An integration of islands

PerillaCove is, for me, a space to connect my seemingly-distant ideas into something that is elegant, cohesive, clear, and complete.

Enter the forest above, and see that durian catches the strongest light and softens what passes through for understory cacao that turns that light into pods and leaf fall. Cows harness the surplus growth and return its nutrients, concentrated, where roots are waiting. What one layer cannot harness becomes the condition for another, and what falls or is eaten returns to the soil. Waste approaches zero. There is elegant math that runs parallel to this, what I call the rotation of nature.

Nature is integrated because dis-integration cannot stand the test of time. Everything, seamlessly, seems to have a place, not necessarily by design, but because that’s just the way the cookie had to crumble.

There is a total harnessing out here, yet in flux, where waste approaches zero. It’s what I call a flawless turnover, and here, harmony is immanent.

We, on the flip side, have been moulded to make goals and chase them. We’ve built systems that are flat-out dis-integrated, like mortgages and centralized food production, held together by rules and incentives, all while fighting nature.

In a system that lacks integration, there can only be fragmentation.
Tasty vs healthy.
Work vs play.
Learning vs living.
Art vs business.
Screens vs outdoors.
Freedom vs security.
Theory vs practice.
Sustainability vs growth.
We have been mass-trained to divide and dissect and now we too easily misses the oneness in things.

I appreciate life too much to be boxed into a niche of any kind. In fact, anyone who doesn't reduce themselves into something all-encompassing is subject to burnout (at the very least). At the purest and most integrated level, there are no full-blown trade-offs. No, the best of this and the best of that can co-exist, yes, but also feed off and reinforce one another.

The most delicious foods are also what is best for my body. My work is play; writing, and building software, to me, is the most riveting game. The bees and trees — honey and fruit — thrive together.

Different worlds, even so-called opposites, are folded into one another; the balance is already baked in. At the truest forms, motion carries rest, nourishment carries lightness, and vice versa, and so on. Nature builds while it clears, and it clears while it builds. Think about a food that nourishes yet lightens, grounds yet lifts, and effortlessly hydrates.

Today’s meal is the tastiest thing you’ve eaten all week and it’s also what your body was asking for. Why put up with any less? Your play sharpens your craft. Your craft funds your life. Your life deepens your play. This is not about the erasure of distinction but, rather, the condition in which distinctions cease to be fragmented.

Consequently, it is about the Whole. Those who live Whole, they tend to float. It’s being in three dimensions as opposed to two …. perceiving the edges, the colours, the layers, the textures, the shadows, the faces, the orientation, and the spin … all at once … and attuning through the five senses, so directly, to the point of … maybe … unlocking a sixth, and dissolving things you once thought were true about, even, your very own self.

A Human is a microcosm who can think not merely with the brain but with every cell in the body. We don’t need rounds of training on pounds of data.

So instead of trying to predict the future, I look to restore the conditions under which I can meet the future … because becoming an integrated world unto myself puts me inside of the ultimate vessel for life in all layers, phases, and forms.

My focus is on present-tense integration, the moment, a continuity of movements each complete in itself that it resembles a sort of travelling fractal, greater than the sum of its parts. Additions may be made provided the system remains integrated. But inherent in the integration are connections so generative that the additions required to further complete the system become vanishingly small.