Thursday, April 17, 2008

Garden and Philosophy of Dreams in the Mind-Body paradox

I cleared brush out of the garden spot yesterday and Mark has gone today to rent the tiller. We have a few places planned to plant this year. Last year when I was pregnant I didn't garden as much as I had planned... I probably could have but I was being careful about Esme.

Philosophy:

Sometimes I still feel as if I don't really exist as my body, but rather within it - as something controlling the switches but definitely separate. Mark and I disagree on this, and haven't reallly been able to come to a compromise on the idea. He believes that since mind and body cannot exist without each other, not as the same person -- then they must be one and not two coexisting entities. I've read a lot of philosophy on it over the years. Descartes, Kant, Plato and Aristotle, the empiricists like Locke - and a lot of new theories as well. It is part of what I paid close attention to in my anthropological and mythological studies in college, as well.

I'm still examining my gut feeling that I am *something* within a marionette pulling most of my own strings (deep - that has more to be said on it). That shows up in my art a lot - masks and puppets with different outer and inner forms. It is only further confused by my dreams, which are rich and vibrant, containing motion and scent and color, time and a richness of detail (books have actual writing in them, titles, authors... people speak words to me, not always English, that seem to make sense but later I can't remember it all...) -- but sometimes it's not ME, that is ... not this body. It's not even the same 'not-me', just some arbitrary different body... Sometimes it feels like I'm just listening in, 'fly on the wall' etc....

When I am 'ME' often the time is wrong, I'm back in the past - or the people I'm talking to I realize halfway through that they are only my dream-world's representation of the person I think they are ... they are not 'complete' - just a memory... It's like someone turns on the lights and everything stops... disappears, melts etc... because I figured out it was a dream.

These dreams would make for excellent writing material - if I could just describe them well enough. They sound like lots of crazy movies and fantasy stories all rolled together. However, this type of experience has always, I think, made me see things a little differently than most people.


A self-portrait I drew while in college
I used a tiny pocket mirror that I couldn't see much more than a little bit of my face at a time in. This was my 'Picasso'-like period as well, thus the odd shadows


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