"What a joy to know where one is, and where one will stay, without being there. Nothing to do but stretch out comfortably on the rack, in the blissful knowledge you are nobody for all eternity. A pity I should have to give tongue at the same time, it prevents it from bleeding in peace, licking the lips."

The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett (1956)

Here, in the Shade

He runs a finger across her waxy, frigid smile.

Cold, yes, and just as biting.

Didn’t they ever warn you

child who plays in the woods? There are

bad things in there

things that will chase you eat you kill you

little girls little whores who don’t listen to their mothers

you think I don’t know

never knew what it felt to be a mother the

warm, soft dependency. Another being hopelessly

attached to you

wrapped in you bonded to you sacred and whole like

God’s love. Waiting for you

every morning before the dawn I’d 

wait for you here, in the shade

On us the rain bleeds, we’d huddle in the dingy dark

sink into the rotting leaves. Make ourselves invisible

Like spires beneath the earth, pushing up and up

teeth from beneath from hell biting

breaking the skin of heaven, drawing thick swells of air

we’d be gasping by the end of it

drenched in sweat like dogs like

God’s love. Waiting for you

every summer before the moon I’d

wait for you here, in the shade

Nothing cleans now nothing breaks this dingy dark 

I am cold, yes, and just as biting

as she was when we first met those 

eyes that loved me feared me hungered me

are pools of glass now frozen

skin that warmed me

burned & fed me cannot tremble at my touch

see? I can kiss you give you now my love

God’s love. little whores who don’t

listen to their fathers you think I didn’t know

don’t know what it felt like to be wasted

wanted. Hunted like an animal loved like a 

spire, I sink my teeth into your thigh 

you don’t move or scream just lay there

with a cold, soft dependency. Hopelessly

attached to me

wrapped in me bonded to me sacred and whole. Like

God’s love.

The Devil's Grievances

Voice Shift Assignment

THE DEVIL'S GRIEVANCES

Jessica Tracy

Dramatic Storytelling:

From Dialogue to Dialogic

Lisa Leaverton

AD-464 M

College of the Atlantic

Jessica Tracy

College of the Atlantic

105 Eden Street

Bar Harbor, ME

Edinburgh, Scotland. 1656. 

Told in the comedic style of a Punch and Judy show, puppets optional.

Characters

(D:)Doctor Paulitious

(Boy)Bread-seller's Son

1. Doctor Paulitious walks slowly across the stage, cane thumping in time with his words. He is cloaked in layers of tattered brown fabric, spotted with questionable stains. His hands and head are shielded by gloves and a mask shaped from heavy leather, studded with silver clasps. His unseen face is distorted by the frightening beak of a plague doctor’s mask, giving him an almost comical appearance if his job were not so terrible. 

II. Light focuses both on the Doctor and The third booth, made of hacked-together lumber painted a worn-looking red. There are two crates in front of the stand, one turned on its side displaying loaves of bread, sweet rolls, and various mystical-looking trinkets. A young man leans against the crate eagerly chatting with 

Doctor: Sick.

D: Sick.

[At stage right there are some booths were people are buying and selling various goods. At seeing the plague doctor most go quiet, but the haggling still continues in some corners.]

D: Sick. [he wheezes a cough which causes many to depart, flocking from the stage. Only a few shopkeepers remain, who stare at the doctor with grumbled contempt. The plague doctor stops at the first booth, where a young man is selling bread and pocket various charmed ornaments and talismans.]

Boy: Those were paying customers, you know. Every time..I was this close.

D: I..apologize. Have you--

Boy: She’s beautiful, isn’t she?

D: ...Who?

Boy: Her! Jesus, you ain’t blind, yet, right? The girl your beak face scared away. 

D: [pauses]

D: Have you the bread?

Boy: Oh, bread. Yes. One peice a loaf.

D: Fine, fine. I’ve got nine. 

Boy: Three, then.

D: [voice raises slightly in grievance]You’ve just raised it trifold!

[pauses]I refuse. One is one, and this is one. One for this, no more, no less. 

Boy: Aw, come now, Doctor. Don’t think death clouds your heavy pockets. You’ve silver fixtures on a that hideous mask, I’m not as blind as you.

D: They’re for the spirits, silver repels--

Boy: Repels customers, that’s what you do. Had two ladies here fixing to buy two pans of rolls until your sorry cough sent ‘em away. Surely, you can spare a couple of bucks to give charity, at least.

D:...Who’s Charity?

Boy: Me girlfriend. It’s her birthday, see, and I haven’t gotten ‘er a present.

D: You’ve got bread.

