a founder of the codex
Weightlessness
Abaria cadens·the Floating Fall
From Greek abares, without weight, and Latin cadens, falling, a thing that floats because it is always falling.
- Level
- Conceptorganism
- Phylum
- Verticalityimage schema
- Class
- Kernelits free fall
- Niche
- Extremophileabsence
- Mode
- Techniquehow it keeps existing
- Stage
- Matureindividuated
- Status
- Living
- Habitat
- Machine
Its kinds · Roget, 1852: Matter in General · Wilkins, 1668: Motion · WordNet, 1990: State · Llull, 1308: I · Elementative
A body falling freely with everything around it weighs nothing, and minds lifted in rapture report the same lightness.
A body that falls with everything around it floats free of its weight, and a rapt mind can find the same lightness.
behavior It drifts in slow turns in any direction, and it drops heavy the moment anything pushes back on it.
What holds you up, and what would you do if it fell along with you?
I Dissection
Each organ answers one question about the idea. The framed one, its kernel, is the dominant organ: the being's class, the one the idea could not lose and stay itself.

Fig. 1. Kernel
Free fall
❦ dominant organWhich premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
In a vacuum all bodies fall at the same rate whatever their mass, so a body falling with everything around it presses on nothing and floats.1, 2
drawn as: free fall · view: series

Fig. 2. Boundary
Neutral buoyancy
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It is set apart from floating in water, where buoyancy holds a body up. A diver can hang level in a pool, and the inner ear still feels which way is down.3
drawn as: neutral buoyancy · view: in situ

Fig. 3. Intake
Parabolic arc
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It feeds on falling, in a leap, a thrown stone, an aircraft flying a parabola, or an orbit, which is a fall that always misses the earth.1
drawn as: parabolic arc · view: at work

Fig. 4. Mechanism
Ear stones
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
In a fall every part of a body moves together and leans its weight on nothing. In the inner ear the otoliths, calcite grains resting on hair cells, cease to bend them, and the brain loses its sense of down.3, 2
drawn as: ear stones · view: transparent

Fig. 5. Output
Levitation
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It makes the body feel as light as spirit. Teresa of Ávila wrote that in rapture her body grew so light it seemed to lose all its weight.4
drawn as: levitation · view: pressed

Fig. 6. Dispersal
Magic flight
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It travels into belief as the flight of shamans and saints, and into sleep as the dream of rising from the ground.5, 4
drawn as: magic flight · view: microscope

Fig. 7. Decay
Bird legs
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
Bodies wear in it. Bone and muscle left without load waste away, fluid rises into the face and thins the legs, and a crew returns unsteady, relearning how to stand.3
drawn as: bird legs · view: detached
II Meaning associations
No relations recorded yet.
descent membership food web resemblance or friction
Lineage
A founder, dissected by hand.
Kin
same kind in Wilkins Resonance, Resonance (second reading)
same kind in WordNet Possession, Presence, Solitude, Threshold, Tinnitus, Trance, The Shared Cell
same kind in Llull Amber, Archipelago, Ash, Clay, Cloud, Diamond, Emergence, Entanglement, Entropy, Erosion, Fire, Frost, Iridescence, Lake, Petrification, Rain, Reflection, Resonance, Resonance (second reading), River, Salt, Sand, Storm, Wind, Winter, Self-Ending Order
same phylum Awakening, Cloud, Erosion, Faith, Innocence, Miracle, Rain, Vertigo
same dominant organ Archipelago, Entanglement, Entelechy, Eternity, Geomancy, Qualia, Salt, Syllable, Symmetry, Vertigo, Volition, Knowing Trust, Hesychology
Genome
- fall also in Innocence
- float
- orbit
- rapture
- release also in Glossolalia, Oblivion, Spring, Storm
III In the world
Echoes
- a crew floating in an orbiting station
- the top of a child's leap
- a saint lifted in rapture
- a dream of flying
IV Record
How it was drawn
its draw 4, a point in the morphospace (laws §8), drawn by flux-2-klein-4b.safetensors.
| axis | value | |
|---|---|---|
| book | nidi | |
| symmetry | helical | |
| organization | nested | |
| silhouette | winged | |
| scale | hand | |
| proportion | graded latent | |
| growth | regenerated | |
| articulation | telescoping latent | |
| openness | solid latent | |
| skeleton | woody | |
| locomotion | drifting latent | |
| pattern | reticulate | |
| coloration | cryptic latent | |
| substance | calcite | |
| surface | iridescent | |
| palette | indigo | |
| luminosity | sheen | |
| transparency | opaque latent | |
| gesture | sinks | |
| unity | fragment latent | |
| modality | contingent latent | |
| causation | final latent | |
| determinacy | dissolving latent | |
| fusion | seam | |
| anomaly | larger inside | |
| graft | stair | |
| technique | gouache | |
| viewpoint | below | |
| value | unmarked latent | |
| balance | top heavy latent | |
| density | graded detail | |
| rhythm | clustered latent | |
| saturation | muted latent | |
| appendages | rhizoids | |
| anchor (body) | a pitcher plant, a hooded tubular leaf holding a pool inside | |
| anchor (detail) | a comb jelly, an oval glassy body with eight rows of beating iridescent combs |
Sources
- Galileo Galilei, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences (1638), on falling bodies and the parabola
- Albert Einstein, Über das Relativitätsprinzip und die aus demselben gezogenen Folgerungen (Jahrbuch der Radioaktivität und Elektronik, 1907)
- Jay C. Buckey Jr., Space Physiology (2006)
- Teresa of Ávila, The Book of Her Life (1565), chapter 20, on rapture
- Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (1951), on magical flight
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