Art by Steve Arnold
There are one-story intellects, two-story intellects, and three-story intellects with skylights. All fact collectors with no aim beyond their facts are one-story men. Two-story men compare reason and generalize, using labors of the fact collectors as well as their own. Three-story men idealize, imagine, and predict. Their best illuminations come from above through the skylight.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
US author & physician (1809 – 1894)
I use this quote in class to describe good essays, but actually I can relate plenty to one and two story thinking. I can be a good fact collector, but in many ways, I’m learning to step outside of what I see. The facts around me are not where it’s at. These days, it is all about the skylights.
The word intellect seems so academic, so mind driven, status oriented, but what OWH is seeing, I imagine, is the powerful force of the human being – our ability to generate change by allowing the light from above to illuminate.
When I allow the light in, when I take the illumination from above, everything is bathed in an organic light that shows what was can now be something new.
We can choose to remain in the dark, artificially lit rooms on the ground floor or we can walk up the stairs, no matter what, and choose to flood our world with the power of the sun and the energy from above, which always far exceeds what is. The light from the skylights actually helps materialize something new. And then, what is comes to be what we saw before it was. (oooh, my phrasing is crazy!)
Am I the last one on this train?
The caboose is still a good ride. 🙂
“Less conventional thoughts, breaking into more creative mind, expanding into vast new realms, leading into a whole new struggle-less melting and architecturing -leaving behind doctrines ever so absolute in all forms of expression – soaring up and into unexplored kingdoms.”
STEVEN ARNOLD
Life as Improv 
I think the cars keep switching back and forth somehow. Sometimes we’re forging ahead up front, sometimes we’re lounging in the middle and sometimes, we play hang on tight at the back. 🙂
I get a mental image of me hanging on to the stairs at the end of the caboose, flying in the wind, moving fast with your words. I think that is a fun ride!
No intellectual response here – just have to say this is a yummy post!
I find I dislike the word intellectual, knee jerkily 🙂 Quotes from earlier times need a mental translator to hold the original intention. So nice to see you, Kelly!
I think your crazy phrasing is right on. We are somehow actualizing what already is- giving it observed presence, becoming mouthpieces for the Unknown. We are a costume party for the Formless, and we never know WHO is going to show up next.
Michael
Sometimes it seems so surreal and perfect too that the work is such organic play – This is the most steady acting gig imaginable 🙂
My lady I am reading your last two posts, in reverse order, and all I can say is, take me with you. I am loving this place you have hatched into.
Hugs and kisses sent from my basement today (it is a walk out one with decent light though!) -x.M
Oh you wonderful being,there does seem to be some sort of spooky action at a distance dip lately, which makes me grateful for the light of the walk-out basements for all of those I wish I could comfort and pamper for a time. Reading back over this post makes me see how I am breezing over some of the places we embody…not every moment is a skylight rush of joy! so upon a revisit, I wish to honor the time and place of choosing our low light periods – how else do we incubate? We can have a gestation of our choosing with the time and manner of emergence optional. Those glorious nuns you shared are sitting still for you funky sister and me in my “get up Trinity” inner whisperings for the demands of this now – such snapshots full of variety. Heart squeezes for you in allowing the realness to shine through and through. xoxoxoxo! m