Boy: A lady don’t want bread. ‘Sides, she’s the baker’s daughter so I think she’s enough bread as it is. 

D: What...have I got to do with this Charity girl…? [coughs again, almost threateningly causing the other shopkeepers to flinch.]

Boy: ‘Ey, you watch who you’re calling a girl, you dingy old bat. I’d be smart to raise it four with a mouth like yours!

D: Ah--! Better watch the clouds, child. The gods look stormy. You’ll bargain the daylight rays keeping on like this. 

Boy: Yes, and your nice hat will get all damp and smell of skin. 

D: Your bread soggy... 

Boy: a nice vase of roses-- 

D: Best settle for daisies. 

Boy: You’ve no heart, death. 

D: Was that thunder?

Boy: Two and a half and you’ll have your bread! [snarls] If not roses, I’ll ‘ave a warm bed at least.

D: [hands him the money] I wouldn’t be so sure of that. You have forgotten her birthday and all…[voice rises slightly in excitement, seemingly on a roll] Your..friend was ...she the baker’s daughter?

Boy: Mmmhm. [a trickle of young women walk by, his eyes follow them wolfishly] What of it?

D: That one... over there? With the pretty eyes? [pointing offstage]

Boy: Yeah, that’s ‘er. 

D: [begins to walk away, bread in hand. Many of the other shopkeepers, seeing the rain clouds, have packed up and left. Only the bread-seller and the plague doctor remain on stage.] My...dearest sympathies.

Boy: What? She’s gorgeous! 

D: Hmmm, pretty indeed. Taken, I fear...

Boy: What, Doctor, are you telling me she’s betrothed?!

D:...in a way.

Boy: [exasperated, running a hand through his hair as if he knew it to be so already] Oh, god! That lying bitch! [comes out from behind the counter to sit on a bench, head in hands]

Boy: It’s one of the O'Reilly boys, isn’t it? The tall, older one? 

D: ...No. No. [sits down beside him on the bench, the boy edges a bit away, as if he smells bad. The doctor stares straight ahead, not noticing.]

Boy: The blacksmith’s son? With the drinking problem?

  

D: No! I mean Death, you fool! She’s cursed, fated! Marked with the plague.

Boy:[darkly] Well now you tell me. Could ‘a said something last week before I bought that larkey broach for ‘er. She had to have copper, the thing nearly cost me my left tooth. 

D: [clobs him over the head with a club] Oh, you--! [hits him again in the head with a club] 

Boy is beneath the stage now. The stage is silent for a moment before PRETTY CHARITY pops up, coming to the Bread-seller's booth gesturing she’d like to buy a loaf. D looks rather stiff (stunned, but there’s a mask there) and slowly hands her a loaf without saying anything]

PRETTY POLLY: [annoyed and a bit off-put] How many pieces, then? 

D: Three.

PRETTY POLLY: That’s bats if you ask me. 

Fin

Re-imaging Truth Through Holistic Epistemology

Jessica Tracy

Collective Constellations: How The Seven Myths Re-images Truth Through Holistic Epistemology

“Historians today are priests of a cult of truth, called to the service of a god whose existence they are doomed to doubt.”

-Matthew Restall

Within the context of the Spanish Conquest, Matthew Restall brings to the surface questions on the value of absolute truth, advocating the reader to instead examine history as multifaceted and composed of various perspectives, ideas, and dimensions. Over the course of his work, Restall deconstructs seven cultural misconceptions about the Conquest, targeting the source of the “myths” as well as aiming to determine their effect on our understanding of history and formation of roles within the greater context of events. He supports his argument by defending the value of subjectivity to the interpretation of history and observing the insight differing perspectives offer to our greater understanding of an event. In the interest of accuracy, we must remain cognisant that like the present, the past is an infinitely complex constellation of collective experiences in which cultures and individuals simultaneously create and validate varying conceptions of reality.  In the face of such complexity, it is clear the idea of absolute truth is one that’s best abandoned. Restall claims that, “We can compare the truths of the conquistadors to our truths about them, and as a result achieve a better understanding of the conquest--- even if that understanding does not pretend to be the truth in an absolute sense.” (Restall, xvii) He further elaborates that while it is the aim of a good historian to seek out the most accurate and unbiased information, accuracy does not imply absolute truth. Rather, in examining situations from a more macroscopic lens, the historian reduces the risk of misconceptions deriving from cultural differences, while also widening the intellectual arena to incorporate multiplicities of varying accounts, each offering shades of truth to further enrich our understanding of the human narrative. 

