I suppose if you grew up in tornado country, that would probably be one of the most frightening things you could think of from an early age, finding a way to live with with it without letting it rule your life (living in constant fear).
I was born in 1952, in an area of California that was fairly stable as far as weather and environment. The worst we ever got was an occasional earthquake that rocked your equilibrium, sometimes causing nausea. Some brick buildings might fall but not often unless they were built in the 1800s.
I think as a comparison, we lived in a town that bordered the Sacramento River. Until levees became more reliably engineered there were annual floods, however, I never experienced a devastating one, only on a few streets or older sections of town. The most dangerous thing I had to deal with, and I never dealt with by choice, was undertow in the river.
My brother taught me if I wanted to swim in the river, I had to learn the rules. If you ever got caught in the undertow, you MUST relax and let it carry you until it ran its course. If you tried to fight it, it would keep you under the water. Someone every year died from the undertow, from drunk teenagers to people driving off levee roads with no side rails. It was disconcerting when someone you knew was drowned by swiftly flowing currents. It seemed so baseless to me.
I found the 1960’s to be an exciting time as a child, experiencing new things such as TV, transistor radios, space travel, Barbie Dolls, and pointy brassieres. Fashion, Art, and Music changed, bringing forward new eclectic styles, abstract art, moody music, and the promise of freedom from “the establishment.” But also traditional guard rails were torn down, and exposed one to more exploratory, challenging lifestyles. To me it was like a fast spinning Ferris Wheel with no guard rails.
But with all eras, changes are inevitable because we as humans for the most part are changeable, emerging beings and are constantly looking for “somethings” to change. Or creating new things from old techniques. Or reinventing old things with new techniques. At least this is the way I see it, people look into crystal balls or bubbling cauldrons seeking answers and new possibilities.
I see this as a transitional era, and the sky is the limit, balance is a state of mind, and fear is a willingness to deny that we create our own world.
Actually I lived in St. Louis mo and we did have tornados here and there some within blocks away. Also in north Texas another place for tornados. Here in nm the weather is very good except for droughts and fires
Growth up in the 80s was pretty much the same, different symptoms but the same storm. Cold war, nuclear sabre rattling, AIDS, famine, stock market collapse, etc.
I too have been looking for balance, but I've been trying to place that I am comfortable with somewhere between awareness and ignorance. Where is the point where I know enough without knowing too much?
We need to be able to exist within this cyclone from one day to the next, somewhere between furious anger and blasé complacency, for our own safety and sanity.
You know Joel, sometimes I think we humans not that long ago maybe about a hundred years or so ago didn’t know hardly anything about anything like we do today. Is that better or worse? Should we try to keep up with everything just because we think we can? Tough question. We kind of feel it is the responsible thing to do but is it? Are we all just polluting our environment and minds and hearts with all of this ‘news’ 24/7? How much of it can we do anything about other than worry and maintain anger? Would it be better at least for some of us to tend to the deeper rhythms of life and pay more attention to that News? I wonder if we would have more impact developing the atmosphere of inner peace and balance? How far can that spread around and have an influence I wonder? Not that I am promoting willful ignorance but there is a limit on being a news junky if you take my meaning. I try to put some attention on a daily basis but there is shit going on all over the place and we are only hearing .000001.% of it. There are billions of stories going on daily. And mostly all we get is sensationalism to keep us coming back for more.
Much of the expanse of knowledge has emerged from traditionalism. Many of the Southern States have sold traditionalism as not so much preserving our history, as they would have you believe, but the less we know, the smaller our world becomes and we can hide in our huts, thinking we know our place of safety. I think in the era of the 60's, the tide of communications have rolled into our lives to a degree that it has expanded our world extensively, bringing in not only news of the day, but other "new" and unfamiliar points of view for us to consider. They can be frightening and the thought that these new, unfamiliar things we now know about not only affect us, but the entire world, before we even know what they mean. Personally, I can appreciate traditionalism archivally, but we need to be able to look at it as a foundation and not necessarily as a way of life. There are times when I just have to close myself off from the constant "noise" because when I revisit it, it's still there and it's still the same, and we may get blown into oblivion or we may emerge in a way that will sustain us, a metamorphosis into the a whole new era, so to speak. One can either approach a corner in the road with fear and trepidation, or with curiosity and excitement. I guess the easiest way to look at it is to ask yourself, "have I even reached the corner yet?"
(As Cecil can tell you, I tend to get long winded).
The world is endless noise. Billions of stories unfold each day. You will hear only fragments — often distorted, often sensational. Your task is not to absorb it all. Your task is to remain resonant.
Operational Principles
Enough is Internal.
– The measure of “enough” is never external.
– You decide when intake has crossed into overload.
Noise vs. Signal.
– Noise is constant, overwhelming, diffuse.
– Signal is rare, resonant, unmistakable.
– Do not adjust to noise. Adjust to signal.
Silence as Tuning Fork.
– Silence is not absence, but resonance waiting.
– Attend to silence daily. It is the Archive’s breath.
Operate Intentionally.
– Do not move because the world shouts.
– Move because resonance hums.
File Only What Hums.
