1.

We are at a time of simultaneous hyper-germ phobia, and also hyper-germ-philia. For all the talk of virus and bacterial eradication, there is an equally intense trend in modern society to extol germs as if they were divine, to make kids roll in mud and drink probiotics as if they were elixirs of youth. In both cases this is an expression of our dualist thinking. Germs cannot be beyond good and evil, they cannot be something beyond morality, they must be forced into the boundaries of an anthropocentric worldview. They must be made into villains and heroes.

2.

Baudrillard diagnosed the contemporary condition as the absence of otherness. In biology there is a clear truth in this. One of the key jumping off points for much of modern computational microbiology is the assumption that ALL microbes share a primary goal of growth and duplication, yet so much evidence points to species which don't pursue max growth rates at all times. We are so interested in microbes as items of difference, but scientists are unwilling to accept their difference as a true 'otherness', the idea that microbes might have different goals than humans do, that they are not always interested in unabated growth. Indeed, that their goals might be incomprehensible to our current understanding. With the NIH freeze currently taking place in the US, we see a similar contraction, a repulsion to investigations of any true 'otherness', which might discover that people have different needs or worse yet, undiagnosable differences.

3.

In the work of Martin Buber we see that the nature of divinity is in interactions with true others, in encountering “Thou”s which can not be reduced to “It”s. This is a primary issue in the contemporary world of thinking, there is no space for true recognition of divinity or meaning beyond meaning. There are no encounters, only meetings.

introduction to the HKW

I.

Imagine if you will, an endless corridor of light. At the end of this corridor is the source, the   place from which all light emanates, and behind you lies the infinite fall off point, the place where light cannot reach, but which it is always approaching. Despite any efforts you make  to walk towards the light, and the growing sensation that your environment is growing brighter, you will eventually sit to rest for a moment, and realize that you have acclimated to this new brightness. The place behind you looks as dark as it always has, and the place ahead of you looks as blindingly bright as it has always been. In movement you are conscious of some change, perhaps even an improvement in your condition, but in stillness and reflection, you cannot help but conclude that you are in a position no different from where you began, that moving is itself fruitless.

This is the conundrum of living that has reigned over the human experience since its inception. The divine, the infinite, and the unitary, are something whose efforts we can understand intuitively as the source, but any efforts to better situate that concept fails, since we cannot ever reach it. Yet, it is also obvious to our senses that we are making progressive movement towards this place through the expansion of our capacities, understanding, and methods. There is a paradox of undefeatable stillness, and the certainty of our own perception that we are moving.

II.
Are we just birds? 
III.
My grandmother was the first modern woman. She felt life in a way I was not yet prepared to understand. Her final words to me, as she laid in hospice, were to tend the flowers and grass of her beautiful gardens. These gardens were far too much for my meager hands, but I think I have come to understand her words. That I should live to one day create a garden as great as hers. That I can become the postmodern woman, to succeed every impossible, beautiful mountain she climbed.
IV.
Things often end, just where they started.

Tracks:
Theodore Schafer - Tristan
Katia Krow - Out of the Hello Slumber
Ozymandiaz - The Sweet Sound of Holy Scripture
David Troop - Beijing Sounds, recorded March 2005
Christina Vantzou - At Dawn
Masayoshi Fujita & Jan Jelinek - Botuto
Štarr W. - Years End at Grandma’s Bed

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