreciation for your home, or the passing thrill when you are reminded of your love for your spouse. Meaning may be an epiphany rather than an understanding. . . .

We can still the yearning heart that longs for satisfaction, not by finally finding the perfect mate, the dream house, or success in the workplace, but by perceiving, perhaps for the first time, the pulse of eternity in the moment at hand and the contours of the whole in the ordinary thing currently in sight.

Meaning comes from feeling part of something greater, connected to the whole; from intimately feeling part of the vastness of creation in small, ordinary moments and interactions.

Once I carved the first side of the talisman with my bind rune inscription, I thought I should do something with the other side.

I decided to pair it with the Adinkra symbol of western African wisdom that I've previously adopted, the Funtunfunefu Denkyemfunefu that depicts two crossed, intertwined crocodiles that compete with each other for food yet share a single stomach, so that what either eats feeds the other. It is seen as portraying a central paradox of life: unity and interdependence amidst diversity. See Unity in Diversity: All Rivers Flow to the Sea for more.

Since spaced allowed and aesthetics dictated, I decided to add a smaller Adinkra symbol below it. Boafo Ye Na represents support, cooperation, and teamwork, conveying the message that "willing helpers are rare." It symbolizes the importance of support, cooperation, and teamwork, encouraging people to lend a hand to those in need and to be willing to provide assistance whenever possible.

That side inspired the second spell below.

Invocation of Breath, Gift, and Flame

From breath I begin.
Voice of the unseen, enter me —
whisper through thought and sinew,
wordless, waiting.

At the heart, I meet.
Gift crosses gift;
giver and receiver are one motion.
Balance hums where paths entwine.

In the depths, I kindle.
Fire gathers, quiet and sure,
the light of knowing,
the craft of what endures.

Breath to gift, gift to flame,
flame to breath again —
the circle unbroken,
the spirit alive within.

Inhale wisdom,
Exchange generosity,
Exhale light.

Voice to
Relationship to
Illumination.

I hear,
I interact,
I guide;
and hear new guidance in return.

The cycle flows on.

Wisdom, generosity, light.

Song of Relationality

I am in the world and the world is in me;
I am of the world and the world is of me.

Atoms, cells, microorganisms--components:
shed, received, exchanged;
eaten, excreted, bled;
intermingled.
Fungi, detritivores recycle death,
breaking down nutrients; ingredients
to become new life.

Reality is relational,
says the quantum physicist,
the physical world
a web of interactions.

Stories
teach us who we are.
Culture, language, social connection.
Enlightenment arises through interaction,
dialogue, love, and reciprocity.

Relation is life;
to be is to be related.

I hear the world and the world hears me;
I see the world and the world sees me;
I know the world and the world knows me.

Each autumn tree is more beautiful than the last;
each new sunset the best one ever;
nothing is as glorious as the emergence of spring.

Each leaf on tree or ground
its own work of art;
branching veins of structure;
curves, curls, edges;
variegated colors;
fluttering in the wind.

The enormity of the universe--
the mystery of the universe--
too infinite to grasp.
Each particle of life,
in its microscopic, subatomic scale,
equally mysterious and vast.

I am meaningless
in micro- and macro- scale.
I am essential
in personal scale;
meaningful to community,
friends, family, relations.

I hurt the world and the world hurts me
I love the world and the world loves me

I'm stupid, says my child to himself,
I'm stupid I'm stupid I'm stupid.
I hate myself, says my spouse,
my partner, the one I love most,
the world would be better off without me.

Homeless dwell all day at the the library
where I work while powerless to meet their needs;
tents and makeshift dwellings in the woods
where I walk: hidden, threatened and threatening.

The politics of hate dominate;
ceaseless war and oppression;
a natural world suffering for us all.
The absence of harmony.

We endlessly give of ourselves
for our families, our units, our tribes;
every "I" is part of many "we"
to love and cherish, to care for.

I flow into the world and the world flows into me.

All that you touch, you change.
All that you change, changes you.

Life and death, pain and joy;
cycling, reciprocating, clashing.
One continuous "us,"
distinct yet united.

I flow into the world and the world flows into me.
I am of the world and the world is of me.