View source for The half life of language

{{Log
| date=02/30/2019
| summary=What is the half life of language?
| cast=
* [[Alma]]
| 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:

----

<blockquote>
"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."
</blockquote>

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.

<blockquote>
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."
</blockquote>

Alma throws the brick. It's raining and she needs no mirror.
}}