Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Where is my mind?


In our bodies or our brains? In the system that includes us and our social, cultural, physical environment? How can we hope to attain knowledge of something that isn't graspable, and that has few bounds?

Mid-way through reading an article about embodied cognition and situatedness, I realized even though I’ve been exposed to these ideas for so long… I still find it hard to wrap my mind around them...

...so I decided to try. I chose the next thing I thought of as the subject matter. Instead of thinking through my chosen activity in the usual way - walking to the door, opening it, walking down the stairs, and using a rake to do some work in the backyard - I would think about it from an embodied/situated perspective as much as possible.

Here is my first attempt at wrapping my mind around “the mind”(there will probably be more):

I am a body, moving through the path of least resistance.

I carry myself to the sliding-glass door.

I extend into the handle, and slide myself to the side.

I am a door-body-handle. Its edges are mine.

I release.

I am a body, moving through the gradient of the visual world.

My body follows my feet which fall on the first stair down below, then precisely on the next.

I am the ground beneath me.

I extend into a rake and my long, cold fingers scrape the soil in front of me.

I flow through the same movement, again and again, in time.

I extend into the ground and become soft, pliable.

I am not always a body, but I am always.

I am a mind.


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