From the moment I could talk
I was ordered to listen

– Cat Stevens

van Gogh: Trees in the Asylum Garden

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We come to Jesus Christ: and He does for us what He promised; and the thing works out. To our amazement, it works out. And then we settle down. We have had our own first-hand and irrefutable experience. But, instead of opening the windows to the glory of the sunshine so evidently there, instead of being incited to a hugeness of faith by what Christ has already done for us, we can’t believe that there can be anything more, or that even He can work, for us, anything better. That first foretaste satisfies us. And so we camp for life out on the confines of the Kingdom, and never press on to inherit what is there and meant for us.

the death of magic

I think it is no mistake that it takes no talent, no extraordinary intelligence or charisma, to be happy. That a simple man can even be supremely happy with simple things, while some who are rich and famous languish in despondency. I think it is something many of us forget, or really, never realize. For we seek after things like notoriety, like wealth, like status, like power — but for what? Is it not that what we all truly are searching for is happiness, in the final analysis? Yet so many of us forget all else when caught up in the game, perhaps not understanding that what we seek is not what we seek, what we want is not what we want — that life can be so much simpler than we make it for ourselves, but that we refuse to acknowledge this could be so. We become lost in plain sight: thus never knowing how cast away we are from our true north.

The simple man, with simple dreams, dreams that come true because they are so available to us: because of their commonness, those in their high towers look down on them as sheep, that something must be wrong with them because… they are happy with what they have. But they miss an even higher purpose that works in the world, that satisfaction is not something that only they who climb the airy heights may taste (of literature, science, business, art, technology, what have you), climb to achieve great things. Not to say that happiness does not lie in greatness, but one may discover, if having had of both the common and the great, that one really is not more than the other. Just different. For who is to say which is the more joy — the man with wine older than he, or the child with the chocolate given him by his favorite uncle?

The world works, I think, in stranger ways that we imagine — but not in stranger ways than we can imagine. The world is a complicated thing, if we try to work out why to the nth detail. But one may find that it is like love: it is so simple we’ll never understand it. That simple joys, those within the province of anyone to attain — these may be the best of all. And I think I will not tell you why this is so, but tell you that this is so. Truly. Listen to what your heart tells you about the subject, and don’t think so hard if you want to figure out such a why!

Do not become too comfortable in your sin.

We are stranded. And we have learned to live this way. All the information that we have none of us can ever absolutely verify — for how are we ultimately to validate that our own senses do not lie to us? What we have to work with, that which we know, we cannot break down beyond a certain level of meaning, and we cannot assemble them in anything like a seamless manner to some grand design. These things are not meant for us, I think. This is a metaphor of how to live life, that which our cognition ever has in its understanding: do the best with what we have at any given time. Perhaps it is to understand that this is all we can ever do, that this kind of insight is brought to our attention. Not to wait for any perfect moment — such things never were, nor will be.

There is a kiss of life somewhere in the darkness, when you are lost, but it is not.

smoke and wind, the world ignites alive the olive branches
doves fall by the thousands, suddenly deprived of their beating wings
what fool are you to desire the end of the world? what madness?

I’m about to lose control
And I think I like it

– Pointer Sisters

Gerhard Richter: Seascape (Cloudy)

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Steadfastness in believing doth not exclude all temptations from without. When we say a tree is firmly rooted, we do not say the wind never blows upon it.

Little in my mind did I suffer like that: you know, complete loss, complete heartache: I have never had any of that kind of thing. I have never been completely hopeless, even in the darkest of the darkest hour; I cannot comprehend what it is like to be completely lost — to man and God, to touch and sight. You, out there: I’ll wager even when your heart broke, there was some one, some thing, that you could fall back on, and not was it the case that only shards of glass broke your fall. I remember what someone once said about what we complain about: and what I fain complain about, life must be pretty swell. We’ve had it easy, n’est-ce pas? Let us consider it: not all in the world have it like us. And it is a gift to know it when life is good — have you thought that lately? Be thankful to the deity of your choosing, even if it’s just to thank the nameless stars. Because it may be that it could be better, but oh, my, could it be worse.

i remember when my mind gave way
like a beam of certainty split in two
my mind, seized by a lying prophecy
to see the mad beauty in the random splotches
my heart never knows what it longs for
some incomprehensible sanity
what was it? what was it? who are you, really?
that nothingness beyond, so palpable
i came upon myself in dreaming, in back
i mistook myself for a dreamer
deathlike stare as if he knew something
knew nothing, intimately, thought so
why did you think you rose so high?
even the dust was above you
you, the mirror says, you: yes, you
i thought you gave a damn

[From A Confession]

The foregoing was written by me some three years ago, and will be printed.

