761
Every one of those persons of enormous sobriety that Holbein painted has, of
course, perished in a manner of speaking. We know most of their names and in some
cases quite considerable biographies. It wasn’t that long ago. The same sensation of
continuity attends upon Edward Curtis’ photographs of North American indigenous
peoples, commencing at the time of Princess Angelina’s life, at the moment she
posed on a beach along Puget Sound for one dollar, and thereby agreed to some
vague semblance of intergenerational communication
3
.
85.3 Unless
Our physiological ties to one another grapple after confirmation, the utility of a family structure, of conjugal nuclearization, the transfer of presumptions of status and
continuity. For Japan’s baby boomers, or the large extended family cohorts within
the matriarchal households of Kerala, human intimacies with one another, codified
into practice and tradition, are equivalent to the covalent bonds in atoms. The hazy
interiors of these obscure but universally dense noble gasses, negative and positive
charges, valency, shells and orbitals, polar solvents, polarity spectra, and the compound chains of any given molecule producing organic compound properties, are as
finely tuned as any relationships can be. We see families throughout the Milky Way,
but can relate to their cogent structures more readily in a rain forest. Such relationships involve multiples of constantly changing charges, variable ions. But carefully
follow any dune, cloud, or wave and the essence of all things believed to have been
understood—like a Holbein—collapses beneath the onslaught of incalculable mind.
This is a wonderful situation.
About 7.8 billion assumptions compounded nanosecond by nanosecond allow
for no shared sentience other than that diminutive cluster of basic survival regimens,
the same attractors to comfort earlier referenced. Absent a thorough human reason,
all rational behavior has become a myth. Belief in such folklore has its occasionally
propitious outcomes and proponents, such as a Hugo Grotius or Mahatma Gandhi.
The hotspots methodology harbors a safe-haven clause in the frissons of partially
sacrosanct space. Think of all those Holbein portraits, each one of them, as a sanctuary needing protection. Whether we see a face in time, or glimpse a sunset from
Moran Point on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, the instinct to protect is fundamental to our kind, yet the vagaries of human evolution work against the fragile
policies struggling to achieve that moment of ecological grace, where a face and the
landscape converge upon the most tenuous of all ideals. UnlessThe human wars against the earth, in spite of thousands of years of our allegedly
knowing and feeling better, have so perpetually erupted, squandered, and shamed
that energy field of the potential conscience, as to obviate its already vastly
3 See Edward S. Curtis: One Hundred Masterworks, by Christopher Cardozo, Prestel/Random
House, New York, 2015.
85.3 Unless
Every one of those persons of enormous sobriety that Holbein painted has, of
course, perished in a manner of speaking. We know most of their names and in some
cases quite considerable biographies. It wasn’t that long ago. The same sensation of
continuity attends upon Edward Curtis’ photographs of North American indigenous
peoples, commencing at the time of Princess Angelina’s life, at the moment she
posed on a beach along Puget Sound for one dollar, and thereby agreed to some
vague semblance of intergenerational communication
3
.
85.3 Unless
Our physiological ties to one another grapple after confirmation, the utility of a family structure, of conjugal nuclearization, the transfer of presumptions of status and
continuity. For Japan’s baby boomers, or the large extended family cohorts within
the matriarchal households of Kerala, human intimacies with one another, codified
into practice and tradition, are equivalent to the covalent bonds in atoms. The hazy
interiors of these obscure but universally dense noble gasses, negative and positive
charges, valency, shells and orbitals, polar solvents, polarity spectra, and the compound chains of any given molecule producing organic compound properties, are as
finely tuned as any relationships can be. We see families throughout the Milky Way,
but can relate to their cogent structures more readily in a rain forest. Such relationships involve multiples of constantly changing charges, variable ions. But carefully
follow any dune, cloud, or wave and the essence of all things believed to have been
understood—like a Holbein—collapses beneath the onslaught of incalculable mind.
This is a wonderful situation.
About 7.8 billion assumptions compounded nanosecond by nanosecond allow
for no shared sentience other than that diminutive cluster of basic survival regimens,
the same attractors to comfort earlier referenced. Absent a thorough human reason,
all rational behavior has become a myth. Belief in such folklore has its occasionally
propitious outcomes and proponents, such as a Hugo Grotius or Mahatma Gandhi.
The hotspots methodology harbors a safe-haven clause in the frissons of partially
sacrosanct space. Think of all those Holbein portraits, each one of them, as a sanctuary needing protection. Whether we see a face in time, or glimpse a sunset from
Moran Point on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, the instinct to protect is fundamental to our kind, yet the vagaries of human evolution work against the fragile
policies struggling to achieve that moment of ecological grace, where a face and the
landscape converge upon the most tenuous of all ideals. UnlessThe human wars against the earth, in spite of thousands of years of our allegedly
knowing and feeling better, have so perpetually erupted, squandered, and shamed
that energy field of the potential conscience, as to obviate its already vastly
3 See Edward S. Curtis: One Hundred Masterworks, by Christopher Cardozo, Prestel/Random
House, New York, 2015.
85.3 Unless