[MD] Flying Spagetti Monsters

[Heather Perella]

Platt,


>      [Platt previously]
> > 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?
 
> [SA previously]
>      And how come we need wood and everything else
> to
> have our minds full of something, that is static
> patterns, and that's why their obvious.

     [Platt] 
> Sorry. I lost the meaning there.

     SA:  All's I'm sayin' is that 'I' your talking
about, well, that 'I' depends on wood and other static
patterns, in order to exist.  It's that obvious stuff
you mention.
 
     [Platt]
> Thankfully we've moved on from some of those ancient
> stable patterns.

     SA:  Ok, Platt.  Say your talking to somebody
from the Amazon Basin about, oh, I don't know, a car. 
Now they've never seen a car, and you don't have one
handy.  How would you describe to them a car, and how
a car transports and moves people and what have you,
from point A to point B?  I might say it's a canoe
that moves on land.  That canoe is the closest
metaphor I have for them.  They know what a canoe is. 
Depending on how old their intellect is describing
wheels would be difficult, since pre-Columbus wheels
did not exist in the Americas, except for on some toys
found in Mesoamerica.  So, maybe it's a matter of
language, but it's what the language is describing
about an experience.  When Amerindians first saw those
big wooden ships with white sails, some Amerindians
called those ships floating islands with clouds.  This
was the best analogue they could come up with.  Yet,
the Inuit are more precise than us when it comes to
describing snow.  They experience and have the detail
in their language to describe all sorts of real snow
events.  Buddha talked about rafting across a river,
but if you go out and raft across a river, that is not
what the Buddha meant.     


>  [SA previously]
>     What is building the relationships?  What makes
> it a relationship?

     [Platt]
> We build and make relationships in our heads. We
> divide the world into 
> parts, forget we divided it, then forget we forgot.

     SA:  That's exactly what a relationship and
bonding does.  I can say I have a wife, and I'm her
husband, we're individuals, but as a married couple,
we are one item, a relationship that is us together,
not us separated.

> [SA previously]
>  A relationship is a bridge.  What
> is the bridge made of, what happens on the bridge,
> and
> what should we call these relationships with all
> their
> events, processes, and stable grounds that have us
> call it a relationship and not say, for lack of
> better
> word at this time - a divorce, a separation. 
> Talking
> driftwood is just another way to stabilize ourselves
> in the wood.  Making the wood familiar to us.  We
> talk
> all the time, but what exactly is this talking?  I'm
> serious.  Talking is an exchange, it has a process,
> and meaning is given.  The meaning may change, which
> is to say it depends on the conversation.  Wouldn't
> the meaning involved in the relationship between
> wood
> and a human being, change?  Could we ever simply
> define what talking is?  I don't know if that's
> possible.  Could we ever simply define what happens
> between wood and us?  Hasn't the meaning or
> relationship between human beings changed much
> throughout time?  I believe it has.  People have
> always known the earth and the trees are important,
> but now a days science says without trees we can't
> breath anymore.  Our very breath is trees.  Trees
> aren't coming in and out of my mouth when I breath,
> yet, that breath's existence depends on trees so
> much,
> you might as well as say our breath is a tree. 
> Science may point to particles, and those particles
> are in outer space, and yet, I can't breath in outer
> space.  I need those particles trees are and have to
> give.  Those are tree particles.  I'm a tree
> particle
> being.  I've got tree in me.  See how this becomes
> cyclical.

     [Platt] 
> You lost me.

     SA:  Here again.  What we in the western world
may say is oxygen coming off of trees so we can
breath, isn't that oxygen a piece of a tree.  It
probably depends on what perspective we are coming
from.  If I'm being scientifically fundamental in my
approach the world might be just atoms and elements
with no distinct forms to say when the tree begins and
ends - it's just oxygen coming out of the leaves of a
tree and carbon-dioxide going into the leaves.  Or one
might say the trees are our very breath.  What we are
breathing is what not only is inside of us on each
in-breath, but oxygen was in a tree and then 'exhaled'
by the tree.  I can just look at the oxygen separate
from the rest of the world and just follow its' 'life'
or existence from trees to other breathing beings and
back again, as scientists can do.  Another way is to
notice that the oxygen was a part of the tree and is
now a part of me, so what was exchanged that was tree,
sky (air), and now me?  One answer might be simply: 
oxygen.  Another perfectly good answer can be it is
tree-sky-me that just bonded, in a way, that is held
so tightly, nothing can be taken out of that equation
(tree-sky-me), as long as those in that equation,
exist.  This relationship, this bond, forms a reality.
 It is easier for me to see tree-sky-me, instead of
oxygen atoms floating about.  I don't think either of
these are mistaken or incorrect.

