# data[].attributes.body
Lovers stay embraced

braided with silk thread

While the moon hides her beauty, ashamed

among black, heavy curtains

The sea combs her white, swirling mane

with regular movements towards the shore

The night falls in the balearic chambers:

hearts begin to flutter and

starving souls crawl out to hunt

# data[].attributes.body
...when reflections are transitioning...

wandering / wondering what will emerge

# data[].attributes.body
Clouds and waves...

skies and sands, rocks and fauna:

...all make for a quality of presence

and reflections

nourishing depths of the soul

Until we meet again...

# data[].attributes.body
...on a need to reflect about not finding time for reflection. which doesn't get much traction. because I'm....somewhere.... in the world.... not in the inner world for sure..... I thought I would reflect. but I didn't. because I've been feeling overwhelmed for months. or maybe it is years? who knows... time flies when you're not having time.

# data[].attributes.body
...sleep

# data[].attributes.headline
Pre-reflection transitioning into reflections 

# data[].attributes.subject
Pre-reflection transitioning into reflections 

# data[].attributes.headline
An invitation?...                         (2024 edition)

# data[].attributes.subject
An invitation?...                         (2024 edition)

# data[].attributes.body
An invitation…

Maybe it’s a song, or a poem, or a question?…

A reflection into reflections…

An opening into openings…

Potential connections

There could be an extending here

...further articulation: Though really it’s superfluous

And essentially the invitation is

Inviting us into an extending

…into whatever might be (?)

Interested?…

Reflections are opening again...

Somewhere here: ...and within

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Reserva Mundial de Surf - Ericeira, Portugal - Salve as Ondas

# data[].attributes.body
by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Invitation ...by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

# data[].attributes.headline
Multiple reflections from shattered mirror (on street in Berlin) 

# data[].attributes.subject
Multiple reflections from shattered mirror (on street in Berlin) 

# data[].attributes.body
Bumped into him chilling with some Coca-Cola on my way to the train station

# data[].attributes.body
Extract from Fernando Pessoa’s sonnet - screenshot taken when I couldn’t sleep (he was born in Lisbon, 1888)

# data[].attributes.headline
Remembering this poem because of the last few lines

# data[].attributes.subject
Remembering this poem because of the last few lines

# data[].attributes.body
[Romanian]
În fiecare dimineață pornim la război
Cu mâinile goale, cu sufletul dezvelit
Credem că putem lupta, învinge, demonstra
Că suntem puternici, c-avem ziduri de piatră
care ne-apară de durere
Și îngeri păzitori care ne apară de noi
Dar la final de zi nu mai știm unde-i războiul
și nici pentru ce luptăm
Afară-i pustiu, înăuntru prea mult zgomot.
Ne hotărâm greu, ne ia o viață să fim
Căci încă nu știm decât să trăim în vecinătatea fericirii
și mai rar în ea.

[English]
Every morning we go to war
With bare hands, with an unveiled soul
We believe we can battle, defeat, prove
That we are strong, that we have walls of stone
which protect us from pain
And guardian angels who protect us from ourselves
But at the end of the day, we no longer know where the war is
nor what we are fighting for
It's deserted outside, too much noise inside.
It’s difficult to make our minds up, it takes us a lifetime to be
Since we still only know how to live in the vicinity of happiness
and less often in it.

(by Anca Dumitrescu, contemporary Romanian     writer and beautiful soul)

# data[].attributes.body
I stretched my soul like:

🧈 good butter spread on hot bread (freshly taken out of the oven)
🦅 a bird stretches its wings for the first time after living in a bird cage
☀️ the way you hang a white sheet on the washing line to let it dry out in the sun
🥄 a spoon of Nutella on a homemade pancake
🌅 the horizon stretches the sunset into a thin, colourful line
😀 a smile stretches the sunburnt face
🛏️ a blanket that covers you when you’re cold
⛰️ a thread of a stream (stretched between mountains) which flows nowhere and towards all corners of being at the same time

(originally written in Romanian)

# data[].attributes.body
What happens to a knot when we desperately try to untangle it? It gets tighter…

…slowly, gently, allow, let be…

# data[].attributes.body
Drawn in the train using my notebook’s shape…

# data[].attributes.body
Linden trees will trigger me to reflect from today.

# data[].attributes.body
How can we be the questions we ask?
(not strain to seek the answers)

# data[].attributes.body
Some wall wisdom welcomes me again on the streets of Lisbon: “I think but I don’t exist”. So, on the one hand, the fact that we think is fundamental for knowing we exist - on the other hand, thinking is not enough to guarantee human existence.

