Assimilation:

-Titles seizing Realms-

 

Lost?

 

Recognising a realm in the dark as one you knew before in the light?

 

Have you ever been driving in the city late at night, lost?

You look at landmarks and some seem vaguely

familiar, but you feel that this is a Realm

you barely know? And then suddenly

you come on somewhere familiar,

and it all falls into place, and

you  ‘know where you are’?

 

Two Realms, one seen by day the other by night.  They seem

for a long time like two different Realms, then the known one suddenly seizes the other.

It becomes its Title, the meaning coalesces – you are in Wimbledon. And each of

the subordinate parts, each of the hyponyms of Wimbledon

seize the relevant part of the strange night time

scene. There’s the Odeon, there’s the

Broadway, there’s the computer games shop, there’s the Station…

In a rush, daytime Wimbledon assimilates

night time Wimbledon. We almost expect to see

Orinoco, Tobermoray or Great

Uncle Bulgaria…

 

 

The Wombles are (TM) Elisabeth Beresford/Filmfair

www.wombles.tv

 

It’s similar to when you are driving through unknown territory, New Malden, say…

And suddenly in this strange place you come across:

 

 

 a flyover.

 

And then you are on the A3, driving where you

have driven a thousand times before,

and that turn-off you have seen

so many times from the A3

now becomes

the point of attachment

for the New Malden Realm. Part

of the new Realm – the flyover - has been

assimilated by the old, known Realm.

 

Assimilation is a fundamental part of how we organise and make sense

of our experience. It is a vital part of the structure

of knowledge.

 

 

The Feeling of Assimilation

 

And how does it feel?

It can be like a bee finding a field full of clover, or a

swimmer finding the sea full of sharks.

Either way it is Surge-like in

feeling. Good or bad,

it is arousing.

 

 

Big Cats

 

Which is your favourite? I think mine is the Jaguar.

So smooth, such graceful lines, so powerful.

A delight for the eye, a stimulus for

the imagination, a dream.

When my mum

First saw it

She said

“Peter! You

bought

a RED

 car?!”

 

And my Aunty said,

“But Joan, it is a lovely wine

red.” And my mum

said, “You’re

right… can

I drive

 it?”

 

Come to

think of it, my mum

had a red car too. I never thought

of that before. Why did

she think I shouldn’t

have one?

 

(My Aunty didn’t have a car. She just

sat beside my mum in the

passenger seat, and

shut her eyes.)*

 

(*I stand corrected. She says she

did not dare shut her eyes,

just kept her fingers

crossed.)

 

 

Metaphor

 

Good name for a car, Jaguar.

The big cat has subordinates such as smooth, graceful, powerful –

and these Pathways can be transferred to the car, one

by one. The cat’s realm assimilates

that of the car. Gives it

meaning with its

title.

 

Metaphor is a major tool in enabling us to express otherwise hard to

describe experiences. The known is used as a metaphor for the

unknown, enabling the known to assimilate the unknown.

Emotion, for example, is hard to describe in its own

terms, but if we allow it to be assimilated by the

concept of a liquid, then we are engulfed by

our expressivity. Let’s test the waters..

 

“The initial calm of the audience was soon churned by ripples

of alarm at the undiluted vitriol and venom of the leading lady.

Soon, waves of sympathy could be detected, though, and this then

brimmed over into an outpouring of emotion. The arid desolation of Act 3

produced a vortex of deep but dry feelings, but in Act 4 it began to ebb.

Her soppy, slushy gushing saw the audience dam up their appreciation

and they left the theatre feeling both drunk and drained. “

 

Ideas, too are hard to emote, unless one allows their Realm

to be assimilated, for example, by that of fabric and clothes…

 

“The book was a ragbag of flannel, padding and woolly ideas, interwoven

with well-worn clichés, embroidered with last year’s frills and

tagged with but one homespun yarn. The threads of its

argument were frayed and tenuous, the fabric full of holes

and the garment overall as ill-fitting as an unwelcome

hand-me-down.”

 

 

Camouflage

 

Let’s look again at Bev Doolittle’s picture,

(since every work of art, and every art form is a metaphor for every other…)

 

 

When we first see it, we think it is about a fox in a forest.

That is its initial meaning.

The hyponyms are the fox and the forest, and snow…

 

And then we see the Indian riders – because

they are low focus, we had thought they were forest

too – but they are so large, that they are clearly the bigger meaning.

The Realm of the Riders assimilates the Realm of the Fox.

 

And what are the hyponyms of the Realm of the Riders, what are its Pathways?

The Riders pass through Nature without leaving a trace. They

are at one with Nature. And they are the big

picture. The fox? Obvious, stands out,

thinks he’s crafty, like us, but

he is small. And has the

wrong coat for

winter.

 

The painting is a metaphor for our world.

The Realm of the Riders seizes and assimilates the

whole Realm of our World and our lives in it.

 

And

the Pathway in the Rider's Realm

we are on - passing through nature without leaving a trace - is the part

 which demands we look at our World, and see it,

and ACT

…anew…

 

When we consume, how do we pass through Nature?

As if we were part of it, not leaving a trace?

And when we create, do we pour

our refuse into the rivers

and our fumes into

the air we all breathe?

When we are on

holiday, do we leave

 behind our ice

cream wrappers, or

merely fading

footprints

in the

sand

 

 

Epidemics and the Tipping Point

 

Incongruent Realms and the Fridge Door