> [SA previously] 
>     You don't hear creeks?  You don't hear the wind?

     [Platt]
> I hear gurgle gurgle and woo woo, but I don't hear
> voices in the wind or creeks.

     SA:  Voices is a metaphor for something occurring
that relates to me, and I relate back.  Some people
say talk to your plants, plants like that.  Is it
because plants are listening, well I don't know, but
people that talk to plants have been proven correct in
what outcomes they saw.  We breath carbon-dioxide on
the plants.  Plants like carbon-dioxide.  I experience
the wind.  I like the wind.  I see red leaves.  I like
red leaves.  What outcome is occurring that is similar
to plants liking carbon-dioxide?  I don't know, so,
off the top of my head, I'm saying the wind and red
leaves are talking to me.  It is an excellent
relationship, full of motion and color.
 
 
> [SA previously]
> Somebody from a foreign country would be just sounds
> to me, if I think creeks and wind are just sounds. 
> Yet, these sounds calm me, soothe me.  Something is
> surely talking to me.  The wind and creek are
> striking a chord.  Just like a drum or violin.  My
heart and
> spirit hear them and I'm struck.  They talk to me,
> they have something to say that pleases me.  I get
> happy, usually.

    [Platt] 
> If nature talks to you, more power to you.

     SA:  Metaphors Platt, metaphors about something
real occurring between nature and I.  Metaphors that
when I see tree, and I hear myself thinking, it is me
thinking, but yet, these thoughts are translating,
defining, and describing something about what a tree
is giving to me, as I look out the window, this very
moment.  When I hear myself, emotionally or other
wise, being touched in some way by a tree, I have
personalized this relationship.  I am translating what
the tree does to me, into a human reality.  When I say
talking, that is more understandable and obvious than
saying I see these invisible elements one by one with
all of these particles moving about in the air coming
from trees, yes, that particular maple tree over
there, here it comes, catch it, catch it in your mouth
- oh, oxygen, got it.
     Talking is a metaphor about something real. 
Generalize talking as an exchange, a form of
communication, a way to relate to each other and we
simply and obviously have trees and humans relating to
each other on a level.  Not only biological level, but
intellectually codified via art, when I become
inspired by a maple tree with red and yellow leaves. 
Beauty everywhere.  That is the relationship being
bridged.  The beauty of the tree meeting with a human
being.  The code of art humanized by this odd looking
creature called human being, as I and the tree talk,
in other words, involved in an exchange, as you said,
one reality, I forget all distinctions, and I forget
that I forgot.  
 

> [SA previously]
>    Maybe your breathing in too many paint fumes, and
> that's saying, that says to me, oh, you're goin' get
> dizzy.  Ha, Ha,

     [Platt]      
> Watercolor paints don't give off fumes.

   SA:  Oh, you're right, then don't eat it.

     [Platt]
> I just put my ear as close to a blank piece of
> watercolor paper as I could 
> and heard absolutely nothing. Of course, I could
> pretend it said "I'm 
> blank."  But if I told somebody, "Hey, the paper
> just talked to me," she 
> would wonder if she ought to call the men with the
> white coats. No 
> thanks. Been there, done that. 

     SA:  In the limited language we have about
quality, just as we do about snow compared to the
Inuit, then as the Buddha said, ride the raft across
the river, but I wouldn't go ride a raft across your
local river, in belief that that is the only way to
realize what he was talking about.  Maybe your
humanizing 'talk' is limiting you to what talk might
mean.  I'm generalizing 'talk' into an exchange
between 'things' and ultimately that exchange builds
something.  What is that something it is building? 
Ultimately, it is a reality that is being built, or in
other words, a reality that is evolving.  That's why
'What is quality?' has a solid reality that dynamic
changes, I guess.

Thanks for your patience in trying to understand what
I'm saying,
SA

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