[...]ught--a kind of thought that is more capacious, one that holds and sustains the human.

...................................

my point in animals without narrative is that the apparatus that is working for Attar in his representation of birds is the same as the narrative tool in the so-called wildlife documentary series which produces nature----a sy.


transcend is about traveling from trope to truth (obur az majaz be haghighat عبور از مجاز به حقیقت,) from virtual to concret. but that is too easily reversible. my point is to stop this transference and interrogate the trope itself. my work in amazon book is about this ‘majaz’ (مجاز), an interface that we are inhabiting.

...................................

the main (and only?) question in my work/performance/lecture is ‘when’ the gift will/have pass(ed) on.
--> holding on to, preparing, strategizing, spontaneity, and so on

-my texture aversion and preference in soft/hard fabric of language and material tonality? --> the “inanimate affections” (that give us pleasure in life) --> we often give each other soft gifts as a way to care for one another (@Janina)
*radical affection does not require intentional politics* (Chen)



[Shepard 2004] Stanner (W. E. H. Stanner, White Man Got No Dreaming) describes how the universe became a moral system and consists of three elements: marvels, species diversity, and institutions. Marvels refer to that presence of the unexpected that one always encounters sooner or later in nature, particularly when the terrain reflects something about the mind that implies a common structure. His second element, species diversity, coincides with one of the major moral issues of our time--the extinction of species and reduction of biodiversity.

-“marvels of affinity” is the key to reality, revealing how things are, what is known, and how to behave.

cosmo cosmogony (keyhan-zayi کیهان زایی‌)--how the universe became a moral system

...................................

[modes of existence]

science studies --> science
what was science before science studies? it was engaged in a sort of stupefaction that prevented meaningful study.

we do not take the fight against X (religion, fetish, etc.) for the truth about X.

...................................

[Avital]

i am adding “mama's boy” (bache-nane بچه ننه) to my short bio (nothing is added by “me,” everything is told to me.)


thanks to all the people who have given me their ‘sides’ (didn't necessorily confronted me)


(book, ketabat کتابت)
to do something to resignify and breakup the serenity and the serene closure of the book, as the universiy values it and seals it
-what deals does it seal?
-the commitment to breaking up the book and its metaphysicall[...]

[...]icated ecological consciousness in ajayeb]


****to move from ideology to recognition**** (of the many different contrasts we have lived by without granting them enough room)


the drab and entirly mythical drama of light overcoming darkness


religious traditio operates by its abilities of two transformation:
1. a radical transformation of the far away into the close and the proximate [#Zolmat] (dead is alive)
2. a positive view of all artificial transformations (=/= tendencyo conserve what it is)

**what happens if religion is allowed to weave its highly specific form of transcendence (salvation?) into the fabric of the other two modes of existence: reproduction and reference?

Leo's dream (and also deep sin): the urge radically to transform *that which is given* into *that which has to be fully renewed* --> alternative, dream of a different world
[=/= to grasp this world (and only this world) otherwise]

...................................

look at spec over the spectacular
(in ajayeb)

i can't give you a dialectical conclusion

maybe a mouth-full

...................................

[Paul Shepard]

our perception of animals as the language of nature in Thinking Animals and The Others; the “natural” way of childrearing in Nature and Madness; and the bear as a dominant sacred animal connecting people ceremonially to the earth in The Sacred Paw.

Octavio Paz reminds us: “The past reappears because it is a hidden present. I am speaking of the real past, which is not the same as ‘what took place.’ . . . What took place is indeed the past, yet there is something that . . . takes place but does not wholly recede into the past, a constantly returning present.”

...................................

[Corbin]<br />
it is so dangerous to say any thinker, writer, artist, or phiosopher ‘was of his/her own time.’ nobody has ever been in their own time, never. we are constantly out of time.

things occur in Malakut, not in the time of this world.
it is a matter of interior history, exoteric in the etymological sense of the word, subtle history whose events do not take place in the exterior world of objects, but in the subtle world of lived states, events in the Malakut, in the world of the ‘Soul,’ in the ‘Heaven’ or the ‘Hell’ which man carries within himself.
(and this is precisely what is ‘changing someone's story’ is about. ‘let me change the rhythm of your story. let me change your history.’ ~= storytelling)
this history----interior wild facts----intermingles with his wills, and objectives itself in the web of exterior facts. these are events of ajayebnameh, Shahname شاهنامه, Qur'an قرآن, Grail Cycle and so on, the events of this history[...]

