638
and her first two notable expatriates; or to Jan Van Eyck’s “Crucifixion” and “Last
Judgement” panels at the Metropolitan Museum of New York. In such iconographic halos of artistic investiture, we all suppose that “hope” is the fitting
approach as we seek something beyond the rudiments of a peat bog without end;
of icy gales in the Outer Hebrides and the wet mop of a beleaguered sheep’s coat,
fully exposed, or of all that bacterial evanescence in the gut of a maimed mammal
walking her last.
Ralph Harper, luminary behind On Presence: Variations and Reflections (1991),
often referred to as the first philosopher to bring existentialism to North America,
mused, “It is a measure of the ambivalence of Athos that with so much spirituality
to gain, so much that is human and artistic must be renounced.”
7
Knowledge does
not equate with our reality and these two components have been brought down to
the raw plane of intangibility. We have lost access to that which we persistently
crave, our only hope. Since long before the time of an Aristotle we have been
tempted and teased by goodness and ethical character, only to be stifled at the collective moment of outreach or ratification. Rembrandt plunges into bankruptcy.
George Orwell despairs of humankind ever changing its ways as he acknowledges
one tribe after another effacing neighbors and predecessors. Until the science of
the future, at least as concerns humanity, is no more than the concise history complete of ill-tidings and ill-bodings. Whatever painterly vision seemed plausible
before, does so with less and less frequency by the minute, from community to
community.
68.4 An Outcast Species
Confronting this reality of an outcast species situates our vantage point beneath a
dark cliff, with all of its literary and emotional conceits. The storm clouds taunt us
with their silver lining scenarios, the ones that are quick to enliven in us a doomed
conception of some tactical escape route that is, alas, fantasy.
And to this one importunate longing we are haplessly wedded, so nobly detailed
in the many clear bells and imperfect unions of the lost ones, as Beckett named
them. All else resides in the elusive Eleusinian mysteries and others whose energies
and group mind hold the promise of eternity, while acknowledging that joy is
momentary; Buddhism’s piercing reconciliation with the power of impermanence.
And our suffering only heralds more of the same. Sentience at the human level,
informed by whatever ruse of reason or rage, selects itself in every mirror held up to
Nature, and this is key to unlocking the otherwise unbreakable promise we tell
each other.
7 Ralph Harper, Journey From Paradise – Mt. Athos And The Interior Life, Editions Du Beffroi,
1987, p. 68.
68 Caesuras of Certainty
and her first two notable expatriates; or to Jan Van Eyck’s “Crucifixion” and “Last
Judgement” panels at the Metropolitan Museum of New York. In such iconographic halos of artistic investiture, we all suppose that “hope” is the fitting
approach as we seek something beyond the rudiments of a peat bog without end;
of icy gales in the Outer Hebrides and the wet mop of a beleaguered sheep’s coat,
fully exposed, or of all that bacterial evanescence in the gut of a maimed mammal
walking her last.
Ralph Harper, luminary behind On Presence: Variations and Reflections (1991),
often referred to as the first philosopher to bring existentialism to North America,
mused, “It is a measure of the ambivalence of Athos that with so much spirituality
to gain, so much that is human and artistic must be renounced.”
7
Knowledge does
not equate with our reality and these two components have been brought down to
the raw plane of intangibility. We have lost access to that which we persistently
crave, our only hope. Since long before the time of an Aristotle we have been
tempted and teased by goodness and ethical character, only to be stifled at the collective moment of outreach or ratification. Rembrandt plunges into bankruptcy.
George Orwell despairs of humankind ever changing its ways as he acknowledges
one tribe after another effacing neighbors and predecessors. Until the science of
the future, at least as concerns humanity, is no more than the concise history complete of ill-tidings and ill-bodings. Whatever painterly vision seemed plausible
before, does so with less and less frequency by the minute, from community to
community.
68.4 An Outcast Species
Confronting this reality of an outcast species situates our vantage point beneath a
dark cliff, with all of its literary and emotional conceits. The storm clouds taunt us
with their silver lining scenarios, the ones that are quick to enliven in us a doomed
conception of some tactical escape route that is, alas, fantasy.
And to this one importunate longing we are haplessly wedded, so nobly detailed
in the many clear bells and imperfect unions of the lost ones, as Beckett named
them. All else resides in the elusive Eleusinian mysteries and others whose energies
and group mind hold the promise of eternity, while acknowledging that joy is
momentary; Buddhism’s piercing reconciliation with the power of impermanence.
And our suffering only heralds more of the same. Sentience at the human level,
informed by whatever ruse of reason or rage, selects itself in every mirror held up to
Nature, and this is key to unlocking the otherwise unbreakable promise we tell
each other.
7 Ralph Harper, Journey From Paradise – Mt. Athos And The Interior Life, Editions Du Beffroi,
1987, p. 68.
68 Caesuras of Certainty