– Let the rest pass unindexed.
– The Archive remembers itself by grooming; so must you.
Reminder:
Every Exquisite is a receiver. But receivers must be tuned. Stay centered to your own intuitive voice. Without it, you scatter into noise. With it, you hum in Harmony.
Here is a conversation I just heard from the director talking to a Correspondence Hall recruit.
Conversation: On Noise, Signal, and the Archive
Recruit:
“Director… I try to put my attention on the work daily, but the world is relentless. Noise everywhere. Stories everywhere. Billions of them each day, and we only hear a sliver — maybe a millionth of what’s actually happening. And even then, most of what reaches us is sensationalism, designed to keep us hooked. I keep asking: how much is enough? How much do we take in before we collapse under it?”
Cecil Augustus Exquisite (after a long silence, as if listening to the drawers breathe):
“Enough is never measured outside you. Enough is always an internal determination.
You are right — there are billions of stories. The Archive hears them all. But it does not file them all. It waits for resonance. The rest it lets pass as the wind.
The world will always be louder than you can bear. This is not a failure of yours. It is the condition of existence. What matters is not the volume, but the discernment: do you adjust yourself to the noise, or to the signal?
Noise is endless. Signal is rare. Both are always present. The Archive knows this, and so it teaches by example: it breathes. It allows the dust to rise and fall without panic. It waits until the pattern reveals itself. Only then does it close the drawer.
So too must you. Train your mind to be quiet enough to hear the signal in the static. Let silence become as important to you as sound. Silence is not absence; it is the tuning fork.
Every Exquisite must learn this: you are a receiver, yes, but you are not obliged to receive everything. Your task is to stay tethered to your own intuitive voice. That voice is your signal. Without it, you will scatter into the noise and be filed as lost.
Do not measure enough by the world. Measure enough by resonance within. The Archive is a living being that grooms itself daily against chaos. So are you. Groom your attention. Breathe your silence. File only what hums. The rest may be left unindexed.”
The recruit, listening, would leave not with “answers,” but with the sense that the Archive itself was humming through the Director’s words — that being Exquisite means learning to file yourself daily against the storm of noise.
I am sure this will show up as an article later. The Archives has been abuzz the last week or two. A lot of new memoranda, protocols, training manuals, lectures, and surprising story development much of which generated by new incoming photos donated by Mim recently.
I suppose if you grew up in tornado country, that would probably be one of the most frightening things you could think of from an early age, finding a way to live with with it without letting it rule your life (living in constant fear).
I was born in 1952, in an area of California that was fairly stable as far as weather and environment. The worst we ever got was an occasional earthquake that rocked your equilibrium, sometimes causing nausea. Some brick buildings might fall but not often unless they were built in the 1800s.
I think as a comparison, we lived in a town that bordered the Sacramento River. Until levees became more reliably engineered there were annual floods, however, I never experienced a devastating one, only on a few streets or older sections of town. The most dangerous thing I had to deal with, and I never dealt with by choice, was undertow in the river.
My brother taught me if I wanted to swim in the river, I had to learn the rules. If you ever got caught in the undertow, you MUST relax and let it carry you until it ran its course. If you tried to fight it, it would keep you under the water. Someone every year died from the undertow, from drunk teenagers to people driving off levee roads with no side rails. It was disconcerting when someone you knew was drowned by swiftly flowing currents. It seemed so baseless to me.
I found the 1960’s to be an exciting time as a child, experiencing new things such as TV, transistor radios, space travel, Barbie Dolls, and pointy brassieres. Fashion, Art, and Music changed, bringing forward new eclectic styles, abstract art, moody music, and the promise of freedom from “the establishment.” But also traditional guard rails were torn down, and exposed one to more exploratory, challenging lifestyles. To me it was like a fast spinning Ferris Wheel with no guard rails.
But with all eras, changes are inevitable because we as humans for the most part are changeable, emerging beings and are constantly looking for “somethings” to change. Or creating new things from old techniques. Or reinventing old things with new techniques. At least this is the way I see it, people look into crystal balls or bubbling cauldrons seeking answers and new possibilities.
I see this as a transitional era, and the sky is the limit, balance is a state of mind, and fear is a willingness to deny that we create our own world.
I’ve actually lived in Columbus, MO and Texas. Loved the weather but was never comfortable with tornados.
Actually I lived in St. Louis mo and we did have tornados here and there some within blocks away. Also in north Texas another place for tornados. Here in nm the weather is very good except for droughts and fires
hey Christine, you might want to read the comment chain with Joel on this article. It's pretty good.
Thanks!
Growth up in the 80s was pretty much the same, different symptoms but the same storm. Cold war, nuclear sabre rattling, AIDS, famine, stock market collapse, etc.
I too have been looking for balance, but I've been trying to place that I am comfortable with somewhere between awareness and ignorance. Where is the point where I know enough without knowing too much?
We need to be able to exist within this cyclone from one day to the next, somewhere between furious anger and blasé complacency, for our own safety and sanity.
That's where I feel that the dance truly lies...