[...]stitution of the relations in play}
[Tehran: wilderness ~ public ~ non-domesticity]

...differing peoples in differing periods and worldly contexts***

societies in a host of settlements, fields, farms, factories, imaginary, literary, psychological and virtual spaces (--> and how animalhuman is socially defined)

technologies of human orderings : telegram? [encountering all kinds of inventiveness that go on cross-species (human, animal, story, image, media), the kind of semiotic work]

*Space* (de Certeau) : A place (lieu) is the order (of whatever kind) in accord with which elements are distributed in relationships of coexistence. It thus excludes the possibility of two things being in the same location (place.) The law of the ‘proper’ rules in the place: the elements taken into consideration are beside one another, each situated in its own ‘proper’ and distinct location, a location it defines. A place is thus an instantaneous configuration of positions. It implies an indication of stability.
--> space as the ‘scheme of things’ --> species-identifying
=/= imaginal space, animal space, memory, dream, etc.

‘species-identifying’ (classification) in:
•pre-Neolithic totemic societies (Shepard 1993)
•biblical classifications of the different beasts (Leviticus: Sibley 1995)
•ancient and medieval ‘great chain of being’ thinking (Lovejoy 1936)
•Linneaus's Systema naturae
•tabular representations of the natural world (Frangsmyr 1983; Spary 1996)
•...

understandings of what comprises an animal is different in each case.
what should be interested?

“(elaborating on Shepard,) Ingold (1994) suggests that hunter-gatherers generally view the distinction between humans and animals as permeable and easily crossed, unlike what is taken as read in much Western science and philosophy.”

when/how you are persuaded to portray yourself as the relevant ‘expert’ in whatever field?

who are the legitimate spokespersons for animals? once Attar, and now biology sci.
(‘the modern constitution’ is as guilty as mysticism's literacy)

...and that strong human sense of the proper place of animals (which they should occupy physically) --> material-conceptual (double) placement ...(‘scheme of things’ [ajayeb] --> animals supposed to be found in the non-discursive spaces and places of the world) (or on the television)
-Said: ‘imaginative geography’, geographical ‘othering’
-overlappings that we find in telegram social media tehran --> what kinds of ‘animal’ (which animalities) are at stake there in the mobile phone's interface?

In recent years zoos have reinvented themselves as ‘arks’


animals categorically embodied ‘meaty beings,’ and how they are usually “out of place” in the the immediate locality made in Tehran[...]

[...]ally. when he was born, one the oldest Zoroastrians fire temples suddenly extinguished for no apparent reason. the blessed dark. the box, fire, both are means to have access to the inaccessible. #Muhammad inception/birth had to be connected to a supernatural event.)

(talking) fire --> speech
(telling) stone --> written

in the history, the leg-less-stone and the lying-visage have been together. a study of apparition must include the physical material as well, not as counterparts, rather as its play-mate.

(fire suppressing) an older ecology of reflection (namely the stone)

