Enacting, engendering and embodying

Living as an Imaginal Bridge between Worlds (Part #12)

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Embodying externality: For those living "betwixt and between" is this modality inner- or outer-directed? Is it a nexus for others or rather a mode of playfully engaging with externalities -- as suggested by the metaphoric title of Mary Catherine Bateson (Composing a Life, 2001). Is it a question of embodying externalities, as separately discussed (Existential Embodiment of Externalities, 2009)? Of relevance is the modality explored by Francisco Varela (Laying Down a Path in Walking: essays on enactive cognition, 1997). It is not sufficient to "compose" a life, the composition has to be "played" -- preferably "improvising" adaptively to emerging circumstances (in the light of the musical metaphor). Rather than he conventional "enjoyment" of life, this may involve some process of imbuing life with joy -- a proactive, or enactive, process of "en-joying" it.

The psychological internalization of the process of "being the change", through the metaphor of "living as a bridge between worlds", implies some form of embodiment of the "traffic" on that bridge rather than reifying it as an externality. This traffic is most problematically associated with the chaos of polarization and the "us and them" dynamic. The metaphor raises the question of how to hold and contain the two-way traffic -- with the bridge then functioning as a form of cognitive container.

Dynamics of intercourse: The argument can be taken a stage further through the intuitive understanding of the dynamics fundamentally associated with creativity and polarization.

Fruitful engagement with otherness is built into the dynamics of intercourse in all its forms (Human Intercourse: Intercourse with Nature and Intercourse with the Other, 2007). This is recognized to a degree in the romantic associations of the arch of a bridge, exemplified by the case of the Bridge of Sighs. It is echoed in the evocative design of any proscenium as framing the psychoactive space within which the new is creatively engendered, given form, and from which dramatically emerges. Cognitively there are intimate relationships between creativity and dramatically and engendering. Intercourse and consummation can be construed as "bridge building" of the most fundamental kind -- through which conception of the new is achieved. As a form of "public" intercourse, dialogue can be under understood in these terms (Future Generation through Global Conversation: in quest of collective well-being through conversation in the present moment, 1997).

Paradoxes of self-reflexivity: The bridge between can then take on paradoxical form -- as in some well-known sketches of "impossible" architecture by M. C. Escher, much-appreciated by mathematicians. However it is the manner in which such paradoxical bridging is internalized which merits greater attention. In a sense the bridging process must be both enacted and embodied.

Mathematics offers forms which take Escher's cognitive challenges even further, as previously discussed (Intercourse with Globality through Enacting a Klein bottle, 2009). As noted there, the cognitive implications of the Klein bottle, and their current psychosocial relevance, have been extensively explored by Melanie Purcell (Imperatives for unbiased holistic education: the Klein bottle, a universal structure: an archetypal image, 1999) and Steven M. Rosen (Topologies of the Flesh: a multidimensional exploration of the lifeworld, 2006).

There is also the intriguing relationship with biological processes in a society in pursuit of globalization as separately explored (Engendering Invagination and Gastrulation of Globalization: reconstructive insights from the sciences and the humanities, 2010). How might the cognitive experience of "betwixt and between" relate to that of invagination?

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