I tien tien fung
... a sigh in the sky
from Lyall Watson's work on Winds
In the language of Tewa Indians
a 3-syllable term translated as
art or creativity means
water-wind-breath
A beautiful evocation of
the creative process
about catching the current,
breathing in, breathing out
in-spiration, breathe in spirit,
ex-halation, release it into the world
- Robert Moss
from his book
Dreamgates: An Explorer’s Guide to the Worlds of Soul, Imagination, and Life Beyond Death
Pastel: Wellfleet Bay Deb Dwyer
The Andaman Islands are home to a people who actively smell and dream.
Their calendar is based on bloom seasons, cycles of emitted fragrances. Each season presents its vital energies of aroma-forces. Navigation in these islands of fragrance is smell-based ... such as closer to the sea = saltier, further from the sea = sterculia flower. Space differentiation is known by fluctuating olfactory perimeters of village and environment.
Coincidentally, while revisiting the article on smell cultures, I was revisiting Robert Moss' books on dreams, coincidence and imagination. Moss relays that the Andaman Islanders are an active dream culture. This means that people individually and as a community share dream work for life-supporting information, often dreaming as a group. It is documented that they left their fishing areas for hillside shelter prior to the 2004 Asian tsunami and survived, specifically due to heeding their shared dreams. There are nasal-centric and dream-centric cultures.
Coincidentally, perfumer Vedat Ozan's radio show Koku this week covers, you guessed it here is the radio show link, the show is in Turkish.
Ozan's show covers:
- "Calendars that change on aromas/scents, not on the movements of the sun
- Places fixed by aromas/scent, not by meters/latitude/longitude
- Andaman Islands and the Onges
- Rain Forests and the Dassanetchs
- Colombia, South America, and the Desanas
- 'All these primitive savages* stink ! Oh god, why are they not clean as us ??'"
Smelling and Dreaming. lastor says it doesn't get much better!
* Savage comes from the Latin silvaticus "of the forest"
Sources
The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence & Imagination
and
The Secret History of Dreaming
both by Robert Moss
Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell
by Constance Classen, David Howes, Anthony Synnett
for your pleasure may I recommend
On Dreams, Coincidence and Imagination
Dreamers through History
Cultural History of Smell
Coincidentally, Arianna Huffington wrote of her dreaming today read here about Luxor Temple sleep/dream chambers and more.
The Andaman Islands photo: Venkatesh, K
Personal space varies within cultures and environments.
On numerous occasions, I have almost been run over with shopping carts or walked into, though I am visible and spatially aware.
One car's tempo changes the whole drive pattern on a freeway.
Here, a presentation on unplanned synchronicity by mathematician Steven Strogatz on the TED talks series It shows how flocks, including birds, fireflies, humans and fish, synchronize, acting as a unit with no one giving orders.
Strogatz shows this tendency in the realm of objects, " ...spontaneous order and unexpected consequences ..."
I call it the dance of order within chaos.
One designer calls it don't bump into anything, stay away from the predators.
Here, an article Playing the Synchronicity Game by author and workshop leader Robert Moss.
Watercolor: Lura Astor
