Reconciliation, Communion
And a Three-Letter Word
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
— Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”
This is a post about a conjunction.
A conjunction, say my friends Merriam-Webster, is
1
: an uninflected linguistic form that joins together sentences, clauses, phrases, or words
Some common conjunctions are "and," "but," and "although."
2
: the act or an instance of conjoining : the state of being conjoined : combination
working in conjunction with state and local authorities
3
: occurrence together in time or space : concurrence
a conjunction of events
4
a
: the apparent meeting or passing of two or more celestial bodies in the same
degree of the zodiac
b
: a configuration in which two celestial bodies have their least apparent separation
a conjunction of Mars and Jupiter
5
: a complex sentence in logic true if and only if each of its components is true
see Truth Table
Note: “Truth Table” is a good name for a poem, and could also serve as the name of a rock record.
In dialectical therapy, the conjunction but is often replaced with the conjunction and.
To wit:
I long for the support of other people who struggle with substance addiction, but every support group I go to seems pre-occupied with so many other things that I don’t feel I personally get much out of them.
I long for the support of other people who struggle with substance addiction, and every support group I go to seems pre-occupied with so many other things that I don’t feel I personally get much out of them.
The first sentence implies that there is an impossibility, that some logical conflict prevents me from tapping into the necessary nectar.
The second implies that there is a difficulty tapping into the nectar and there is something about how I’m thinking that is preventing me which can be changed by something within Epictetus’ dichotomy of control. That is, I can look at how I feel, and I can do something about my own thought process that might empower me to find alternative measures to either interact with the group in a novel way, or find alternative measures.
This is what Coleridge recognizes in his poetic theory of imagination, and which I can apply to autopoiesis in the real world:
“[The poet’s imaginative power] reveals ‘itself in the balance or reconcilement of opposite or discordant’ qualities: of sameness, with difference; of the general with the concrete; the idea with the image; the individual with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshness with old and familiar objects; a more than usual state of emotion with more than usual order”. — Coleridge, Biographia Literaria
That is, it synthesizes. What once seemed impossible and prohibitive now offers new chance for growth using the tools at hand in novel ways, much as the organism is able to exapt and adapt to different environments, finding nourishment and evading threats by re-applying past patterns in novel ways within new circumstances.
The organism itself doesn’t need culture, but culture emerges (often to great benefit despite its difficulty). After culture emerges, the organism is confined to the culture’s structures, strata, and dictates.
The organism itself doesn’t need culture, and culture emerges (often to great benefit and despite its difficulty). After culture emerges, the organism is pleasurably challenged by the delicious tensions of the culture’s structures, strata, and dictates.
One part of culture is improvisational comedy. In this manifestation, we are called to respond “Yes, And” to whatever circumstance arises.
We have gone from a threat to an opportunity. We have done this via the act of imagination, which Coleridge distinguished from fancy as being:
“The primary Imagination I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I Am.” — Coleridge, Biographia Literaria
We have no choice but to work with the materials available and we are fortunate to have the powers of cognition and meta-cognition, which allow us to synthetically transcend our biological and social circumstances in order to revel in individual experiences rich with a joyful panoply of intellectual fruit which can sustain and nourish our spiritual souls.
And we can bring that fruit back from the ether to earth, participating in the co-creation of the cosmos, and sharing that divine light with our friends here on the Stoa.
Through discourse, we can create polyphonic ideation, sharing energy via communication to provoke new manifestations of delight, reconfiguring sorrow with empowered response to restore wholeness and reverence, enacting true Meaning: Goodness, Beauty, and Truth.
Affectively, Aaron