Mind Cloud

Superorganism of thought
Net of instant impulse
We live here in visible ways
Inhabiting this mind cloud forever now
It holds our living messages
Cellular rhythms
Our vibrating intelligence
Continually transmitted, received, processed, relayed
Evoking responses in our absence
We leave it all and we return to it

Returning with the periodicity of planets circling stars

We find new lives
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Image: “Mind Cloud (New World 2011b)”
by Tullio DeSantis, painted globe, ink drawing, and digital images, 2011

Thinking Philosophically

 

It is sometimes sufficient to simply frame questions and not rush to “answer” them.
With practice, over time, one comes to accept the fact that there is no reason why every question should have an absolute answer. We may wish it to be so, but that doesn’t mean it is the case. These questions of ours say something about the way we think. Our deep desire for answers says something else about us, our craving for certainty, our need to believe.
Over the millennia of our time on Earth, a set of questions have been generated that are often referred to as “philosophical” in nature. It does us some good, I think, to simply ask them – as we have been doing for thousands of years. It is not so clear to me that our attempts to answer them have brought us more pleasure than pain, more success than failure, or more good than bad results.
I’ll use an Aristotelian framework here to supply and briefly describe a list of some of the most basic philosophical questions humans have asked since we began to think as humans do.

1: What is the nature of the self?
2: What is the nature of the universe?
3: What is the nature of consciousness?
4: Can we achieve personal understanding of the ultimate philosophical questions?
a. The ontological question: What is real?
b. The epistemological question: How can we know what is real?
c. The ethical question: What is good?
d. The aesthetic question: What is beautiful?
e. The political question: How should we organize ourselves?7: What is the nature and purpose of life?
8: What is the significance and meaning of death?
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The ontological question: What is real?
Ontology concerns the true nature of what is real. The question, “What is real?” is the ontological question. In some ways, it is the only question. Seeking an answer, however, can include other questions: Who is asking the question? What is the nature of the questioner? In what context does the question arise? What relationships exist between the questioner and the thing in question?
The epistemological question: How can we know what is real?
Epistemology is concerned with knowledge. How do we gain knowledge? What is true knowledge? What is false knowledge? How knowledge is achieved is related to what is real. The epistemological question is directly related to the ontological question.
The ethical question: What is good?
Ethics involves what is right, good, and proper. Therefore ethics is also concerned with what is wrong, bad, and improper. Ethical discussions follow naturally from the manner in which the first two philosophical questions are dealt with. What is good and bad depends on what is. Knowing what is good or bad depends on how knowledge is achieved.
The aesthetic question: What is beautiful?
Aesthetics defines the beautiful. The beautiful is intimately involved with the good, and what is good depends upon what is true. As such aesthetics is interconnected with ontology, epistemology, and ethics.
The political question: How should we organize ourselves?
Politics involves putting the truths revealed by solutions of the first four questions into action in organizing human society. How political action is defined is dependent upon how one answers the questions of what is real, true, good, and beautiful.
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There is no reason why we need to consult “experts” to answer these questions for us. Answers come with agendas attached to them. They are a form of influence and manipulation. They have more to do with the power of systems of belief than with free philosophical pursuit. In the ideal republic, we are all philosophers.
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Image: “New World 2011a”
by Tullio DeSantis, painted globe, ink drawing, and digital images, 2011
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In this moment…

In this moment, in this space, there is just a gentle stream of photons, pulsing light and sound, entering your eyes and mind in the midst of an endless field of invisible waves. You need only to be aware now of simple things – feeling the easy rhythm of your breathing and the pleasure of a moment of pure relaxation.
This is the calm and centered place from which all inner peace and strength arise. In this state of mind you are filled with clarity. From here you move forward with elegance, grace, confidence, and power. As you go about the rest of your day, this feeling stays within you. And now, bring this calm and focused awareness with you, and continue to make our world a better place…

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The video,”A Calm Place” is a collaborative art project by:
Tullio DeSantis – ArtworkPatricia Wells – AnimationBrian Routh – Sound
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warm weather poems

Low-Rent Birds

I fall for common birds

My youth misspent

With bushtits and boobies

Robin seduced me

Each and every spring

I loved her

For her breast alone

I’m still thrilled by starlings

Simple silhouettes

With little hearts as grand

As the beating cores

Of brilliant eagles

Having have no time to flirt

All birds are lovebirds

Equal in the blue eyes

Of the empty sky

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The urge to possess

I learn to anticipate your arrival
Between the angle of the sun and your hunger
Arranging myself
Waiting with my camera

One day I pull the trigger
Hold your image in my hand
And forget I ever knew you

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untitled

I wanted you to wait
For my camera
I wanted your image
And to speak your name
As if by saying, “Indigo Bunting”
I could possess you

Camera ready now
I see only air
Above your branch

Where you were
Beyond your grey perch
Behind its green leaves
The sky is bluer now

But for a name
I could have been you
On that walnut limb
At the center of the world

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a summer poem

cloud-flecked

blue air above us

summer green

surrounding warm skin

we’re free here

like butterflies

hawks, foxes

deer, serpents

like undulant trout

we’re arms and legs

splayed wide

at play with each other

spead under radial boughs

of wide open elms

we’re hot pink as thistles

and naked like the flesh of day lilies

pulsing nearby

as we pound each other

into the ground
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Image: “Summer” by Tullio DeSantis, altered ink drawing, 2011
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