I think, therefore I am (Descartes)
I think, therefore I am not, therefore I only think (Daniel Lima)
Therefore I am. I am. Am (Nate)

P.S. There’s a good pasta place right across this sign! I am. Am. Am eating good pasta…(Ana)

# data[].attributes.body
Looking forward to this reflections space waiting for us in Lisbon ✨

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
From: On Becoming Aware by Depraz, Varela & Vermersch

# data[].attributes.body
... Suspend what appears to be reality
... Redirect attention (from exterior) to interior
... Let go / accept your experience from there

# data[].attributes.headline
Beginning (again) to slowly open a space for reflections... 

# data[].attributes.subject
Beginning (again) to slowly open a space for reflections... 

# data[].attributes.body
... pondering what will come into this space

# data[].attributes.body
www.iklektik.org/reflections.html
Space for Reflections... Opening again soon...
Let's JOIN together!...

2-4 June 2023
Lisbon, Portugal

# data[].attributes.body
... and we may see...
... and feel...

# data[].attributes.body
Yes, those of you who know me well - know I'm not your typical reader - at least of books...

This was the last one (of very few in my lifetime) i read. I'm reminded of it because of the connection / community / tree / forest reflection... and what Nora Bateson talks about and references in the book about living systems.

Life is life...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Published by Triarchy Press in 2016 ﻿
Paperback List Price: £15/$20
210 pp. ~ 15.6 x 23.4cm
ISBN: 978-1-909470-96-5

Click the pdf or ePub 'buy button'. Once you have paid, look for an email (check your spam folder if necessary) with a link to download the file.

pdf ISBN: 978-1-911193-17-3​
Version: bookmarked pdf
(pdf text retains the printed book's format and pagination but cannot be edited, printed or copied)

978-1-909470-97-2 ePub ISBN:
(ePub text reflows to suit your digital device, losing the printed book's format and pagination)

The book will interest anyone who knows the work of Nora Bateson, her father Gregory Bateson and the International Bateson Institute: social and organizational theorists and practitioners, futurists, systems thinkers, psychotherapists, and general readers concerned with where our world is heading.

Systems thinking, education, social anthropology, environmentalism, Bateson, symmathesy, inter-learning, knowledge, transcontextuality, Ecological Design, Regenerative Economy, New Economics, Futures Studies, Thrivability.
​

"If I have a hope for this decade, it's that we might stop coming up with goals."
Nora Bateson, Jan 2020, Communities for Future: Online Summit

This is an important first collection of essays, reflections and poems by Nora Bateson, the noted research designer, film-maker, writer and lecturer. She is the daughter of Gregory Bateson, president of the International Bateson Institute (IBI) and an adviser to numerous bodies at international and governmental level.

Building on Gregory Bateson's famous book Towards an Ecology of Mind and her own film on the subject, Nora Bateson here updates our thinking on systems and ecosystems, applying her own insights and those of her team at IBI to education, organisations, complexity, academia, and the way that society organizes itself.

She also introduces two terms:
*' symmathesy' to describe the contextual mutual learning through interaction that takes place in living entities at larger or smaller scales
*' transcontextuality ' to describe the multiple, interlayered spatial, social, temporal, cultural, ecological, economic contexts in which symmathesy takes place.

While she retains her father's rigorous attention to definition, observation and academic precision, she also moves well beyond that frame of reference to incorporate more embodied ways of knowing and understanding. These are reflected in her essays and poems on food, Christmas, love, honesty, environmentalism and leadership.

The book offers important advice and new thinking on issues like immigration, systems thinking, new economic and financial models, future thinking and strategic planning, sustainability and governmental ethics, agency in organizational leadership, the education system and organizational governance.

﻿As Nora says in the opening chapter of her book: "For you, a respite of uncontainability. Safe pages for words, to taste them as they find their rightness. Let them rest in their silky beds of lyrical dreams. Let them run like rivers down mountain-sides, arranging curves and switches where the textures change. Thoughts yet unmet arrive in cloaks of language, becoming bards to take you where you can see that you are wide inside.

