"The subject of a novel is not the plot"

- taken from Graham Greene's "A Burnt-Out Case".

The architect Querry says this when he talks about how he has lost the vocation for his work or the desire to love.
He also says:

When I made something I made it for my own pleasure . . . I was not concerned with the people who occupied my space - only with the space. "A writer does not write for his readers, yet he has to take elementary precautions all the same to make them comfortable.“ -“A Burnt-Out Case” by Graham Greene, 1960. (Ch.3, p. 44-45)

I wish I could have introduced my writing like that 1841 posts ago! Next it made me liken Steemit to a building, perhaps a church, or another sanctuary, a construct where free spirits might gather to commune, or to let more inspiration flow into their midst. Or so some would like this "place" to be considered.

He goes on to say:

My interest was in space, light, proportion. New materials interested me only in the effect they have on those three. . . . space seems to alter with what you use to enclose it. Materials are the architect's plot . . ." (ibidem)

If I transposed this notion onto the architecture that is Steemit it could work well to suggest well-rounded experiencers of life could meet here with what they have designed so far, to compile their lives into a Safe Haven for further prayer (spiritual advancement). What else would make Steemit different?

#anibas comments to me, in my previous post, which posits that Steemit cannot pool a spiritual impulse, because of the impediments of the "machinery" to the weft of spiritual flow. Probably the internet cannot provide the right (sense-based) channeling. She writes as follows.

It is possible for a group of people to form something that runs on the larger machinery, on its rules, however runs independently, or at least capriciously. To not be painfully predictable.
Mathematical predictability is the killer of spirit.

Of course, it is possible for a group to do their own thing, anywhere. There could be as many websites as there are people and people can have many websites at the same time, regrouping or splitting off into factions as they go along. But is it anything different to what else is going on? And is it positive? And is it spiritual? Is Cyberspace giving us a New Plot to develop?

Spirit, Phantom, Ghost, Etheric Clouds.....The Same Holy Whole?

My first reaction was, what on earth does she mean by “spirit”? It’s a word, I think, people use in everyday language to approximate the creative flow or ideas they feel invigorate them to become uniquely themselves. She seems to be saying that the artistic, thinking, creative community here on Steemit are using the machinery or cyber platform, conforming superficially (abiding to its rules) without loosing their personal, unique spontaneity. But what for? Surely, though, she can't be saying that she would want to promote capriciousness?

I think this "capriciousness" may be a mistaken word choice (mistranslation), for capriciousness is nothing positive to aim for, especially not from a spiritual perspective. I know all artists need a bit of organised chaos or chaotic organisation to get the juices flowing, but the days of free expression have been well underway for decades now, for all who have access to Steemit. Let us assume she means to encourage improvisation and spontaneity, enthusiasm and mutual endorsement. I still think she omits to incalculate the larger Sub-natural Laws involved, those of the very virtual reality Steemit is part of. They actively oppose spiritual flow by creating artificial currents of dead thinking (programming).

I know Sabina a little bit by now, and I know where to place her as an artist in her own right - which does much to carry humanity forward with hope and love. Let me leave her personal musings to one side but take her comment further as the typical answer of the artistic community I’ve been coming across quite a bit. It’s the general vibe out here of the ones who want to lend meaning to Steemit as a quality-content provider over and above, or along-side it being a (just another) social media platform.

We must take care not to become swept up by the promise of a creative bubble. This would leave us somewhere like it leaves the protagoist escaping death in "The Fountain" (2006), which might buy us time for the spirit, but sluices little else into our midst.

Self-expression is a hard and selfish thing. It eats everything, even the self. At the end you find you haven’t even got a self to express. “A Burnt-Out Case” by Graham Greene, 1960. (Ch.3, p. 44-45)

Still from "The Fountain".

Wait A God-Darn Minute!

Isn't everything spiritual!? Don't we all have spirits!? How can there be good and bad, better and worse, proper and fake, right and wrong spiritual streams?
Who am I to call any spade spiritual?

• I think I mean to describe a State of Mind. Or rather an Ideal State of Being which is conducive to (conducts) the Mood of Love.

To nurture a spiritual impulse requires an unutterable (often called occult) understanding and a yearning to nurture it above all else. It is prooving extraordinarily difficult to make this into a group activity, even between one or two. It is as if we are all still waiting to make friends (or useful leg ups) instead of prepared to become colleagues on a joint mission.

I am not looking for people to express a vocation (like mine), one can read it from their blogging. There are those who are catching on to how it can be an artform which stimulates the I AM in the other. We can only develop this if we were paid to do this, however. Then we can entirely stop taking anything personally and truly love the other instead of relating for the sake of self.

