[MD] Flying Spagetti Monsters

[Platt Holden]

Hey SA,
 
  [Platt]
> > But I don't think there is an exchange
> > of meaningful signals 
> > between humans and inanimate objects, like pieces of
> > driftwood.

[SA]
>      Sure a piece of driftwood may not offer the array
> of meanings that say we do or even for a bubble bee
> for that matter.  Yet, the driftwood does have
> something that it can offer us.  It can speak to us. 
> We can pick up a piece of driftwood, and have so much
> come to our minds on what we might carve in that wood.

I think in this case we're talking to ourselves. Which raises a question 
I've never solved: Who is the I that talks to me?

>  Without the wood, I would never, that is never have
> the wood art come to my mind - there would be no wood,
> thus, no wood-art.  This is the relation.

Isn't this simply saying that without a ceiling there would be no Sistine 
Chapel?  Or without an up there would be no down?  Isn't your point
rather obvious?  Relationships I can take, but talking driftwood is a bit 
much.   

> The wood
> does say something to us, and being who we are, that
> is human beings, we can look at a piece of wood and
> what that wood is connects with me, connects with me
> unlike any flower or bird ever could.  Wood is wood,
> and everything about that piece of wood, everything
> about me, as a human being, allows for something to
> happen between the two of us, the wood and I.  What
> happens between the two of us would go back and forth.
>  I see a dip in the wood here, so I carve something
> there, and a rise in the wood, so I do this, back and
> forth, the wood and I, as the tides, as two humans
> swinging their arms, as the branches of a tree as the
> wind comes and goes - that motion, by the impressions
> of the wood, the impressions of me - the wood to me, I
> to the wood, back and forth.  Maybe it's more like
> fishing.  Throw the line out, reel in the line, throw
> out, reel in.  Motion...  Without that driftwood, a
> wood carver would not be.  The identity of a person, a
> whole event called carving that needs wood, human,
> sun, ocean, etc... this whole event comes together and
> we have this meeting of person and wood, and oh, the
> beauty that can happen.  This driftwood is very, very
> significant.  Just as oil is significant to us
> now-a-days, but long ago, or someday in the future,
> people may hear stories about oil and think how could
> that thick, awful tasting stuff ever have been so
> valued.  Does the wind speak to me?  I hear the wind,
> just as I may hear you talk, but the wind talks a
> different language, one that can be heard and listened
> to.  Ever hear somebody talk in a different language
> and have no idea what they were saying.  They would
> sound just like the wind.  I wouldn't hear the English
> language, I would just hear these sounds, just as a
> creek makes sounds, that's called creek language.   
 
You hear a lot more things than I do. People who hear things that nobody
else does are considered a bit daffy. No offense. Chalk it up to my tin
ear. If the wood, wind and creeks speak to you, more power to you. I wish
the blank sheet of watercolor paper spoke to me. I tried to get it to say
something this morning. Nothing. Maybe I'm not smoking the right stuff. 

Best,
Platt

  

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