Restall’s point resonates with many other contemporary scholars, whose work can be interpreted as a holistic approach to epistemology, moving towards a reunification of experience, knowledge, and meaning. The reappearance of holism in western thought seems to signal the approach of a paradigm shift; pulling away from the mechanized state of being and reestablishing the significance of interconnected resonance. The demystification began during the Eighteenth century, when the western world experienced a pivotal shift in consciousness as the sciences replaced religious doctrines as the dominant philosophical authority. With the scientific revolution, reason became the new dogma and with the emergence of mechanical philosophy, all behaviors of tangible bodies could be explained through examination of the relationships of their parts. The concept of the whole was delegitimatized, instead an object’s actuality was derivative of the sum of parts. The best way to know about the world was to look deep within, to pry loose the esoteric stitches binding truth and knowledge to religious authority and continue the deconstruction in search of truth itself. It was from here the quest for absolute certainty set forth to free knowledge from the deceptions of the senses to incite reconstruction of a new epistemological framework upon a solid foundation of a inarguable and universal truth. 

This cultural paradigm transcended into all forms of academia, though Restall questions the overall effectiveness of absolute certainty in the realm of history, for it attempts to sterilize a group or culture’s experience of an event of subjectivity. This eradication is not only an impossible aim, but doing so results in the creation of more distorted misconceptions. The other issue is one purely of translation. When history is read and recorded it is told from a singular voice, as if seen by one set of eyes omnipresent, and the result is the flattening a multidimensional object---time--- into a single story; one protagonist, one plot line, one image. Restall uses the example of Cuauhtémoc’s capture and assassination to illustrate the conflicts historians face when trying to translate an experience of the collective into the language of singularity. Here the author is faced with four accounts of the events, from varying cultural backgrounds and motivations from which he aims first to establish common grounds between the stories before comparing the conflicting details. He finds that, “the dialogues seem clear within the context of each individual account, but that clarity breaks down when the texts are compared.” (Restall 155) This statement is not surprising when interpreted literally, as each account is not so simply a record, but an interpretation of events. If one chooses to examine the statement as a metaphor, it reflects the integrated relationship between truth and context, a symbiotic relationship that renders the individual as both an island and atom in the larger culture, influenced by both personal and collective experiences. 

The resolution Restall provides is a more phenomenological approach to truth, accepting subjectivity as integral to the human experience and of value when struggling to derive meaning from cultural phenomena. While it would be nice to observe the events of history from an omnipresent state, our individual interpretations will always remain altered and imprisoned by our cultural conditioning and individual experiences. Although a concrete idea of what really happened evanesces when you compare the accounts of Cuauhtémoc’s death, unintentional information reveals itself about the affiliations and values of each witness and opens the doorway for further dialogue on the cultural and political implications of perceptual differences between major actors within the Spanish Conquest. Likewise, the way historians choose to present this story can also be examined as a reflection of cultural consciousness. As opposed to reducing the Conquest to bits of facts and evidence rearranged mosaic-like in loose cohesion, Restall’s method for best deconstructing the mythos and preventing harmful misconceptions is to approach the past in search of clarification through understanding instead of certainty. The Conquest of the Americas remains one episode in history where “The concepts of a particular culture, the way they are expressed, and the relationship between those words and reality, can lead to genuine insight into a historical phenomenon.” (Restall xv) Further, meaning can derive not just from the alinement of common information, but also from conflicting accounts there is born a peripheral truth which speaks to a more holistic understanding of the relationship between past histories and current situations. He concludes in musing that, “our purpose as readers of history is to explore [the] metaphors, to journey behind them into the motive, methods, and mundane patterns of human behavior.” (Restall 157) In this we draw connections between cultures and movements across the transcendent terrain of space and time, a galaxy of tapestries in complete truth interwoven, conveying the story of life. 

Works Cited:

Restall, Matthew. Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest. New York: Oxford UP, 2003. Print.

Scrap Philosophy in a very concise dose.

 I consider myself a Cosmic Humanist, more interested in transcendent experience than any sort of vestigial doctrine. Chasing the mystic has become something of a hobby of mine, and I’m always looking for new ideas to alter and clarify my perceptual lens. I believe religious experiences can be found in rain forests and laboratories; in meditational fields and on mountain tops. Technology advances exponentially, and I don’t see any benefit to drawing distinctions between our manufactured existence and that of a person who’s more connected to the natural world. We need to bridge the twin dynamic, or else the mechanized consciousness will remain the destroyer. What we need is a radical redefinition of human’s relationship with nature. As an ethnobotanist, I see sacred plants and psychoactive medicines to have the potential to open up doors to cultural redefinition, as long as we are prepared to realize that they are not the answer. 

Don't sleep.