Words are delicious, but cannot say much. They often lose the water of meaning before it is delivered. But they can be stirred to form descriptions of the breath, glances, gestures, and pulses between lives. Perhaps writing is finding a scrape in the skin of knowing, where the sting and dirt and blood of the day is let out, and music is let in.

There is no language to define the spiraling processes of the vast context we are participants in. We do not have names for the patterns of interdependency. To lock down the delicate filigree of life in explanation is to lose it, but not to see it is disastrous. Words are what we have. The why, of why we do anything at all, matters.

An inside-out kaleidoscope-a de-fragmenter-might be useful for looking at a fractured order through a lens of unity. A superhero in a comic book might have such a tool at her belt. The way we see affects what we do, in both the broad strokes of global study, and the details of a day. Playing with the limits of our perception, our knowing, and tweaking the cultural script is like using a lemon juice wash to reveal the invisible ink and unspoken scaffolding we inhabit.

The ink of interrelationship bleeds across the boundaries between professionalism, academic research, and the banality of daily life. Theory and philosophy are stained with the mundane and both are vis-à-vis. What holds this collection of sightings together? What holds anything together? Glue is superficial, so not that. Thread is better, sewing, mending the torn-apart seams of perception-possibly. It is the right question-what is holding it together?-and the question alone might be the source of inquiry. Surely a search for the elegance in a mess of weighted compensations, and river-washed shapings of the context of life, is enough of a spine. Perhaps?"

"Poetry, philosophy, and memoir merge in ecological thinking at its best."
"In this book that moves above all by its questions, Bateson embodies that rarity, a truly free thinker also fully engaged with the fates of all."
Read these and other reviews in full

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Published by Triarchy Press in 2016 ﻿ Paperback List Price: £15/$20 210 pp. ~ 15.6 x 23.4cm ISBN: 978-1-909470-96-5 Click the pdf or ePub 'buy button'. Once you have paid, look for an email (check your spam folder if necessary) with a link to download the file.

# data[].attributes.body
One layer of reflection over the weekend was about (lost) connection and (finding) community...

There was reference to how a beautiful individual tree - is still part of the community of a forrest - and how all resource each other in that system...

Definitely maybe / maybe definitely we have so much to learn by RE-CONNECTING to the wisdom of the nature we are all always part of (however distant we have become - and what we have put as barrier in between us)

Time to 'feel' and 'be' again - we can create this space of (re-)connection between us

# data[].attributes.body
I don't know what this is or how it was captured... Only that there is beauty all around, even when we don't see it or realise its there.

Magical 💫

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Letting go of needing to sleep right now

# data[].attributes.body
Reflecting during the mystery hour…

https://www.ted.com/talks/rives_the_4_a_m_mystery

# data[].attributes.body
Reflections require a pause, a breath…slowing down. Travelling forces me to stop and ponder. Floating above the clouds, the earth, is perfect for reflecting. ☁️☁️🌥✈️🏔

# data[].attributes.body
Over the rooftops of the morning skies... I wonder what Lisbon will hold for the day ahead... What reflections?

# data[].attributes.body
The artificial light casts shadows on the natural... More than might be apparent

# data[].attributes.body
Reflection time with Nate, nearing sunset at the local Miradouro... Deeply, beautifully and poignantly connecting to life

# data[].attributes.body
early thoughts on the Reflections session...(scruffily) handwritten on a sunny day outside a pub in London

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Reflection invite _ handwritten from London

# data[].attributes.headline
"Reflections of my life" (song my the Marmalade)... contributed by Steve

# data[].attributes.subject
"Reflections of my life" (song my the Marmalade)... contributed by Steve

# data[].attributes.body
...Thanks to Steve for sharing this

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Dean Ford - Reflections of My Life -  Produced by Joe Tansin

# data[].attributes.body
- a moment of (re)connecting, pondering, scary and enlightening potential new beginnings continuing into the beauty of African sunsets...

# data[].attributes.body
Back in time to when wandering  was opening up again... Dawn rising after a somewhat sleepless night... Reflections are deep in these moments!