1)    Zarqawi was killed but that will do absolutely nothing to stop or slow down the “insurgency” in Iraq.

2)    Installed a window mount air conditioner in my room; it has a freaking remote control! I see in this remote (for an air conditioner that is meant for a small space) the presence of the stereotypical fat American sweating while sitting in a La-z-boy and turning the AC on full blast––using the remote of course, so that the one calorie that would have been used in getting up will not be.

3)    A brief part of my last conversation with Kristine was about her paper on Brian Massumi’s work with art and poetics that don’t force your attention on them. Instead, the piece diffuses itself into a setting and opens a space for the passive engagement of multiple senses, their intersection and ultimate role in creating a kind of embodied memory and orientation. (This is a vulgar summation of work that I am not familiar with but am recounting from KFD’s synopsis).

    Interestingly, that conversation was followed by an exploration of my music catalog, which consists of a wide range of material but mainly of downtempo electronic artists like Thievery Corporation. K’s reaction to my enthusiastic offerings was mixed, a visible struggle to take the music on its own terms as the politics of its appropriation by bourgeois hip bars and stores (Banana Republic) beat the beats into silence. Among other points, K said that her aesthetic sensibilities were simply not in line with the band’s uber-smooth style (too easily consumed) and favored more dissonant, ruptured textures.
    Her critique, although far more nuanced, articulate and sophisticated, is one most people voice when asked about my primary musical groundings; “too mellow”, “can just fade into the background,” “I could sleep/ study to this,” “This a different track? Really?” or the most insulting manifestation, “I think I heard this at Banana.” What I found interesting in her commentary and what we linked to our earlier discussion of Massumi, is the music’s ability to fade into a setting, to be a background that doesn’t necessarily call for attention even while it helps shape the space. To point to the obvious for a moment, the music dictates one’s embodied orientation in a space, the feel of it, which in turn helps regulate other codes such as dress.
    Most interesting, however, was the link between the music’s (non) call for a passive attention, a diffused awareness that privileges no single sense but an embodied orientation, and Zen. The latter, as I know it in relation to martial arts, emphasizes both an attention to the moment and what my teacher used to call “flood light consciousness.” That is, despite the metaphor, no single sense or object is privileged for the sake of another. Rather one is called to be aware and feel a given moment, a given space, so that perceptions beyond the basic senses come into one’s ken. I would assume that most have heard this, and dismiss it, in its Star Wars incarnation as Obe Wan’s sage advice to feel and use ‘the force.’ Despite my raw ignorance of Massumi’s argument’s details, let me venture two basic departures in Zen.
    First, the call to be aware of the “moment” in Zen, although an embodied attention, also has a temporal component; place your attention in the here and now. Complicating this, lest one think that Zen masters do not care about the past or the future, is the broader meta-awareness needed to be in the here and now. That is, it’s not so much about what “time” you are thinking of but rather that you recognize that you are in that cognitive space; I am thinking of the past, but am doing it (thinking) in the present moment and because that is my present activity, I must be entirely focused on thinking of the past. Here, then, (note the play on words ;—) is the second of Zen’s departures.
    In contradistinction to “flood light consciousness,” my teacher used the term “spotlight consciousness,” which for Zen means to be entirely focused on a particular. I leave “particular” purposefully vague because the object of one’s attention can range from washing dishes to questioning one’s being to being itself. (Kristine’s post on experiencing the self discusses this in more detail) To be entirely focused on a particular, to the exclusion of all else, is extremely demanding but equally rewarding. The challenge of living this, it seems to me, is the ability to recognize when either floodlight or spotlight awareness is necessary and being able to shift modes quickly.

to Be (here), or not to Be (now)

...my bed needs my body’s passive attention