(Muted) Snake River, last light with Winter Solstice

INTERCONNECTIONS . - _ /

The movements of intelligence in Nature resonate together like the
circular waves of water droplets merging on the surface of quiet water.

Shake one, and they all shake. Leave one out, and another steps in to
take its place. This is why machines like computers, which are based at
present not so much on the all-at-once of the resonance of natural in-
telligence, but rather on long, complicated, necessarily explicit strings
of logical thought, so easily break. And they do this, as we all know,
in frequently highly disturbing and unpredictable ways. Their connec-
tions must indeed be ‘hard-wired,’ so to speak, one at a time. Given the
present need for this surface absolute precision, and therefore the lack
of the greatly more flexible relational movements of resonance, com-
puters, computer networks, and the software upon which they depend,
are all prone to go haywire with even the slightest low-level error.

Remarkably, if one were forced to tune the complex weave of inter-
connected sounds and rhythms of an orchestra in this way, one would
not make it past the first bar.

ON NECESSITY

The perception of Necessity can be liberating, because the way is then
made free for clear, decisive action. Indeed, how could this be oth-
erwise? When something must be so, the mind—whether that of the
individual or that of the collective—quits wasting energy by fighting
against itself, and, without forcing, comes to a unitary vision or flow.

The peak is in view.

The problem clearly defined. Let’s get on with the
climb!

ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
LIMIT & CONTROL

Control imposes order from without by projecting the predetermined
thought, conditioned by the past, of what should happen. The need to
control invariably increases as the disorderly, unexpected, side-effects
of past efforts accumulate, which results in ever-greater unnecessary
difficulties or complicatedness. In contrast, limit allows order to emerge
from within by determining only what at any given moment should not
happen.

Limit is therefore open to the future, and tends strongly towards
ever-greater simplicity and freedom.

PROTECTING THE COMMON GROUND
OF LANGUAGE

The cheap and flashy slogans of politics and commerce are like
aggressive alien weeds, overrunning the sacred common ground of
language with a kind of false—or irre-poetry. They numb and cor-
rupt our natural sense of the refined sonic elements of verse, reducing
subtleties like rhythm, anaphora and rhyme to mere clever instruments
in a grab-bag repertoire of tricks eager to serve the abuse of power and
questionable gain.

One of the first tasks of Poetry is to protect this common ground of
language, especially for the young, in the same way we might protect
the Earth itself, whether it be a patch of prairie along a busy road, or the
delicate balance of species in a remote and pristine alpine meadow.

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INTERCONNECTIONS & ON NECESSITY are part
of THE LITTLE CLAVIER please preview 150 of 631 pages
w/ my black & white photography [opens in new window]