[essay] From Where I Am

In 2001, three years before he died, Czeslaw Milosz published a collection of essays titled To Begin Where I Am. As if carved with a blade in the bole of a tree, the first sentence of the first essay reads, “I AM HERE”. Then continues…

Those three words contain all that can be said – you begin with those words and you return to them. Here means on this earth, on this continent and no other, in this city and no other, in this epoch I call mine, this century, this year. I was given no other place, no other time, and I touch my desk to defend myself against the feeling that my own body is transient. This is all very fundamental, but, after all, the science of life depends on the gradual discovery of fundamental truths.

There is something redeeming in Milosz’s words. In the story of a man who wrote throughout his life, and upon nearing its end, finally discovered a way to begin.

Also in the way his refrain remembers Descartes’ I think therefore I am. Whereas Descartes’ brand of enlightenment rationalism is often criticised for being disembodied, I AM HERE is grounded. Situated in place: earth, continent, city, and time: epoch, century, year. Also in touch and feeling. Through its embodied way of thinking, the phrase earns its resonance with wisdom and fundamental truth. There is a here. And there is also an experience of being here, which we call I.

To say something about here, that is, to describe and transmit knowledge about here across time and place, is a defining occupation of humanity. We are what Alfred Korzybski (1948) called a “time-binding species”. By which he meant we use varied forms of language to separate knowledge from the moment of discovery, and send it elsewhere. Probably in the hope that what we have to say is of some instrumental value to the survival of our kind. But not only for that reason. We also communicate to think, to acquire what we need, to advocate for change, to nurture relationships, and to be heard.

We want to be heard, because life is distributed among singular instances of lived experience. Each of us inhabits an entire world by ourselves. For every here there is only a single I. And when that I is extinguished, its here ceases to exist as well. I am here. I was given no other place, no other time.

To say something about here is also to enable another defining occupation of humanity, the invention of culture. What Clifford Geertz (1983) called the “inscription of activity”. If language binds knowledge in time, then culture binds activity in a worldview. The closest we get to a common here. Where here is a map, complete with trails and track notes.

Still, like all human knowledge, the nature of a worldview is fundamentally separate, in time and place, from here. Or as Korzybski put it, “the map is not the territory”. Therefore, knowledge about the world should never be confused with the world per se.

I am here. In this epoch I call mine. And so far, I should say, I have believed many things that turned out to be untrue. But not before taking shelter in them. Only to realise, time and again, that the mind creates a semblance of what it seeks to find. Which is a phenomenon psychologists call cognitive bias. But I think a better term is catastrophe. Because what could be more catastrophic than realising that every shelter made of thought is good for only one storm? And I touch my desk to defend myself against the feeling that my own body is transient.

I am here. And whatever I have to say is at the very least a description of where I am. That much I know.

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