the telling stone is the same as spirit stone(?)---non-animal container (@Karin)
(stone is related to the spirits of the ground. the prisoner who throw a pebble into the pit, the pebble's sound is going to tell about the depths and darknesses that the human, on death sentence, does not have a long enough rope to carry too. so the rope is never enough, the linear connection, the closed chain of links, but the throwing stone can risk a disjunction between that mother->king->prisoner->darkness)
--> sending a guy into the pit is not typical for the cultures of Pleistocene: (using linear connection, darkness ~= unkown, and so on)
[Shepard] Prehistoric humans were autochthonous, that is, “native to their place.” (related to the earthly stone =/= fire that perpetually evacuates) (it is not that of the introvert stone and the extrovert fire, but the opposite, stone was social and fire allied interiority, it sent/banished the subject to the land of the mediated, ‘from now on you are coming from mediation.’ (Where the subject comes from? it comes from the mediation.) --> use me --> industrialize with me --> technologize with me --> stone-tech are 1.5 million years earlier than fire-tech --> with stone you can't reach the sky but by controlling combustion you can go up ==> alienation as the touchstone of humankind --> then comes the “reflective consciousness” of humankind --> and later the invention of the very strange object: the mirror [---> go to amazon#2DifficultForests] ==> a change in the “structure of existence” --> then the idea of “selftranscendence” by monotheist religions --> adventures of power and ideology --> then a very bad idea called “history” was introduced---an active, psychological force that separates humankind from the rest of nature because of its disregard for the deep connections to the past.[Shepard 2004] --- Lévi-Strauss points out, historical thought is analytical and concerned with continuity and “closing gaps and dissolving differences” to the point that it “transcends original discontinuity.”)
[in east mirror was never used as mean to self reflect, rather it was weaponized agains evil, although this evil was female and men used mirror to defeat it. unlike the western thought since the greeks in the Narcissus story where mirror is the foundation of self-absorbance and knowle[...]

[...]or the cultures of Pleistocene: (using linear connection, darkness ~= unkown, and so on)
[Shepard] Prehistoric humans were autochthonous, that is, “native to their place.” (related to the earthly stone =/= fire that perpetually evacuates) (it is not that of the introvert stone and the extrovert fire, but the opposite, stone was social and fire allied interiority, it sent/banished the subject to the land of the mediated, ‘from now on you are coming from mediation.’ (Where the subject comes from? it comes from the mediation.) --> use me --> industrialize with me --> technologize with me --> stone-tech are 1.5 million years earlier than fire-tech --> with stone you can't reach the sky but by controlling combustion you can go up ==> alienation as the touchstone of humankind --> then comes the “reflective consciousness” of humankind --> and later the invention of the very strange object: the mirror [---> go to amazon#2DifficultForests] ==> a change in the “structure of existence” --> then the idea of “selftranscendence” by monotheist religions --> adventures of power and ideology --> then a very bad idea called “history” was introduced---an active, psychological force that separates humankind from the rest of nature because of its disregard for the deep connections to the past.[Shepard 2004] --- Lévi-Strauss points out, historical thought is analytical and concerned with continuity and “closing gaps and dissolving differences” to the point that it “transcends original discontinuity.”)
[in east mirror was never used as mean to self reflect, rather it was weaponized agains evil, although this evil was female and men used mirror to defeat it. unlike the western thought since the greeks in the Narcissus story where mirror is the foundation of self-absorbance and knowledge and madness, the easterns since they did not posses the same brand of selfhood they found mirror strange and uttelized it in curious ways, another optical problem ---> go to mirror and the laughing snake - mar-e ghahghahezan, img]
...through the speaking fire, events “on earth” were finished except for a final judgment by fire --> invention of sin, spiritual existence : selftranscendence. anthropoce separating themselves from earth and its processes
-‘essence’, ‘appearance’, and ‘change’ became sources of anxiety
-other forms of life are now irrelevant to humans
-from now on “you cannot be two things, in two places, or in two times, at once.” , no more overlapping identity ==> alienation from (the domains of) nonhuman life
-the “Persian” new mind, (intanced by fire,) divided the world into material creation and infinite spirit that would shape the philosophy of the civilized world. (Shepard 2004)
(-in my amazon book i am pointing out: Esthetic distancing also made possible the landscape arts and connoisseurship and commercialization as scenery painting, tourism, and recreation. To the credit of the Greeks, they resisted converting the lands[...]

