Thursday, March 29, 2007

Metaphor


Removed from the First Cause, the families of Effect, these ripples, draw us outward. Like the dazzle on water obscures and tempts us toward a belief in That Which Is Not. Or the reflection in a mirror, pomp and ceremony. They clothe us in the regalia of the crowned child.

Ultimately, this is where symbol loses its luster and referrent achieves a clarity previously thought impossible. In this way, the crucate figure in the center is seen as the foundational element. Around it, beyond it, visual echoes are feeble attempts at "explanation." Yet nothing needs explanation. Nothing adequately serves. And, here, each successive argument is more dilute—the angled forms, the cutting black blades. Insubstantial and pale, a dissipating spirit. Which renders the enterprise irrelevant, a distraction from the object of adoration. In paradoxical splendor, this brings the object into greater focus. And isn't this more properly called prayer?

The seed need not grow to be the seed it is.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Illusion


Through the scrim of our misapprehensions, our misconceptions and misinformations, we view the universe. Self-deceit can become a permanent appendage, a new leg that renders us lame. To the Hindu, maya; to wanderers of a more literal nature, mirage. Ever out of reach, ever over-reaching. We chase the ignis fatuus—the foolish fire of our hearts' blinded eye—into we-know-not-what.

The central figure is night and twilight, cloud and haze. Where it is not black, it is gray, lined with parallelisms. Everything is obscure, half-hidden, unknowable. Tantalizing cutaways are falsities—pretenders to light and knowledge. Around the periphery, the way is fraught. A world pushing past its own too-tight boundaries, to spread its—what? Its nothing? To spread its nothing then! To sow the seeds of distrust! Of disloyalty! A smothering blanket of denial. Repudiation! And now, finally, travel inward and see it, at the bottom, as of a plumbless well: the one unveiled, untainted glimpse at Truth.

To see clearly, close the eyes of seeing.

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Renewal


The blossoming Now is daughter to a blossoming When. Seeds to roots to flowers to seeds to roots. The progression of living states proffers a recapitulation of all possible pasts as the present funnels its energy into putative futures.

Note the skewed black squares at the four corners of the calyx, the final forms still incubating, still out-swelling. They echo the white square of the stigma, the flower's central spire. And around this, paired triangles like split squares, kissing vertex-to-vertex. The figure is an ariose meditation on becoming, separating, coming together, and re-becoming. Birth and loss contained in a corolla, a being infused with the perfume of life and of decay, whose shadow is nothing less than ourselves.

Life turns toward Life, like flowers face the sun.

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Transcendence


Rise! Rise above your earthly pains. The pains of loss, of doubt, of that which is no longer and that which will not be. It is the pain of change. Once aloft, freely rising—to float—the world is so small, a brilliant bauble of no more consequence than diamonds to the Devil.

The tapered lines of this figure create a gleaming icon. One can almost feel the heat and light. The acute angles capture and transmit a dazzle that is possible only after rising above a world in which change can act, above a galaxy of constant laws, above a universe of separation. Above. And in the center, in the very heart, the eye of self-knowledge. It is the axis upon which everything turns.

To discover, escape.