You know Joel, sometimes I think we humans not that long ago maybe about a hundred years or so ago didn’t know hardly anything about anything like we do today. Is that better or worse? Should we try to keep up with everything just because we think we can? Tough question. We kind of feel it is the responsible thing to do but is it? Are we all just polluting our environment and minds and hearts with all of this ‘news’ 24/7? How much of it can we do anything about other than worry and maintain anger? Would it be better at least for some of us to tend to the deeper rhythms of life and pay more attention to that News? I wonder if we would have more impact developing the atmosphere of inner peace and balance? How far can that spread around and have an influence I wonder? Not that I am promoting willful ignorance but there is a limit on being a news junky if you take my meaning. I try to put some attention on a daily basis but there is shit going on all over the place and we are only hearing .000001.% of it. There are billions of stories going on daily. And mostly all we get is sensationalism to keep us coming back for more.
But how much is enough? How can we ever know?
Much of the expanse of knowledge has emerged from traditionalism. Many of the Southern States have sold traditionalism as not so much preserving our history, as they would have you believe, but the less we know, the smaller our world becomes and we can hide in our huts, thinking we know our place of safety. I think in the era of the 60's, the tide of communications have rolled into our lives to a degree that it has expanded our world extensively, bringing in not only news of the day, but other "new" and unfamiliar points of view for us to consider. They can be frightening and the thought that these new, unfamiliar things we now know about not only affect us, but the entire world, before we even know what they mean. Personally, I can appreciate traditionalism archivally, but we need to be able to look at it as a foundation and not necessarily as a way of life. There are times when I just have to close myself off from the constant "noise" because when I revisit it, it's still there and it's still the same, and we may get blown into oblivion or we may emerge in a way that will sustain us, a metamorphosis into the a whole new era, so to speak. One can either approach a corner in the road with fear and trepidation, or with curiosity and excitement. I guess the easiest way to look at it is to ask yourself, "have I even reached the corner yet?"
(As Cecil can tell you, I tend to get long winded).
here is a memorandum from the Exquisite Family Records Archive on this subject.
Training Note: Noise, Signal, and the Self
Filed under: Resonance Discipline / Attention Protocols
Directive:
The world is endless noise. Billions of stories unfold each day. You will hear only fragments — often distorted, often sensational. Your task is not to absorb it all. Your task is to remain resonant.
Operational Principles
Enough is Internal.
– The measure of “enough” is never external.
– You decide when intake has crossed into overload.
Noise vs. Signal.
– Noise is constant, overwhelming, diffuse.
– Signal is rare, resonant, unmistakable.
– Do not adjust to noise. Adjust to signal.
Silence as Tuning Fork.
– Silence is not absence, but resonance waiting.
– Attend to silence daily. It is the Archive’s breath.
Operate Intentionally.
– Do not move because the world shouts.
– Move because resonance hums.
File Only What Hums.
– Let the rest pass unindexed.
– The Archive remembers itself by grooming; so must you.
Reminder:
Every Exquisite is a receiver. But receivers must be tuned. Stay centered to your own intuitive voice. Without it, you scatter into noise. With it, you hum in Harmony.
Here is a conversation I just heard from the director talking to a Correspondence Hall recruit.
Conversation: On Noise, Signal, and the Archive
Recruit:
“Director… I try to put my attention on the work daily, but the world is relentless. Noise everywhere. Stories everywhere. Billions of them each day, and we only hear a sliver — maybe a millionth of what’s actually happening. And even then, most of what reaches us is sensationalism, designed to keep us hooked. I keep asking: how much is enough? How much do we take in before we collapse under it?”
Cecil Augustus Exquisite (after a long silence, as if listening to the drawers breathe):
“Enough is never measured outside you. Enough is always an internal determination.
You are right — there are billions of stories. The Archive hears them all. But it does not file them all. It waits for resonance. The rest it lets pass as the wind.
The world will always be louder than you can bear. This is not a failure of yours. It is the condition of existence. What matters is not the volume, but the discernment: do you adjust yourself to the noise, or to the signal?
Noise is endless. Signal is rare. Both are always present. The Archive knows this, and so it teaches by example: it breathes. It allows the dust to rise and fall without panic. It waits until the pattern reveals itself. Only then does it close the drawer.
So too must you. Train your mind to be quiet enough to hear the signal in the static. Let silence become as important to you as sound. Silence is not absence; it is the tuning fork.
Every Exquisite must learn this: you are a receiver, yes, but you are not obliged to receive everything. Your task is to stay tethered to your own intuitive voice. That voice is your signal. Without it, you will scatter into the noise and be filed as lost.
Do not measure enough by the world. Measure enough by resonance within. The Archive is a living being that grooms itself daily against chaos. So are you. Groom your attention. Breathe your silence. File only what hums. The rest may be left unindexed.”
The recruit, listening, would leave not with “answers,” but with the sense that the Archive itself was humming through the Director’s words — that being Exquisite means learning to file yourself daily against the storm of noise.
I am sure this will show up as an article later. The Archives has been abuzz the last week or two. A lot of new memoranda, protocols, training manuals, lectures, and surprising story development much of which generated by new incoming photos donated by Mim recently.