Category: Notebook

For me, superstition is not characterized by choosing one metaphor over another labeled wrong, but rather in mistaking perception and metaphor for an objective reality; and to banish superstition is to realize this: that truth is never without subjectivity because any truth understood by a mind is conditioned by the limitations of mind, that metaphors and perceptions are tools of mind to understand facets of greater things beyond and bigger than the simple and flimsy container of comprehension. While I do really like my hammer, and it has served me well on many an occasion; it is merely one tool in my toolbox. While I treat my tools with respect, I do not worship my hammer or mistake it for the things I can build while using it, nor do I mistake my hammer as universally useful for all tasks no matter how handy and at hand it seems. Further, although I have a hammer, I try not to seek out only nails, rejecting all other methods of construction, but, and because, I rather enjoy the opportunity to use a screwdriver once in a while too. I recognize that I am enamoured with the possibility that what I think of as my tools have agency, and that I’m actually in relationship with them, but recognize this is also another metaphor. Finally, sometimes I like to try the ecstatic experience of working without tools, and instead rely on my own hands to shape and mould, though I recognize that even still my body is a kind of tool, perhaps even metaphor, perhaps with its own agency, of mind, but that there is a kind of noesis available through the personal and close acts of crafting and creating which is to be enjoyed for its own sake without hammers at all.