The half life of language
{{ | date=02/30/2019 | summary=What is the half life of language? | cast=
| place_name=In a cross section of being and time, pushing hands with someone who doesn't always exist. | place_desc=Alma is an orphan, and this is how she learns | log=Alma has been learning about Entropy. The grit when she slides through old factory lots on her bike. The way the tires goes flat. The way the rubber feels under her fingers as she changes it. The way sometimes alleys echo with the Wheel of Fortune drumming in wobbly bike tire when she doesn't fall.
Grit isn't like a river or an ocean. At most it evokes a beach, like the one where she picked up her Tao stones and smooth drift glass. The pieces were small and scored with scratches so shallow that it was fog that kept the glass from transparency.
When she's brought her mind into the focus of the flow it /has/ been like a river, sometimes. stepping through riparian zones into a new place. Sometimes when she focuses she finds that she is in an ocean. It doesn't feel wet though. It's like a dream. And it's hard to move in dreams. It takes force. She knows that, and the information around here pushes on her. Sometimes she can push with it, sometimes she moves out of a heavy current, sometimes she stomps her foot on the ocean floor and stirs up the turbidity.
Those are small things. Once she got into a panic. She rushed to friends. She was agitated. She was agitated with all the energy from how things fit. How do buildings learn? That was a thing she learned in school. In her agitation she tried to everything all at once. She pushed the memories from that time out--this is how a forge learns. this is where tools could go. This is how you can move with the place and the place can move with you. She wanted to talk. This was a mania, not the sick one, the real knowing of all the information rushing in her seashell ears. She pushed. She was prickled. She didn't wait for water to boil. She didn't flow with the knowledge of how to move. Worry. Furious action without acting. The universe, it spoke to her. She fell over in the silence when it stopped. Retreat.
What was that? /Who/ was that. _Metaphors We Live By_ by A. Linguist. But she learned in the beginning that everything lives. She's tried language. She's tried what comes before. The universe was never personal before. She had suspected, but never felt the memory of a conversation. This was different. Somehow she knew things from a conversation before time.
Aikido. Or, more than that; She might think of Takuan's advice:
"Try not to localize the mind anywhere, but let it fill up the whole body, let it flow throughout the totality of your being. When this happens you use the hands where they are needed, you use the legs or the eyes where they are needed, and no time or energy will go to waste."
Our whole body, Being, is farther than maybe he knew? It's how to play with a cat without being punctured. A few scratch are natural. Or it how you dance with chaos, or throw them. push them aside, or tumble. Maybe chaos is personal, more than a thought.
She's learning to meet chaos by metaphor.
It is like walking along in the flow of Entropy and knowing that there is something that talked to you. Then begrudgingly (at first) holding your palm out to it. Existence understands you, pfah, and says, well okay. Whatever, kid, I'll participate in this. And it puts its palm on your palm. just touching, no grasp.
And you think, well ok. That wasn't horrible. And you tickle its palm with a brush of your fingers. teasing. and it's like, what? ok. and then there's tackling and you get flipped. Maybe you were touching a catlike part of existence and being a cat with it.
Is about acceptance of a divine nature of things. It is not about surrender or obedience or being possessed. It's like learning how to fall. Learning stances to be able to withstand and redirect force.
So you don't fall over.
Everything in existence isn't something you love personally, but you have an attachment like the way you might be wandering along and pat a leaf to say hello to it. The leaf may or may not care. You may or may not invite it to tea. But it's good in that way that gives you the impulse to stroke it.
when you go into the flow of entropy it's easy to be confused and bombarded and pushed around in the currents and eddies and sometimes you playfight or just touch hands. You engage with something personal. This acceptance of the personal is a compromise that makes your doubt more powerful, and this has allowed you to change more.
Her doubt is the brick Alma throws through windows. But maybe something catches it and throws it back.
A native of Ssu Ch'uan, Ch'an master Ma Tsu spent his childhood in a temple, playing games with the young novices. When he was twelve, he became a monk. Soon after that, he went to Nanyuehshan Mountain to practice tso-Ch'an (sitting-Ch'an). At that time, the celebrated master Huai Jang held the position of Abbot of Pan Jo Ssu Temple. At first sight he knew that the young monk was an unusual person with the potential for immediate realization. So the abbot tested Ma Tsu ny saying, "Why are you going to practice sitting-Ch'an?"
"To become a Buddha," was the reply.
At that Huai Jang held a brick up and started to polish it.
"What are you doing?" asked the young monk.
"I am polishing this brick in order to make a mirror."
Alma throws the brick. It's raining and she needs no mirror.
And, action
<<DICE>> Alma rolls int+meditation, difficulty 6
<<DICE>> FAIL (2 3 4 4 5, Specialty: No, Willpower: No)
<<DICE>> Alma rolls intelligence + Meditation, difficulty 6
<<DICE>> 4 successes (3 6 6 7 8, Specialty: No, Willpower: No)
<<OOC>> Alma says, "vulgar without witnesses: highest sphere + 4"
<<OOC>> Alma says, "Prep action (attempt at meditation with difficulty 7) gives 2 successes"
<<OOC>> Alma says, "the 2nd ritual where Alma attempts to learn entropy. Orphan diff +2 because the 1st ritual was successful"
<<OOC>> Alma says, "entropy 3 + vulgar 4 + orphan 2 - prep 2"
<<DICE>> Alma rolls arete, difficulty 7
<<DICE>> 2 successes (3 4 10, Specialty: No, Willpower: Yes)
[POOL] Alma spends 1 points of Willpower. Reason: Automatic Success
<<DICE>> Alma rolls arete, difficulty 7
<<DICE>> 1 success (2 4 6, Specialty: No, Willpower: Yes)
[POOL] Alma spends 1 points of Willpower. Reason: Automatic Success
<<DICE>> Alma rolls arete, difficulty 7
<<DICE>> 4 successes (8 9 9, Specialty: No, Willpower: Yes)
[POOL] Alma spends 1 points of Willpower. Reason: Automatic Success
<<DICE>> Alma rolls arete, difficulty 4
<<DICE>> 2 successes (1 6 10, Specialty: No, Willpower: Yes)
[POOL] Alma spends 1 points of Willpower. Reason: Automatic Success
<<DICE>> Comment: check for anything spiritual problems in the dirt
Alma scoops a mess of contaminated ground into a specimen jar this time because no one has her back. She /could/ spend time setting up a blind and scouting around to see that there still are no wild boars, but she's trying to learn something new that could blow up in her face.
At home, Alma goes to her room to meditate. The jar is set in front of her. Her meditation gives her a proprioception of where things are and how they might be. Somehow, it doesn't work. Maybe the air in her room is too still. She pads to the mudroom to put her shoes back on, and heads out to the backyard. There's the shirt hanging on the bramble. She left it there for the ants. Birds and rodents have used the fraying shirt to line nests and dens. It fits.
The day has a chill, but she's endured worse before. Weeks camping in the alpine forests of New Zealand toughen one to the cold. She's rattled from failure, but she starts again. It works this time. Whatever language or fizz she hears out there catches her tune.
A frayed cuff falls over the jar. She waits. Let the wind take it.
When finally she can see the mess of dirt in the jar, it no longer has that unhealthy iridescence when she tilts the jar to look for it. She'll check again in the lab to compare it with the other specimen.
Her work isn't perfect because she doesn't know what to do about the lead. But everything else is okay for now. }}
