Response to Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Reflections on Chauvet Cave

When first he saw his hand

Then he became a man

First laping water like a dog

At midnight

At a stream

With and hiding from

Other animals

His eyes only for them

His ears only for them

See how they move

Shoulder blade punching through

Paws flaired

Hungry to eat flesh

Hungry to make flesh

Hungry to rest a while by the water

He saw emotive animals

Lapping water at midnight

They took refuge in a cave

Bones of prehistoric bears

Cast eternally in cave drip

Saved for all time

In the belly of their mother

Smears of smoke

Dressing the walls

30,000 years ago

He pressed his hand here

His first signature

Pressed indelibly by his own fear

Of the unknown

Of death;

He made life

He pressed a rock to the wall

And gave birth to a lion

A lionness—troubled by the lion

A heartsick lionness

Flairing paw for food

Flooding a glacial plane

With tears of frustration

Oh how they move!

Oh how he knew!

And then he saw his hand

This one we call Adam. 

TNT_2

Week 1 Observations:
1. tendency to raise shoulders, draw neck forward, and clench right hand, including tension prior to beginning in anticipation
2. in response to a clenching right hand, I removed right hand from notebook: right hand still unconsciously tense, pacing is slower, left hand more deliberate
3. success with 'reversibility' early during one day while listening to the news. Thought: "maybe I don't know"
4. improved legibility with a change in medium from pen to pencil
5. most legible when writing unconsciously

TNT_1

observations:
 1. tendency to clench paper with right thumb
 2. clumsy left to right movement, regular adjustment of left hand on page
 3. tendency to draw neck forward towards page
 4. spell 'tongue' wrong repeatedly when typing, not so when writing

time: 10 mins
words: 160

Project TNT, part I, Introduction

Introduction: Project TNT

This project started in 2010, fizzled in 2011, died in 2012, and is being resurrected in 2013.

A week ago a family member directed me to an obscure web-page hosted by a Korean star-gazer who told me that in 2013 I would be, "like a dragon without teeth",--not a good omen in context of the last three years of semi-un employment. I have decided that I need a shot of potency in the arm. I therefore return to project TNT.

 This project has five elements. The first of these is a goal to write left handed everyday for ten minutes. The long term objective is to become as comfortable writing left as right. To undo, is as much as I can, what my mother did when at three years old, she shifted the paint brush from my left hand to my right. This part of the project has a very experimental aspect--in that I am interested in learning how this shift can improve plasticity, reversibility (in a feldenkrais context), creativity, and spontaneity.

In 2010, I completed a full left-handed transcription of 3,933 words of Coleridge's Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner . In 2013 I will begin with one month of an anonymous four line poem:

 Only a thought but the work it wrought
 Cannot by pen nor tongue be taught
 For it ran through life like a thread of gold
 And the life bore fruit one-hundred fold.

This will be documented with a photographed index of the writings over time as a means of observing changes, improvements, anomalies etc. in the writing style itself. At the end of one month, a new work of text will be selected.