Blooming awareness...

I was aware, but I wasn't aware that I was aware...

For example: I was always aware of some key differences in watching a movie in a theater and at home. But I wasn't aware how aware I was of this, that is I wasn't aware that I was harboring such a detailed explanation for this until a friend mentioned that he fell asleep watching a movie at home and then went to see it in the theater and was riveted. This comment triggered an "awareness bloom" in which my awareness transformed from a vague neural pattern to a concrete verbal declaration.

In this case I was making a firm distinction between the public nature of the movie theater versus the private nature of the home screening. Two completely different minds. A film's deep impact (i.e. the filmmaker's intention) is rooted in the presumption that it will play in a public place where there are rules and taboos (that just don't exist in the home). How the film dissolves these resistances is part of its magical power. Without these resistances, the film loses some magic, it becomes domesticated.

Unlike a flower, an awareness bloom rarely wilts and falls off the vine. It retracts into a semi-vague state once the declaration is nudged out of the beacon of our consciousness. It doesn't disappear though, it leaves a slightly raised clump in the soil of our minds, a braille mark that we can rediscover as our psychic fingers scan our psyches for information in the future.

(Illustration by the magnificent Lou Beach)