notes

In buddism, suffering is an unavoidable part of life, but that dosent mean being nailed to the cross. Its the ongoing sense of dissatisfaction that things aren't as we want them to be. Roshi sometimes talks about the struggle to accept that the world dosent really give a shit about you. The other side to all this focus on suffering is the aim through practice to fully embrace my life as it really is.

Seeing and accepting people that I'm close to in my day to day life as they really are, not knowing how they feel, why they do what they do, how they are changing, feels closer to accepting life as it is than some grand hazy image I concoct of 'the world'. Maybe if I can do that, if I'm less startled when people dont do what I want them to, then I could feel freer to move in response and say what I want to say.

The tensions in my body are the accretion of 1000s of unconscious invisible fears that reality is going to smash into my expectations. Reminds me of being on the football pitch aged 12, bracing myself to be clattered from behind.

Most of my perceptions are actually my expectations for how things should be and people should act.

I can’t see much beyond my expectations, everything else, beyond my expectations is unknown to me.

If I loosen my responsibility to know what's happening, put less trust in looking and more in feeling, invisible sensations moving through the spaces of my body feels open out. It feels like sensing movement and change beyond my body, sight and language.

Perceptions, expectations and intentions are like white blood cells, attacking the threat by swarming, covering it and piercing it.

My idea is to combine immune system responses with the way ants build structures collectively as a metaphor for how our perceptions and expectations construct syatic surface representations, of ourselves, others and things in our environment.

Picturing social situations as attempts from the different parts of the liquid brains of the people in them to manifest their expectations, with all representational surfaces forming on, around and between people as conflicting intentions meet.

Thinking of interaction methods, gaze based and gesture recognition, none of which are very sensitive to the subtleties of human expression. IRL I manifest my expectations onto others in ways I don't understand, just by thinking, through speech, body language, clothing, movement and manipulation of physical and digital objects, digital communications.

I'm beginning to feel that my underlying metaphor is of thought, speech and behaviour through different media are extensions of the immune system out beyond the body.