Toxico Cultura

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

– David Wagoner

“The linking and relinking of objects by the Brain is actually a language, but not a language like ours (since it is addressing itself and not someone or something outside itself). We should be able to hear this information, or rather narrative, as a neutral voice inside us. But something has gone wrong. All creation is a language and nothing but a language, which for some inexplicable reason we can’t read outside and can’t hear inside. So I say, we have become idiots. Something has happened to our intelligence. My reasoning is this: arrangement of parts of the Brain is language. We are parts of the Brain; therefore we are language. Why, then, do we not know this? We do not even know what we are, let alone what the outer reality is of which we are parts. The origin of the word ‘idiot’ is the word ‘private.’ Each of us has become private, and no longer shares the common thought of the Brain, except at a subliminal level. Thus our real life and purpose are conducted below our threshold of consciousness.”

—Philip K. Dick, Valis

(v @dustfruit)

One of my most happily intoxicating moments every year is when I get to meet the new batch of fellow TED Fellows.

I met Lucy this past February at TED Long Beach, while she was pacing the hotel corridors, nervous about her talk–which, as you will see, she had nothing to worry about. On the contrary. And only later did it finally dawn on me that my dear Sophie Krier (amazing designer, ex Fabricante, living in Holland) had already told me about Lucy and her work, since they are friends and collaborators.

And now, then, bring forth: a body constructed like a whole city unto itself.

“If only you could see what I have seen with your eyes.”

- Blade Runner