Now a few days ago, when revising it and returning to the line of thought and to the feelings I had when I was living through it all, I had a dream. This dream expressed in condensed form all that I had experienced and described, and I think therefore that, for those who have understood me, a description of this dream will refresh and elucidate and unify what has been set forth at such length in the foregoing pages. The dream was this:

I saw that I was lying on a bed. I was neither comfortable nor uncomfortable: I was lying on my back. But I began to consider how, and on what, I was lying – a question which had not till then occurred to me. And observing my bed, I saw I was lying on plaited string supports attached to its sides: my feet were resting on one such support, by calves on another, and my legs felt uncomfortable. I seemed to know that those supports were movable, and with a movement of my foot I pushed away the furthest of them at my feet – it seemed to me that it would be more comfortable so. But I pushed it away too far and wished to reach it again with my foot, and that movement caused the next support under my calves to slip away also, so that my legs hung in the air. I made a movement with my whole body to adjust myself, fully convinced that I could do so at once; but the movement caused the other supports under me to slip and to become entangled, and I saw that matters were going quite wrong: the whole of the lower part of my body slipped and hung down, though my feet did not reach the ground. I was holding on only by the upper part of my back, and not only did it become uncomfortable but I was even frightened. And then only did I ask myself about something that had not before occurred to me. I asked myself: Where am I and what am I lying on? and I began to look around and first of all to look down in the direction which my body was hanging and whither I felt I must soon fall. I looked down and did not believe my eyes. I was not only at a height comparable to the height of the highest towers or mountains, but at a height such as I could never have imagined.

I could not even make out whether I saw anything there below, in that bottomless abyss over which I was hanging and whither I was being drawn. My heart contracted, and I experienced horror. To look thither was terrible. If I looked thither I felt that I should at once slip from the last support and perish. And I did not look. But not to look was still worse, for I thought of what would happen to me directly I fell from the last support. And I felt that from fear I was losing my last supports, and that my back was slowly slipping lower and lower. Another moment and I should drop off. And then it occurred to me that this cannot be real. It is a dream. Wake up! I try to arouse myself but cannot do so. What am I to do? What am I to do? I ask myself, and look upwards. Above, there is also an infinite space. I look into the immensity of sky and try to forget about the immensity below, and I really do forget it. The immensity below repels and frightens me; the immensity above attracts and strengthens me. I am still supported above the abyss by the last supports that have not yet slipped from under me; I know that I am hanging, but I look only upwards and my fear passes. As happens in dreams, a voice says: “Notice this, this is it!” And I look more and more into the infinite above me and feel that I am becoming calm. I remember all that has happened, and remember how it all happened; how I moved my legs, how I hung down, how frightened I was, and how I was saved from fear by looking upwards. And I ask myself: Well, and now am I not hanging just the same? And I do not so much look round as experience with my whole body the point of support on which I am held. I see that I no longer hang as if about to fall, but am firmly held. I ask myself how I am held: I feel about, look round, and see that under me, under the middle of my body, there is one support, and that when I look upwards I lie on it in the position of securest balance, and that it alone gave me support before. And then, as happens in dreams, I imagined the mechanism by means of which I was held; a very natural intelligible, and sure means, though to one awake that mechanism has no sense. I was even surprised in my dream that I had not understood it sooner. It appeared that at my head there was a pillar, and the security of that slender pillar was undoubted though there was nothing to support it. From the pillar a loop hung very ingeniously and yet simply, and if one lay with the middle of one’s body in that loop and looked up, there could be no question of falling. This was all clear to me, and I was glad and tranquil. And it seemed as if someone said to me: “See that you remember.”

And I awoke.

1882.

A little break, I think, from all this, while I’m here in Seoul, Korea. You know what they say: “Be excellent to each other. And party on, dude!”

Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.
Nothing you can see that isn’t shown.
Nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.
It’s easy.
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
All you need is love (all together now)
All you need is love (everybody)
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.

– The Beatles

Robert Rauschenberg: Untitled

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