Small Arcs of Larger Circles: framing through other patters (2016)

Nora Bateson

Triarchy Press

 

“Sound of Sun 

 

William Bateson said, ‘Treasure your exceptions.’ In unseen banal moments, a visiting unreasonable notion can come along and unwrite the limits of our thinking. Such wonders wait with the infinitude of what we never saw in the margins of our sensibleness. When asked how smell moves, a group of 5-year-olds came up with a theory that they built a whole world around — deciding that ghosts pull smells on strings you cannot see. Tiny dreaming grass sprouts tenderness between languages. The sunlight in waves might be audible to the plants. Do the ferns know the creek has stopped running? The sound waves are not tickling their delicate hair. Drought is coming. Stay small. When ancient and modern vocabularies in multiple mother-tongues weave together, they form ambiguities. These composites are, for me, as close as anyone can come to speaking truth. Play with the edges.” — Nora Bateson in Small Arcs of Larger Circles (page 143)¶