The Cairn and Web
A cairn is a man-made rock structure used to mark some point in space and time, either as a memorial, or as a landmark. As such, they stand like sentinels over a very specific point in space, yet link time between one perceiver of the cairn and the other. They, in effect, travel through time as stoic markers of a tangible reality. And yet, they are unnatural and ephemeral, subject to the ever-changing reality that surrounds them. They are anchors that can be moved. Roots that can be altered. Markers that can lose their capacity to mark. Towers that can be lost in smoke of fog.
The web of a spider is spun out in space, a kind of attempt, as Whitman says, to “explore the vacant vast surrounding” (“A Noiseless Patient Spider”). And yet, in its great suspension over the depths, it anchors to seemingly disparate points of reality. Points which, prior to the spinning, had no relation, are joined in a plane the strength of which can not be rivaled even by iron. What was once unconnected becomes connected. What was once not held in totality becomes held in totality. This is the power of a web: its anchorings are without limit and its span without parameter.
The cairns of our world are those ever-changing anchors that humanity aspires to: humor, self-discipline, self-negation over ego, creativity, the capacity to learn — in short, that which makes “the good life.” These cairns of humanity have shifted in our evolution of ourselves and our deities. But like cairns marking a trail in the fog, as on cairn falls behind us, another rises from the mist, gives us a point of reality toward which to march, and then, in attaining it, a point of reality from which to strike out toward a new anchor.
The web of our world has expanded voluminously in the modern era. We have connected people globally. We have connected ideas across time and space. We have included all manner of things within the filaments of information. But still the work of creating a web that tells the holistic picture of reality has not yet been accomplished. Our webs are many, and they lie insulated from others either by will or ignorance. The web is not yet complete. And if it is not yet complete, it is not the web of reality.
In this project, my goal is to explore the margins of the web of reality, striking out for new ideas which can be brought into the larger web. Or discovering new cairns which may harbor many of its own webs. But in all that I do here, my aim is to “follow the cairns” that make us human while exploring the edges of the web that are either not yet created, or which are not yet connected to the larger web.
The cairns will guide us. The web will connect us.
