Hi Caire
Sorry for delay, been otherwise occupied with writing tasks. Humberto
Maturana writings can be found on the Internet. _The ontology of
observing_ and _Meta Design_ are the two I found most interesting. He
also wrote a book with Francisco Varela called _The tree of knowledge_
(or something like that... from memory.)Varela was a neuro-scientist who
used Budhist espistemology and wrote on the brain and emotion. Affective
force, in the words of Francisco Varela, bifuricates into affects or
emotions as a possible multiple stemming which may produce indeterminate
diversity of affecive outcomes. Varela's folding of affect in a flow of
time as lived emotional experiences is irreversible. Affect, now
expressed as emotion, enters into feedback loops. I am only making
partial use of Varela and also linking to the theoretical physicist
Prigonine's way out of equilibrium systems and to Silvan Tomkins
evolutionary pyschology. It is not as heavy as it sounds, really, and my
reading is very limited. I only read this stuff looking for ideas I can
steal and hide in my fiction writing. You simply can't read everything
and if you did you would probably never write a word.

I use to be worried about not having the readings of a wide range of
poets or writers, but then had to ask why I would need such a reading.
Although I am in the academic system I still find ways to rebel against
it. More then that, rebellion or disaffection with the system I consider
to be good. Not the sort of thing that is likely to get me into the
senior ranks, like proferssor level.  Fortunately my academic
experiences have been what is termed non-traditional, so I don't have to
take a scholarly approach to what I write, which means not having to
demonstrate a traditional reading or a reading which follows a historic
formal line. I instead make conections, some of which may be considered
too wild to take seriously in an academic sense. Ialso read a lot of
Deleuze and am very interested in his philosophy, but I am not a
Deleuzian, nor am I a philospher.

And yes, it was Dogen, I was thinking of. Thanks for those comments. It
also gave me a clearer understanding of your split I. (The I in the
psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan is split and I have some vague memory of
this being linked to Eastern thought, also through Hegel's discussion of
Indian philosophy(????) but the difference I understand is over desire.
Anyway, not that it matters much. I don't want to read Lacan, if it can
be avoided.) What is more fun, I find, is not how much or little reading
someone has done, but the diversity or different readings. And yes, even
different readings of the same book. If someone wants to tell me they
are right and I am wrong, I usually just want to walk away. That's not
fun and I want to do something else.

I agree that when thinking stops, or when you get to the point of saying
I know nothing, then you have the possibility of creating writing.
Beckett said he knew nothing after his experiences with the French
Resistance and the Nazi holocaust. That was what I read in the Knowlson
biography _Damned to fame_, from memory.


best wishes and good vibes

Chris Jones.

Claire Gaskin wrote:

>Thanks Chris,
>The biologist you refer to sounds interesting. I'm sorry I don't know
>'dogon'.
>Unless you mean Dogen, a Zen teacher who said,
>"When you are drunk, there is a close friend who will give the pearl to you,
>and you, without fail, must impart the pearl to a close friend. When the
>pearl is attached to someone, he is, without exception, drunk. It being
>thus, it is the one bright pearl-all the universe."
>I do sort of rebel against academia, although I am intellectual, more then
>I'd like to be I think.
>thinking, thinking thinking.
>Its a conflict in me.
>I often feel afraid that I will get 'caught out' because I haven't read this
>or that probably because my education is not formal and has lots of holes in
>it.
>I am passionate about books and yet very fussy in my reading. It has to be a
>revelation to me otherwise I'd rather the direct experience of writing.
>I feel comfortable about yoga because it is the science of experience.
>Out of the head and into the body.
>And yes so is orgasm, the ultimate extinction of the 'I' to hark back to an
>earlier conversation.
>I often think of writers I know as brilliant minds
>who ignore the body, like a Dali painting, I visualize a giant mind walking
>around on sticks.
>I 'think' something great happens when thinking stops. Maybe its love.
>Claire
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Chris Jones" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2002 2:01 PM
>Subject: Re: in response to Randolph,
>
>
>
>
>>Please don't go away, Claire. I enjoy reading what you have to say.
>>Eastern philosophy is very interesting to me, although I have not
>>read much. (I did read a little some years ago but it had words like
>>ontology and epistemology in the book and at that time I didn't ever
>>want to hear those words again... I had just finished my degree, if you
>>follow my drift.) Recently I read the biologist, Humberto Maturanna,
>>which uses Eastern phil as a living in the doing of the now, and I would
>>like to read about dogon, is it?
>>
>>best wishes
>>
>>Chris Jones.
>>
>>(PS... sorry about any possible typos... this email client, Mozilla,
>>don't have a spell checker and I am not rich enough to get a new pair of
>>multifocals, right now. That will have to wait for a new job.)
>>
>>Claire Gaskin wrote:
>>
>> >No-one is talking to me much on this list but I will introduce myself
>> >anyway.
>> >I sometimes think I'll drop of this list but it is like a soap-opera at
>> >times and a bit addictive.
>> >I have an addictive personality.
>> >
>> >
>>
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