We would need to earn money in order to make time free to dedicate one's day to this work. One is then here performing any number of tasks that need to be done to keep this Nebuchadnezzar afloat. Someone also has to train the whales to sit and beg for such consistent workers to stay and do their job.

Still from "The Fountain".

Birds Of A Feather

Perhaps, at most, anything like Steemit, anything on the Net, offers one a chance to reflect the freedom that one enjoys by “being yourself”? All good and well. Great. But does sharing it make something special happen? I am not sure how it can, spiritually. I am not a healer of the soul, so I cannot comment on how good it makes people feel. I am concerned about the next level, where sympathy and antipathy have no role to play but right judgement must be honed.

Some people are more free than others; more artistic in their creativity, have clearer visions, more empathy, are surer within themselves. But that's not the point. Man helps man and all levels can co-exist. But where to must man look to raise himself?

Steemit is full of rules and aims and conventional manners and people block together, drawn to political, religious and aesthetic precepts they have in common. You can come as you are and find out where you are most likely to be accepted - yes, prison yard style. None of it connotes greater freedom here than in my freezing attic room.

Art Is Dead

Clearly someone like anibas is not looking to define - like I am - which parameters it would take to sustain a spiritual flow of imagination, inspiration, and intuition that might transmute into posts (digits and pixels - more we cannot work with) to serve as tangible automated-thought blockers in the black-hole and white-out world of unter-Natur cbyer reality.

All that says is, that I haven't found my group, yet. This makes it hard for me to brainstorm and I must remain spiritually alive by other means while I chew on my stale crust. Artists only really have work within society, not as recluses. (Although hermits may paint.) We all have to find a way to cope with the terrible dilemma that, the precise killer of spirit IS stuff, dead matter, form, substance. The future needs the working of art, no more works of art. How can we transition? Possibly, not yet, but then Steemit will become a gallery, a museum, a warehouse, an artschool, a concert hall, a theatre, a radio and a tv. Nothing new under the sun.

Love Is Living

To make art is basically, from a spiritual perspective, the job of being in love. Present in that darkness that aspires to the light.

It is a high-energy job, and it needs a sacred space and plenty of sponsors, but only if they get the picture. We don't need to be wanted as voices of the people. We don't need a special place to feel "ourself". But what might we not feel if we come together creatively? Why would this have to be such a narrowly defined place, becoming ever more fenced in?

To quote from Greene one last time

Men have been prayed in prison, men have been praying in slums and concentration camps. It's just the middle classes who demand to pray in suitable surroundings.

Who Is Anyone?

I was educated this morning by the helpful post of #derangedvisions, a marvellously dedicated chap when it comes to helping others with depression, notably veterans. We won't have a single thing in common you might think. And true enough our styles are as far apart as any ocean might set them. But I, too, address depression and mental illness by speaking openly about it. Does this make us interconnected on a soul level? Who is to say? Does it suffice to count the little gestures otherwise? The miniscule benefits from my presence here? (I have given him votes). Are we creating a karma that might only play out next life?! It is unlikely that the impact we have on eachother is significant here. He's not going to miss me when I am gone, but nobody really misses anyone for long on here...

In any case, more to the point, is how his post was about ADsactly and his need to verify he was who he said he was - at least, to match a face to his user name with a sign. It feels to me like a mug-shot after you've been arrested, and I don't understand how this fits into a modern community culture. Transparency? In his case, we all already knew who he was (or says he is: you never know, photoshop can work miracles! But anyway we don't have his address or his health records yet, so who knows for certain this is all we need to know to trust him?! I mean: what does a face or five minutes of a blog tell you more about anyone than their art or their writing? #anibas may have only meant to highlight how frustrating it is that we want computational data and calculated certainties before we trust or act or dare to breathe.

It's No Mystery

Are you saying I obfuscate? I am shrouded in fog? Derangedvisions is now certified an okay dude and a credible expert but I am very iffy? I could be anyone. A convicted criminal (in one of those fancy nordic prisons [?] where you get access to internet) or the daughter of a president. The more I think about it the more Steemit is a rather sneaky project to get everybody to "be themselves" in a self-deceptive utterly materialistic way. This 100% unfangled, naked, and true self, as if this is all there is is supposed to make us all feel safe in a "proven" reality. There you have just handed all the power of self-realisation and future self-determination back to the System. The machine becomes a conveyor belt; you are no longer walking your own path. It just will seem you are, very very convincingly.

