Humans make meaning. We don't get a choice about that. Give us enough fragments, we'll start connecting them. This episode grew out of a weekend Zoom call with my family, but also out of everything that came before it: A week ago, I was in California with family. One afternoon my brother and I spent a long time floating in the ocean, talking the way people do when they're not trying to get anywhere. No agenda. A conversation discovering itself. Later, after I recorded an episode that touched on something we'd discussed—not in the water, but afterward—with him AND his wife. Anyway, on account of that, I sent that episode to both of them. And now I find myself wondering about context. If I had delivered this episode while we were still floating in the water, would it have made more sense? Maybe. The conversation in the water was embodied, shared, and interactive. This isn't. As I write these words, I don't get puzzled looks, laughter, feedback that tells me when to slow down, explain, or abandon an idea entirely. So what remains is just evidence that something was there. Not the conversation itself—the one in the water, with his wife, the episode I sent, the Zoom call. And now there's this. Everything is a trace of another trace. To be crude, I could say it's like eating shit, digesting it... along with whatever else I might be eating at the time. Maybe a sandwich. And you might hear about a sandwich later. And when you do, it might stick with you more because you've already read it here. So, what I'm basically saying is that traces get left behind. We metabolize them. They never go away. As humans, you could say we experience ONE long thought. As I sprinkle these words onto your ongoing thought, it starts to sparkle and turn a little differently. That's all. We act, we react, we respond. Those are all the same process... happening at the same time. Whether this description or this episode will help my brother—I'm not sure. But the process of trying to understand why we connect certain things, why some patterns feel obvious, and why others remain invisible, was helped by his presence and what that presence means to me. And this description just set a constraint for you about what you are now going to hear. Or if you've come here after listening to the episode, or while you were, or maybe after you gave up. That wasn't a quest to determine what your experience might mean... how you might be able to use it. We just do one thing after another... all at the same time, the ONLY time—Now. I write these words and they are a new quest... retroactively. I do the thing, then I see what it might have meant. That's all I'll say. Though I'll add that what I'm doing is "shining more probabilistic lights on the wall." Eventually you may see Donald Duck. And now I've told you that, you may be more likely to see Donald Duck with less data. Because me telling you it might be Donald Duck... that, itself, is more data. That's all. Now you'll be looking for a duck bill. Maybe you'll find it. Maybe you won't. If you're like me... instead of collapsing quickly into seeing Donald Duck, you'll actively resist it. You like to think something REALLY sophisticated might be going on. I told you to look THERE... So you're going to look everywhere BUT there. You want to see how I did the trick. What my other hand was doing while you were looking somewhere else. Donald Duck is not actually there. It's just a picture made of fragments. And now—I'll throw meat for those who already know the map. From art and philosophy. Or are those inseparable? Here's the red meat for those who like to eat it: Magritte's painting of a pipe was not a pipe. Then Foucault smoked it. But here it is without citations: The Big Dipper is not a Big Dipper until you know what a dipper is, and then you don't really need to know that there is a Little Dipper. It's implied. But it's not certain. The Big Dipper implies a Little Dipper. That's just how it works.