  


Peyote dreams, how esoteric. I can't help but to remember past experiences this summer when this song plays in my head. The strange journeys and alternate worlds that danced over my conscious state during times of psychonautical transcendence. 
       My mother was very much in-tuned to inter-dimensional theory. It was her who first introduced me to the new age literature and the shamanic tradition, magical ideas that would rampantly flourish in my limitless childhood imagination. Every dream I had was a symbolic reflection of the cosmic universe, varying in degrees of depth an meaning. Our library was filled with books on Astrology and numerology; cosmology and consciousness.  
    What interest I had in the supernatural faded as I entered my teenage years, my mind had given way to the constructs of western thought and I had lost my chi, becoming one of the many ego-centric "I"s of consumer culture. In all honesty, I can't really remember how my conscious self evolved from that point to where I am now. Was there some great ontological shift that made me start reading Alan Watts and sparked my academic interest in altered states of consciousness? 


I'm not sure, I can't be sure. 


My memories of myself after my mother's death are blurred, if existent. In retrospect, I struggle to place exactly how I was feeling and where my head was. If I could talk to her now, I suppose I'd ask her more about her spiritual beliefs, what she felt about Zen philosophy and altered states of consciousness. When someone important to you dies, it's very easy to mythologize them, morphing your relationship with them into a powerful idea structure that often dwarfs or obscures their true Being. I need to remember my mother didn't read Aldous Huxley or actively advocate for the regulation of entheogens for therapeutic uses. I cling to the image of my mother as a revolutionary because I'm hesitant of treading that water alone. Now, however, I've discovered a constellations of like-minded communities who advocate for a redefinition of self and nature. There lies in this web support and structure upon which to build new ideologies & new social movements that will one day greatly influence the ascent of humanity and fall of civilization. Turn on, tune in....

I. Observations on Advancement

Image by Erik Charlton on Flickr Courtesy of Creative Commons Licensing

1) The expansion of Psychology has opened the human mind to pharmacological dialogue as well as philosophical. Increasingly, we begin to apply the same types of Darwinian classification found in biology to the ever-deepening multiverse of the human mind. From his observations of hypnosis and dream analysis, Freud founded the pivotal discovery of the human unconscious, an idea that expands our concept of self into a transcendent and fluid psycho-organism that extends beyond our conception. Like time, we can only experience one facet, one moment, of the Self, yet that cell is implicitly interrelated to a web of other influences in which we exist simultaneously, in past and future, in memories and imaginings.  

Yet, nowhere in the physical structure of the brain is there corresponding mechanisms for  Freud’s id, ego, or superego. Nor are there areas of the brain designated to the development of love, trust, or altruism. Although we know from our experience that these are nonetheless elements that exist in our thoughts and actions as humans. However, what we see when interpreting a neuroimage of the mind is at best a map of sensory systems that roughly outlines functionality of the brain as an interface, non-specific to the consciousness which operates within. Therefore, to examine the point at which thought manifests into physical action, neuroscientists have focused on electrochemical interaction in the nervous system and spinal cord. Research on the synapse was pioneered by Sir John Eccles and his colleagues during the early 1950s, as they used the stretch reflex of the peripheral nervous system as a model to examine the interaction between electrochemical impulses of the brain and response of muscle fiber. By passing an electrical current through the sensory neuron in the quadriceps, Eccles was able to observe how the motor neuron produces an excitatory postsynaptic potential, or EPSP,  in response. [4]Conversely, as he passed the same current through a sensory neuron in the opposing muscle to the quadriceps, the hamstring, he witnessed an inhibitory postsynaptic potential manifest in the motor neuron. While the EPSP produced by a single motor/sensory neuron pair was essentially powerless, the sum of several EPSPs from surrounding motor neurons could potentially cause action and produce movement in the muscle tissue. Theologians and philosophers have taken ahold of the synaptic gap as the crux between the “I” and material form, yet to understand the complexity of millions of these gaps and overlapping webs of electrochemical pulses that it takes to create movement, thought, intelligence, is an idea beyond that of individual perception. 

As our studies of self continue, I foresee an emerging importance of out-of-body experiences as critical in solving the mind/body problem. Current work being done by Dr. Sam Parnia of Cornell University and Dr. Peter Fenwick on near death experiences should give greater insight to the mind as a divergent entity capable of consciousness past the point where the brain shuts down and the person, essentially, dies.[5] We inch ever closer to understanding, and as we acquire newfound knowledge of our world the expansion of the universe and human experience nevertheless causes new questions and philosophical problems to surface and spill its ink across the page of history. We have stretched a thin arm into the unknown, what wealths of understanding lie ahead is, for the greater part, undiscovered.