Should this be achieved (again): a voluntary by-passing of the Information Privacy Law, that we hand out proof of who I say I am (as if that's the core of who I am), we still will not have prevented nasty scams, cat-fishing, all sorts of masks to hide behind and be exploitative from, but we will have missed the whole point of starting up something innovative and freeing from the System. The System IS your name and number and face and DNA and job and house and family. Is the dead stuff, the fixed stuff, the old feats, the licences, certificates, awards and credits you collected. Is the slogans and doctrines and knowledge you hoarded. It is your house, your debts, your possession and desires. It is the anarchy, the conventions, the violations, the spins, the laws, the rules, the lies, the wiff-waff game of tit for tat and the whole shabang of who's who. The System is the self-deception that I am anything other than a spiritual self.

Do I really believe this?

That I am a spiritual being inspite of my body and my identity? Not different to it, but other than it?
That I am actually not important as a singular being once I operate in love? That my individualisation process is only about getting me to the church in time, into the midst, the Inbetween, where love can make colours move to birth states of being?
No, not every waking minute of every hour of every day.
Thomasina is my middle name, so to speak. I couldn't do my work as spiritual scientific researcher if I didn't work from a position of doubt - as much as I do from faith (the trickier stand for me to take).

I do believe unwaveringly that the Steemit Ideal balances precariously on personal vested interests; and that the only common ground we shall have in the future is of an indisputable spiritual nature. I also feel this to be a prophecy for which there is no place on internet.

Parasitic Internet

The internet is designed to suck us dry. The real viruses, the parasites that bury themselves deep in our bloodstream or cellular stucture to strike when you least expect it and your defenses are weakest, are not so easy to avoid (or detect). But we can all spot the more obvious manifestations of the machine world (general social media, and the excess of conflicting and indoctrinating information) which swallow our intelligence whole, like an anaconda a hog, and spits the bare bones back out in a hair ball (it was a cat-snake all along!) to leave them to bleach in the frying-but-dying sun, agreed?
Probably not.

In any case, to return to #anibas's most dreaded nightmare, a mathmatical world, I have to say, unfortunately, that a spiritual perception reveals an entirely mathematical, or geometrical universe, at least. Even atoms are numbers (or they'd be nought). There is nothing unspiritual about maths. But I'm a stickler for precise naming of what is. I get what she means (I think): the clichés and rehashed pulp on the one hand and the materialist ambitions on the other. Spirit is not killed by maths but uses maths to decode Will into works of art or fields of corn, or babies or houses, which in turn can kill spirit!

I Wanna Break Free!

The hope to form a different, harmlessly-anarchical, or “capricious” commuity spells out to me a naïve hope of independence and authenticity or originality which is still relevant to large parts of our world, but not to the progressive - manichaean/Love - movement I am trying to find some gusto for.

I recall my mother lamenting for her life to be more “frivolous”. She would give anything to feel freer, liberated from the yoke of my father’s and sister’s autism. She banked on me to go out and find a way to set us free. I came back with everything I found, but discovered (far too late) that I could not annul a personal choice on her behalf; as long as she stayed in her marriage and took up nothing but her motherhood, she would have to destroy all I brought her.

When this kind of systematic rejection or objection or criticism occurs, it is the indication that personal destinies cannot walk hand in hand: a fork must be made, a parting must take place and when this doesn’t happen you get regrets and have to live with mistakes. The karmic cycle continues.

New Spiritual Impulse

It is poorly understood, if at all, what it would take to infuse Will (i.e. love) into the darkest and deepest underground tunnels undermining our humanity. There is the harrowing of hell and there is getting out before the roof caves in upon you.

I have been much faulted, repeatedly, from the beginning of my life, and at every turn of the road again, for the little patience I have with the small gestures in life, the sweet tokens, the pleasantries and courtesies. I am a bull in a china shop. I am a Orlando Furioso. I am a whirlwind around my own I.

I am also full of paradoxes and seem fickle in my contradictions. My memory is getting worse - really quite bad - but it used to have a near photographic recall without that being possible (I never could cram or learn poetry by heart). Later on I recognised this was more a kind of clairvoyancy but strictly curbed not to take off on its own accord (a deal I struck early on, giving mental straight-jacket knock-on effects that were a drag).

This is the fate of a girl who has no studio in which to work out her vision; who cannot find the materials with which to share what she sees. All she can point out with a cry is, "Yes, like that!" using the art of others for approximations. This is a girl with a tremendous and never diminishing sense of urgency. All she can do is live it.

My writing is gardening. I grow nothing. I enable spirt to transmute. Everything but my words are original; the germs lay dormant behind their representations. One must be careful not to end up like Simone Weil (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Simone_Weil)!

I have lived in the lives of others for pain and joy. I have read books for language and death. My canvas is the relationships and bridges we build to every germ. We become the work of art. This is not so easy to organise; you don't want to form a group (and end up a cult!); rather you want to find out you are part of a group already (a soul constellation).

When you then meet eachother, there is a little nod, a friendly knowing smile, and much "aha!" Not so much of the capricious, I don't think.

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