Barrett Dorko
07-01-2007, 06:22 PM
It’s been a quiet week in Cuyahoga Falls…
Whatever else Waco Texas might be, it is a major attraction for birds. I’ve never seen flocks this size. On Saturday morning I drove through the parking lot of the hotel on my way to the airport and couldn’t see the asphalt for the birds covering it a hundred yards before me. I drove forward slowly, watching the ground lift in a graceful, dark wave full of flutter and rhythm. The airborne shape of the flock is known in chaos theory as a strange attractor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor) and its energetic expression is akin to a soliton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soliton); the same wave form that drives tsunamis and nervous depolarization.
As it happens, I’m reading a great deal about birds these days, specifically pigeons. On Christmas day my brother Kevin gave me Andrew Blechman’s Pigeons – The Fascinating Saga of the World’s Most Revered and Reviled Bird (http://www.amazon.com/Pigeons-Fascinating-Worlds-Revered-Reviled/dp/0802118348/sr=1-1/qid=1168177431/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-7213658-3536738?ie=UTF8&s=books), and I can’t put it down. Aside from an enormous amount of information about the nature of this remarkable animal, Blechman’s writing exposes our culture’s ignorance of and indifference toward something both amazing and useful in plain sight. This sounds eerily familiar to me.
Wait. This is exactly how my workshops might be described!
But I digress.
Pigeons display a phenomenal strength and endurance, and these attributes are amenable to training as those who race them (for big bucks) will tell you. There’s also this, they possess an unparalled homing instinct.
Aside from the presence of birds in Texas I also noticed an absence of signage. By this I mean simple indications of what road I might be on or some indication of where the next exit might lead me. Returning from a restaurant a couple miles from my hotel Friday night I found myself in the middle of nowhere, headed in an unknown direction upon a highway that had apparently never been named in any way. This sort of situation is normally hard to create or encounter, unless you’re in North central Texas.
But, in many ways, I am a pigeon. At least, that’s what I’ve recently decided. Pigeons know where home is no matter where you put them, and they will move in that direction no matter the deprivations faced along this journey. This ability has been exploited by cultures at war since the beginning of recorded history and extends to the war in Iraq today. I’m not kidding. Pigeons carry information, of course – often information one party wants kept secret from another.
This is the way my mind works: alone on the highway on that windswept plain in Texas I was reminded of K. C. Cole’s The Universe and the Teacup: The Mathematics of Truth and Beauty (http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Teacup-Mathematics-Truth-Beauty/dp/0156006561/sr=1-1/qid=1168179386/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-7213658-3536738?ie=UTF8&s=books). I reviewed it here (http://www.somasimple.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1338). This book, as I said, “(isn’t) about math at all. To me, it's about the courage and brilliance behind experimentation in every field of science, and about the uncertainty of all knowledge… It’s about how a scientific prediction is less like a weather forecast than a train of thought. Predictions are guideposts along the way to understanding, not goalposts. What science is about is how and why, not where and when." There’s also this about me; I become what I read, but only when I want to, only when I sense its worth and its connection to my life.
I kept my wits about me, I made a few turns and watched how the lights of Waco reacted, I made my way “home” by thinking about what it must be like there and who I was in relation to it, not by performing any specific calculation or by being told by another what to do.
I’m also a precise species of pigeon; a carrier. I pack a heavy suitcase full of books and always bring it along though what’s in there already resides in my head and comes out through my mouth when I speak. Landing in one city after another I try to spread a series of memes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme) that, truth be told, many find repellent and others find fascinating - mind-boggling even. I show therapists things that are in plain sight, things that could transform their careers, their patient’s functioning and sensation. Like the pigeons that surround us these ideas are poorly understood and disruptive.
No wonder most don’t want to hear about them.
Whatever else Waco Texas might be, it is a major attraction for birds. I’ve never seen flocks this size. On Saturday morning I drove through the parking lot of the hotel on my way to the airport and couldn’t see the asphalt for the birds covering it a hundred yards before me. I drove forward slowly, watching the ground lift in a graceful, dark wave full of flutter and rhythm. The airborne shape of the flock is known in chaos theory as a strange attractor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor) and its energetic expression is akin to a soliton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soliton); the same wave form that drives tsunamis and nervous depolarization.
As it happens, I’m reading a great deal about birds these days, specifically pigeons. On Christmas day my brother Kevin gave me Andrew Blechman’s Pigeons – The Fascinating Saga of the World’s Most Revered and Reviled Bird (http://www.amazon.com/Pigeons-Fascinating-Worlds-Revered-Reviled/dp/0802118348/sr=1-1/qid=1168177431/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-7213658-3536738?ie=UTF8&s=books), and I can’t put it down. Aside from an enormous amount of information about the nature of this remarkable animal, Blechman’s writing exposes our culture’s ignorance of and indifference toward something both amazing and useful in plain sight. This sounds eerily familiar to me.
Wait. This is exactly how my workshops might be described!
But I digress.
Pigeons display a phenomenal strength and endurance, and these attributes are amenable to training as those who race them (for big bucks) will tell you. There’s also this, they possess an unparalled homing instinct.
Aside from the presence of birds in Texas I also noticed an absence of signage. By this I mean simple indications of what road I might be on or some indication of where the next exit might lead me. Returning from a restaurant a couple miles from my hotel Friday night I found myself in the middle of nowhere, headed in an unknown direction upon a highway that had apparently never been named in any way. This sort of situation is normally hard to create or encounter, unless you’re in North central Texas.
But, in many ways, I am a pigeon. At least, that’s what I’ve recently decided. Pigeons know where home is no matter where you put them, and they will move in that direction no matter the deprivations faced along this journey. This ability has been exploited by cultures at war since the beginning of recorded history and extends to the war in Iraq today. I’m not kidding. Pigeons carry information, of course – often information one party wants kept secret from another.
This is the way my mind works: alone on the highway on that windswept plain in Texas I was reminded of K. C. Cole’s The Universe and the Teacup: The Mathematics of Truth and Beauty (http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Teacup-Mathematics-Truth-Beauty/dp/0156006561/sr=1-1/qid=1168179386/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-7213658-3536738?ie=UTF8&s=books). I reviewed it here (http://www.somasimple.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1338). This book, as I said, “(isn’t) about math at all. To me, it's about the courage and brilliance behind experimentation in every field of science, and about the uncertainty of all knowledge… It’s about how a scientific prediction is less like a weather forecast than a train of thought. Predictions are guideposts along the way to understanding, not goalposts. What science is about is how and why, not where and when." There’s also this about me; I become what I read, but only when I want to, only when I sense its worth and its connection to my life.
I kept my wits about me, I made a few turns and watched how the lights of Waco reacted, I made my way “home” by thinking about what it must be like there and who I was in relation to it, not by performing any specific calculation or by being told by another what to do.
I’m also a precise species of pigeon; a carrier. I pack a heavy suitcase full of books and always bring it along though what’s in there already resides in my head and comes out through my mouth when I speak. Landing in one city after another I try to spread a series of memes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme) that, truth be told, many find repellent and others find fascinating - mind-boggling even. I show therapists things that are in plain sight, things that could transform their careers, their patient’s functioning and sensation. Like the pigeons that surround us these ideas are poorly understood and disruptive.
No wonder most don’t want to hear about them.