textures: a loose thought

I think I will do a small Textures series where I explore each Texture. I started with Strange, so working backwards, I need to do Loose now.

Strange might be the strangest Texture, but Loose is equally mind-boggling. Let’s try to pinpoint what Loose is.

Loose Building Blocks

The Loose Texture is built from Shape − and Flow +. This means it has no solid form like Strange things, but it does have an active outward Flow property like Radiant.

These Divisions indicate that Loose is something immaterial and intangible, but it does activate things around it.

This view probably has not made things much clearer. Strange might, in a way, be simpler to grasp: it has no form and stays hidden. Loose has no form either, but somehow it acts outward.

This is paradoxical and quite abstract. And that is the core of Loose.

Loose Names

Let’s try to clarify and dive into each Loose Elemental for a better view. But first notice that, of all the Elementals, I gave the Loose Elementals weird names: Eye-1, Eye-2, and Eye-3.

Most other Elementals are named after material Facets, things we can point at. Even Strange has material names like Water and Ice.

For the Loose Texture, I found this difficult. There is no material that easily conveys the nature of these Elementals. So, I decided to name them by a perceptual organ, the Eye, and give the organ a mathematical sequence: 1, 2, and 3.

It is important to note that these names do not directly designate the Elementals themselves. Rather, Eye-1 is the perceptual organ that perceives the Eye-1 Elemental. Still following?

Think of an idea. An idea exists, but we cannot point to it. The best we can do is point at the brain where that idea lives. This is how and why I named the Loose Elementals “Eyes”.

Also important to note is that Eye is a metaphor. Humans primarily rely on vision, but I could have called Eye-1 Ear-1, Tastebud-1, or Skin-Receptor-1. I thought Eye was more poetic.

Blind humans definitely still have all their Eyes!

Eye-1, the Flower Elemental

I think we totally misunderstand how fundamental Eye-1 is. This is the Elemental of beauty, fun, silliness, surfaces, communication, signals and the superficial.

Dusty people love to crush Eye-1 through Capture; Dust is serious, Eye-1 giggles. Many serious systems tend to exclude Eye-1. Most systems minimise it; beautiful things are superficial things, nice for children and the weaker sex (read the sarcasm). Any serious work is almost immediately degraded in quality if the work dares to be funny and silly.

But no worries, Eye-1, Blood-Heart is here to rescue you! I love Eye-1. It is crucial as the first of the Eyes, and dismissing it is a grave mistake. Let me explain what Eye-1 is at its core with an example.

Suppose we were all born exactly identical. All humans are more equal than twins ever could be. We look the same, act the same, think the same…

Pretty boring world, right?

Individuality? Gone.

Even if each person is technically their own person, they have almost no way of feeling much “me”, because everyone else is exactly the same. We are basically stuck in a Base-1 world!

Now, we introduce Eye-1, and suddenly one human looks different. Maybe they have a bigger nose, greater height, different ideas… It does not matter. This person is different, and everything changes.

Suddenly, all the others can see a difference. They can tell this person apart from all the others. They can give this person a unique name. From the perspective of this person, an identity can finally start forming in the Shape of “I am not like them.”

In the world before Eye-1, Beauty did not exist: everyone was equal. But now, there suddenly exists a weirdo with a bigger nose. And in this bigger nose, Beauty is born.

Who is the beautiful one — all the normal people or the weirdo with the bigger nose? — that remains open.

But the difference made the concept of Beauty possible.

Starting to get how Eye-1 has no specific form, but still has an active effect? Difference in a homogeneous group triggers deep changes radiating outward.

Let’s keep going. Another example: the Flower Facet.

Flower is a Facet of Eye-1. Where 'Eye' designates the perceptive organ of Eye-1, the Flower Facet shows the product of Eye-1.

Flowers exist in Nature because plants are sending messages to insects. Specifically, they are saying something like: “Look how pretty I am! Choose me! I am so much more colourful than all the others! Let me be the apple of your eye!”

Plants need these insects to reproduce. This makes Flowers a perfect embodiment of the Eye-1 property.

In a Codex Elemental lens, Eye-1 opens the way to the entire Circle. E1 gives us the single 1. E2 then adds another 1 through 1 + 1 = 2. But E3 /// Eye-1 is the first Elemental that understands the addition. It can take a step back and say: “Hey, I added something to 1, and then I got 2.”

Eye-1 is also the first Terminal Elemental. It is the mechanism where we can keep adding +1 to generate incredible complexity. Or rather than complexity, noise might be a better term, because Eye-1 is not necessarily neatly structured. It has this chaotic quality.

Copy-paste, copy-paste, copy-paste, and it can keep going and going.

I hope you start feeling what Eye-1 is like. It is more a process than a particular Shape. It is the process of creating variations of the things that already exist. It moves fast, in an undirected manner, adding +1 to anything and everything.

Even this description fails my mental model of Eye-1 and its deep implications, but I hope the core is becoming clearer.

Let’s move to Eye-2.

Eye-2, the Flower-Blind Elemental

Once you get what Eye-1 is, the other Eyes are really simple. They are Eye-1 applied to itself — but let’s not go too fast because this insight was rather Eye-3.

Back to the Flowers.

Suppose you are a colourblind bee like me ;). You don’t see the colours of the flowers really well. One Flower or the other? If they look the same to you, the distinction becomes less important.

Here we start relativising again — we are effectively collapsing back to something Base-1-like. We still see the difference between the two flowers, but we also start to see that they are the same.

We understand that if we are really peaceful bees, we don’t need to visit the brightest flower only. Maybe the less bright flower has more sugar for us?

This is why I see Eye-2 as the Peace Facet. This Elemental gives us a perception mode where we still see the differences between two things, but we can also see their underlying unity. Two flowers are still flowers even if one is blue and the other is red.

Another way to look at Eye-2 could be material. Our atmosphere is filled with gases. Oxygen and carbon dioxide have strong effects on our biology. They are not really peaceful gases. But the most abundant gas in our air is nitrogen.

It does nothing to our biology. To us, nitrogen is a perfect medium for the other gases. Its role is helping distribute and carry the more “active” gases. This is a perfect image for what Eye-2 does.

Diving deeper into Eye-2, we get processes like homeostasis: the tendency for everything to regulate itself towards a balanced state in organisms. Physically, we get equilibria and stable states.

Eye-2 is the blank space — not a black hole — a blank space.

If you feel a little flash of Peace while reading this, you got Eye-2.

Let’s move on.

Eye-3, the All-Flower Elemental

Eye-2 looked at two Flowers and found a central Truth. Eye-3 takes that process to the next level and applies it recursively.

In our example:

If you keep seeing the properties uniting all Flowers, and then do the same not only with Flowers but also with rocks, trees, rivers, planets, etc., you are eventually going to perceive the Shape of Elemental 1.

You are stacking underlying Truth upon underlying Truth until you get a glimpse of Truth Universal.

Suddenly, that blue Flower is not just a message from a plant anymore.

The Flower has become a message of Truth Universal itself.

And you just read it.

(Exiting at this paradox, because I think you’ve got Loose now. Thought I went too fast? I wrote this thought Loosely on purpose for purposes of embodiment. :P)