Unknowns, Unseens, Unstateds, Undones

[Image: A Pair of Shoes (1886), by Vincent Van Gogh. See the note at the foot of this post.]

From whiskey river:

We live in a huge net and web of being, human and non-human and we have obligations towards it but the only way to fulfill them is by doing it from the inside. Not from the head, not from what we’re told to do, but to discover for ourselves what needs doing and then start doing it.

(Jane Hirshfield [unconfirmed source])

…and (italicized stanzas, following epigraph):

Mon Semblable

“No man has ever dared to describe himself as he truly is.”
-Albert Camus

I like things my way
every chance I get.
A limit doesn’t exist

when it comes to that.
But please, don’t confuse
what I say with honesty.

Isn’t honesty the open yawn
the unimaginable love
more than truth?

Anonymous among strangers
I look for those
with hidden wings,

and for scars
that those who once had wings
can’t hide.

Though I know it’s unfair,
I reveal myself
one mask at a time.

Does this appeal to you,
such slow disclosures,
a lifetime perhaps

of almost knowing one another?
I would hope you, too,
would hold something back,

and that you’d always want
whatever unequal share
you had style enough to get.

Altruism is for those
who can’t endure their desires.
There’s a world

as ambiguous as a moan,
a pleasure moan
our earnest neighbors

might think a crime.
It’s where we could live.
I’ll say I love you,

which will lead, of course,
to disappointment,
but those words unsaid

poison every next moment.
I will try to disappoint you
better than anyone ever has.

(Stephen Dunn [source])

…and:

The key question isn’t “What fosters creativity?” But it is why in God’s name isn’t everyone creative? Where was the human potential lost? How was it crippled? I think therefore a good question might not be why do people create? But why do people not create or innovate?

We have got to abandon that sense of amazement in the face of creativity, as if it were a miracle that anybody created anything.

(Abraham Maslow [unconfirmed source])

Not from whiskey river:

The Last Perfect Season

No one knew it then, but that was the last
perfect season, the last time sky and earth

were so balanced that when we walked,
we flew, the last time we could pick a crate

of strawberries every morning in June,
the last time the mystical threshing

machine appeared at the edge of the field,
dividing the oats from the chaff, time of

hollyhocks and sprinklers, white clouds over
a tin roof. Everyone we knew was young then.

Our mothers wore dresses the color of
dove wings, slim at the waist, skirts flaring

just enough to let the folds drape slightly,
like the elegant suits our fathers wore,

shirts so white they dazzled even
the grainy eye of the camera when

we looked down into the viewfinder to
press the button that would keep us there,

as if we already knew that this was
as good as it was ever going to get.

(Joyce Sutphen [source])

…and:

Not content with being confined solely to the worlds of math and science, chaos and fractal geometry have made their way into art as well…

Perhaps the best example of fractal patterns in art is the work of the splatter master Jackson Pollock (aka “Jack the Dripper”). The physicist Richard Taylor was on sabbatical in England several years ago, pursuing a master’s degree in art history, when he realized that the same analysis used in his scientific research could be applied to Pollock’s work. Once back in his laboratory, he took high-resolution photographs of 20 canvases by Pollock dating from 1943 to 1952, and scanned them into a computer. Then he divided the images into an electronic mesh of small boxes. Finally, he used the computer to assess and compare nearly 5 million drip patterns at different locations and magnifications in each painting.

The result: very clear fractal patterns were detected in all the paintings.

(Jennifer Ouellette [source])

…and:

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

So they show their relations to me and I accept them,
They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession.

(Walt Whitman [source])

…and:

[The art and antiques dealer said,] “…if a painting really works down in your heart and changes the way you see, and think, and feel, you don’t think, ‘oh, I love this picture because it’s universal.’ ‘I love this painting because it speaks to all mankind.’ That’s not the reason anyone loves a piece of art. It’s a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes you.” Fingertip gliding over the faded-out photo — the conservator’s touch, a touch-without-touching, a communion wafer’s space between the surface and his forefinger. “An individual heart-shock… a really great painting is fluid enough to work its way into the mind and heart through all kinds of different angles, in ways that are unique and very particular. Yours, yours. I was painted for you…”

(Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch [source])

___________________

About the image: In Martin Heidegger’s essay The Origin of the Work of Art, he analyzes this painting as follows:

From van Gogh’s painting we cannot even tell where these shoes are. There is nothing surrounding this pair of peasant shoes to which and within which they could belong; only an undefined space. Not even clods of earth from the field or from the country path stick to them, which could at least point toward their use. A pair of peasant shoes and nothing more. And yet. From out of the dark opening of the well-worn insides of the shoes the toil of the worker’s tread stares forth. In the crudely solid heaviness of the shoes accumulates the tenacity of the slow trudge through the far-stretching and ever-uniform furrows of the field swept by a raw wind. On the leather lies the dampness and richness of the soil. Under the soles slides the loneliness of the field-path as evening falls. The shoes vibrate with the silent call of the earth, its silent gift of the ripening grain, its unexplained self-refusal in the wintry field. This equipment is pervaded by uncomplaining worry as to the certainty of bread, wordless joy at having once more withstood want, trembling before the impending birth, and shivering at the surrounding menace of death. This equipment belongs to the earth and finds protection in the world of the peasant woman. From out of this protected belonging the equipment itself rises to its resting-within-itself.

Well, I don’t know. The Van Gogh Museum says:

A fellow student in Paris reported that Vincent bought these workman’s boots at a flea market, intending to use them in a still life. Finding them still a little too smart, however, he wore them on a long and rainy walk. Only then were they fit to be painted.

Overthinking a little, MH?

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