This work is a meditation on existence as a habit.

On different forms and graduations of habits, resulting in identity, its shape.

From a subtle sequence of thoughts solidified into action, or inaction, following dopamine, arrested by avoidance, resulting in belief solidified into identity, identity into a posture, inclined, again, towards the subtle sequence of thoughts, on the ground of feelings, tabula inscripta, never really rasa, all right below the obscure gate of consciousness.

 

Habit is a form of resistance to change gradually acquired - “There is a right measure between too hard and too weak a resistance to change- between rigidity and excessive fluidity.  This in-between is a possession of the structure weak enough to yield to the influence but strong enough not to yield all at once.” (William James) It’s plasticity at work. A process of adaptation, where external influence becomes internalized, intrinsic to oneself. But also oneself adapting to oneself- organs adapting to the each other, our lives adapting to ourselves, coats adapting to our bodies, becoming our coats.

 

It’s a continuous imprint of both self- identity and self- differentiation, opening to the future and the imprint of time. It’s a way of solidifying the self, existing simultaneously in the collapsed temporalities of past, present, and future.

 

It’s an obscure activity, where will is not free, but conditioned, but also free to condition.

 

It’s second nature, always already there. Fashioning over being. It’s a fold to stay.

 

Addiction or grace.