'What does it look like to write about life? One version, among many others, is through biography (bio-graphy): writing about (a) life.
Another version of writing about life is biology -- the study of life -- or discourse, reasoning, and organization / ordering regarding life itself, not only individual lives but also in terms of what makes life in all its diversity. Yet another version of working on the topic of life is psychobiography: writing about a life from a psychological perspective. ...My own version of what others have called psychobiography leans toward being more expansive and as all-encompassing as possible, both to understand and optimize life/lives. At least, that is the aspiration.' Memento Vivere project notes, pp. 1-2, adapted
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'Memento mori in an experiential sense is transformative because it brings one into awareness of truths about human existence, as an individual and beyond, in a way that may not easily be surpassed. It not only shows or tells, but it brings one into an experience of what it is, or what it is like, to be mortal. In many contexts, this experience raises questions of the most fundamental kind that are often dealt with in religion, art, and science.'
D.i.D., p. 13 'The brain is wider than the sky / For, put them side by side / The one the other will include / With ease, and you beside.'
–Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems, p. 98 https://books.google.com/books/about/Selected_Poems_and_Letters_of_Emily_Dick.html?id=aLZOAAAAMAAJ 'beyond one's own life, there are the lives of others, and beyond that: even life itself. The project of memento vivere explores life on all these levels. For example, what, after all, are the 'building blocks' of life? What are the building blocks of living experience? Any discussion of life may go in the direction of quantitative or qualitative accountings of life, lives, and a life. One primary way to account for life is through writing.'
Memento Vivere project notes, p. 1 'the higher price one pays, the truer one is seen to be. If one does embarrassing, absurd, or sacrificial things, one is perceived as 'really meaning it' and being authentically serious in one's commitment.'
XJ, p. 94 'water is always more than itself'
A. Ballestero, 'The Anthropology of Water', p. 405 https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102218-011428 'Memetica ecologica is a new "glocal" folk culture that operates anywhere there are people, whether they are business people, scientists, village market goers, artists, political party leaders, refugees, citizens, revolutionaries, or the proverbial ordinary.
But anywhere a "totality" exists, in reality or in one's mind, we humans have a way of thinking otherwise. Is this because "the world" is always more than we think? There a more things, Horatio.... Is this because our brains, powerful and complex as they are, remain relatively limited? Or is this because when it comes to words and concepts, our minds always have the power to create slippage or differential change even if such slippages/differentials do not exist in reality? These questions and others like them ultimately will be left for readers to answer for themselves, but there is no question that a new informational ecology of memetics is at the forefront of our minds, bodies, societies, and our very lives.' Memetica Ecologica project notes, p. 2 'Susan Sontag...writes...of how "certain photographs...can be used like memento mori, as objects of contemplation to deepen one's sense of reality; as secular icons...."
...primetime viewing on public television, the major television networks, or online providers provide a steady stream of death-related or mortality-awareness content, including access to massive volumes of visual material and footage through venues such as YouTube, Vimeo, and social media platforms.... [Beyond information and entertainment, these images] give occasion for reflection upon a viewer's status as a mortal (and either an immortal with an uncertain future or not an immortal at all).' D.i.D., pp. 6-7, citing Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, p. 119 http://www.susansontag.com/SusanSontag/books/regardingPain.shtml 'when are the maddening / steep if consoling fractions of history done'
-K. Koch, "Ellie Campaigns...", Collected Poems, p. 9 https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/94568/the-collected-poems-of-kenneth-koch-by-kenneth-koch/ |
AuthorBenjamin Bennett-Carpenter writes philosophy and poetry. Teaches at a public university in North America. Consults/coaches (executive, life, creative). Archives
July 2024
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