Report 69

Imagination (oo-la-la)

I struggled with this assignment -- felt like a drag to "think" about imagination, or to self-consciously try to apply it.  Of course, everything we do or think involves a form of imagination (including analytical activities, including notions of truth or realism that are so often used in opposition to imagination, etc.) and it can be very helpful to remember the imaginative aspect in even the unimaginative moments (reminding myself that "I am now imagining a very dry piece of toast" while looking at my plate).  But the delightful part of imagination more often has to do with self-arising spontaneity, uncontrived action and response, and I felt quite resistant to making it part of the plan.

So I decided to substitute the word "metaphor" -- a word from Eliza's report last week -- to make it a little easier on myself.  Enjoyed remembering metaphors and jokes made by favorite friends and good acquaintances, illogical juxtapositions that reveal new meanings by slicing the usual order of things in an unexpected way, meaning in the intersection, or sometimes in the lack.  Dream life is often so rich in metaphors and insider references, so much information packed into a few well-chosen images.  Images and imagination -- themselves metaphors for a world we have never really seen. 

(Metaphor also served me well this week in reading some of the time emails.  I started to respond to one of the first sallies, but got busy with work and missed the boat.  Still, I particularly like my first snippet so I'll include it here :):  (didn't realize that conjunction would look so tragicomic)  It's been a while since science discovered the world is round, yet in our day to day lives, most of our maps are still flat.  We're willing to live with that distortion because most of our media are still flat (paper, computer screens) but it's interesting to note that we have not put more energy into creating more 3D media -- seems we are "biologically conditioned" to view our environment as flat (perhaps because we don't normally fly or swim), and that we're still wiling to make considerable adjustments to accommodate 2D views.  (Goes on from there...)