Staring at an empty archive, the temptation to rehash some ageing pieces from my other blog (shh, don’t tell Metaxu) ran high this morning. METAXU has just been born, so it would be unfair (and unwise) to force a pre-determined identity on it. So, no rehashing of old stuff; we’re in terra incognita now… time to find out where we are, and who knows, perhaps that might help us understand who we are.
Sometimes I will refer to Metaxu (in sentence case) as a person and not as the silent and impassive METAXU. Metaxu is currently non-binary, though in this instance, the indigenous concept ‘two spirit’ feels more like Metaxu, based on my loose understanding of it. Perhaps Metaxu is ‘three spirit’, ‘four spirit’, ‘five -'… you get where I’m going with this. No, Metaxu is not my alter-ego. Metaxu is the third person in our (yes, yours and mine) relationship. Welcome to polyamory! Glad you could make it.
Before getting into all that, I thought I’d introduce myself. Perhaps then the spirit of METAXU will become more transparent, and you can decide whether dating us both is worth it.
You can find out about my professional life via my website. I call myself a writer, photographer, and cultural curator because that’s the simplest thing to do, but I’m also a student, filmmaker, facilitator, designer, and former horseriding instructor. I’m a generalist (I know, it’s one of those insufferable words people use on LinkedIn). I do not know exactly what I ‘do’, but I do know that my efforts in work and life converge around trying to make the world more beautiful, or, unearthing the beauty that’s already there.
The main thrust behind the things I involve myself in has to do with repairing our perception of relation in an alienated society. To me and many others, relation in its myriad forms comprises the fundamental mechanics of aliveness. I use the metaphor ‘mechanics’ lightly here, because we all know what can go wrong when we perceive life as a machine.
Much of what I talk about has an ecological bent, but I’ve also done research (and ‘lived the questions’) on romantic relationships, communities, metaphor and mythology, psychology, spirituality and so on. My work is about relation ‘writ large’, if you will, because in some way or another, all of these things involve questions about how we relate to self, other and ‘things’, including big things like culture, truth and meaning, and little things like the billions of bacteria in our gut microbiomes. I might be an aspiring animist, though I don’t like calling myself that for various reasons which I may write about another time. ‘Gonzo philosopher’ might also work, but I’m not sure I’d be caught dead calling myself that, either…
I spend considerable time in the Hebrides researching ‘islandness’ because I believe it has much to teach us about relation, and I am utterly in love with these places. I am in love with them for all the usual, possibly harmful romantic reasons, but also because I am in love with the ocean, and to be on/in an island is to be in continuous relation with the ocean. I love them for healthy reasons, too, but I’d be a liar and a fool to pretend I’m not a hapless romantic.
I have a particular fascination with metaphor. I find that islands are places where these supposedly ‘abstract’ phenomena come alive. This leads me to one of my core bugbears - that what is ‘abstract/intellectual’ is not ‘real’. It’s an attitude I encounter a lot in my circles. One of my goals in life is to help suture this gap that people (myself included) love to create between mind/body, art/science, mythos/logos, and so on. The dominant culture forces us to choose one cliffside of this bottomless canyon when we could be swimming, basking, between them.
That said, I think that non-duality is a paradox and that well-meaning people perpetuate bullshit when they think in absolutes, even if it’s absolute, so-called good. That’s not to say we should encourage things that are bad to counter things that are good. Don’t get me started on morality. It’s to say that I’m advocating many-ness as well as oneness. I’m advocating for parts and wholes and beyond. I am interested in the spaces in-between, the meanwhile places, gaps and intervals, places where, as Leonard Cohen said, the ‘light gets in’.
This is where METAXU comes in. The word ‘Metaxu’ comes from the Greek' metaxy’ (μεταξύ) meaning: in-between, meanwhile, the permanent place where hu/man is in-between two poles of existence, concerning the ‘ontological rank of Eros’.1 It seems to have originated with Plato, later finding its way into the minds of philosophers and mystics like Simone Weil and Eric Voegelin.
Although I said Metaxu is not my alter-ego, my life has been a metaxic one. I live with a physical disability that most do not see but which has determined my entire life's path. This disability has caused me to hover at the edges of places, observing, tipping over, wading, rather alone (or so I thought), in the in-between. It was not until I realised that these liminal moments did not condemn me to isolation, but instead infused my life with meaning, that I began to seek them out, recognising such an existence as one of flux, therefore, as one of relation. You can belong in fragments, too, cue: archipelago.
Aside from all this, I’m an aspiring sailor and co-lead the Creative Ecology sailing residency with Sail Britain and poet Anna Selby. I used to run a project called the Experimental Thought Co. in London, where I convened artist and activist groups around topics to do with culture change. Those were good times. I’m also a keen hiker and love nothing more than waking up in a tent on a dewy morning to brew the most mediocre coffee known to man.
I’d like to mention some people who have influenced my thinking, because I think it’s important to do that, and no doubt threads of their thought will find their way into METAXU. I’m inspired by Eduoard Glissant, Simone Weil, Andreas Weber, Tim Ingold, Charlotte Du Cann, Vanessa Andreotti, David Whyte, Iain McGilchrist, Alan Watts, Craig Santos Perez, Minna Salami, Gavin Van Horn, Douglas Rushkoff, George Monbiot, James Baldwin, Clementine Morrigan, Roc Sandford, Kenneth White… and so many more.
What to expect from METAXU? I’m not sure. Stuff that comes out of my bodymind. I care about critical thinking, good faith, and salvaging reverence from romanticism. Sure, it’ll be philosophical, and if philosophy is the love of wisdom, then it’ll be about going outside, going inward, speaking with people, plants, and places and learning what that actually means.
I couldn’t come up with a niche for this blog because my interests are broad and disparate, but if anything knits it all together, it’s the love of being alive, being curious, and learning how to be a better human. It’s also, necessarily, about struggle.
Love it, very inspiring.
And because Cohen was a learned, spiritual fellow, here’s Rumi in the 13th century (translated from Persian).
I said: What about my eyes?
He said: Keep them on the road.
I said: What about my passion?
He said: Keep it burning.
I said: What about my heart?
He said: Tell me what you hold inside it?
I said: Pain and sorrow.
He said: Stay with it. The wound is the place where the Light enters you.
I have been oozing into your words, thank you! Kinship: World as Archipelago deliciously rearranged my cells and I can see that Metaxu will be also.