[...]g differences” to the point that it “transcends original discontinuity.”)
[in east mirror was never used as mean to self reflect, rather it was weaponized agains evil, although this evil was female and men used mirror to defeat it. unlike the western thought since the greeks in the Narcissus story where mirror is the foundation of self-absorbance and knowledge and madness, the easterns since they did not posses the same brand of selfhood they found mirror strange and uttelized it in curious ways, another optical problem ---> go to mirror and the laughing snake - mar-e ghahghahezan, img]
...through the speaking fire, events “on earth” were finished except for a final judgment by fire --> invention of sin, spiritual existence : selftranscendence. anthropoce separating themselves from earth and its processes
-‘essence’, ‘appearance’, and ‘change’ became sources of anxiety
-other forms of life are now irrelevant to humans
-from now on “you cannot be two things, in two places, or in two times, at once.” , no more overlapping identity ==> alienation from (the domains of) nonhuman life
-the “Persian” new mind, (intanced by fire,) divided the world into material creation and infinite spirit that would shape the philosophy of the civilized world. (Shepard 2004)
(-in my amazon book i am pointing out: Esthetic distancing also made possible the landscape arts and connoisseurship and commercialization as scenery painting, tourism, and recreation. To the credit of the Greeks, they resisted converting the landscape into scenery and wilderness into an aesthetic experience.)

we are not directed towards a measured location, (as his-story tries to make belief)

“After you die, others live.” (Sina)

old world's arboreal simians, monkeys

Anthropos

cultures of Pleistocene
-Pleistocene was the time of glaciation and ice. Much of the world's temperate zones were alternately covered by glaciers during cool periods and uncovered during the warmer interglacial periods when the glaciers retreated. it is when the evolution and expansion of Homo sapiens and by the close of the Pleistocene, humans had spread through most of the world.

Agonic / Hedonic --> my Köln group, agonistic doctrine challenges that mode of personality

ontogenesis---extended in human (the specialized and scheduled development of physical and psychological traits that appear, disappear, or stagnate during the life cycle of the individual.) --> Neoteny (a “state of newness"--a retardation of certain parts of the maturing process.) preprograms life stages, so that our becoming is a lifelong process.
-developement of the self in terms of harmonious relations to other species and nunhumans.
-ontogenetic agenda --- (The agenda is a given; the support depends on a social readiness to nurture, itself a product of successful ontogeny of an older gene[...]

[...]o storytelling, as necessity(!?)

one emerging in Pleistocene, is about perceiving one's place in the scheme of things (and not sending people down the pit into darknesses)

WE NOT ONLY LOOKED ‘AT’ ANIMALS, WE ALSO LOOKED ‘INSIDE’ THEM, realizing that they were more kin than indicated by our exteriors. (it wasn't Aristotle first who was performing such procedures)

attaching sounds to things/animals/species when they were not visible
(“Never ignore a sound!”)

inheritance (DNA, etc.) calls upon human society and imagination to invent its exact expressions.

human species’ “theme” is Paleolithic

(those who are “better” live in a natural environment and a cultural system that are closer to) meeting the “expectations” of the genes

Children at age six are typically anthropomorphic

trees structure space

**imagining the possibilities of something else being in there.
(how we were doing it? before fire)

“A meditative stillness that is good for the human soul, suggests poet Gary Snyder, was invented by motionless hunters. That moment of silent reverence comes also at the final death stroke when one succumbs to the cycle of life.” (Shepard)
[from predation to hunting (there is a huge epistemological shift) (matter of representation and interpretation)]

mammalian ecology

[(let's) risk everything (instead of risk-reducing) --- issues of representation and agency in thinking ‘with’ animals. textual, metaphor animal in Attar line of thinking]

a distant call in known terrain says it is the there, not the here, where attention should be paid. [far, origins of our tropes, metaphysics? abstraction? =/=? motionless hunters invented motionless meditative worship]
-(kinfolk in) swamps, brush, and forest (in terms of discerning the *relationships between clues*)
-(indirect) dealing with the escapable (=?=> tracking strategies + symbolic thought)

a central theme: (a banquet/feast at which) the participants--eater and eaten--risk the improvements of mind against the certainty of occasional poor decisions, (faulty memory, carelessness, errors of judgment, and the decrepitude of age and disease.)
-Those who fled had to understand [the limits of distance, the intentions of the others, and] (the ability to control) the abyssal terror that itself would engulf them if they submitted to panic. ==> mind
-“self” emerged as the consequence of “participation,” a calculative and organizational relatoin of the individual within the group? (and perceiving the so-called “inanimate” entities) --- shaped by the game -- a participant amidst other participants oriented by the action
(David Abraham: Perception is Participation, in an animistic logic)

mind, memory, --> cognition and communication --> reference --> imitating t[...]