[Image: “Spirits in the Material World, Plate 3,” by Thomas Hawk; found on Flickr, and used here under a Creative Commons license (thank you!). As has happened before, with other photographers, I find now that I’ve used Hawk’s work to illustrate earlier posts as well as this one. I don’t know how to conduct a search (of almost 1,500 posts) to find all such favorites, but I wish I did!]
From whiskey river:
The Discovery Of Daily Experience
It is a whisper. You turn somewhere,
hall, street, some great event: the stars
or the lights hold; your next step waits you
and the firm world waits—but
there is a whisper. You always live so,
a being that receives, or partly receives, or
fails to receive each moment’s touch.You see the people around you—the honors
they bear—a crutch, a cane, eye patch,
or the subtler ones, that fixed look, a turn
aside, or even the brave bearing: all declare
our kind, who serve on the human front and earn
whatever disguise will take them home. (I saw
Frank last week with his crutch de guerre.)When the world is like this—and it is—
whispers, honors or penalties disguised—no wonder
art thrives like a pulse wherever civilized people,
or any people, live long enough in a place to
build, and remember, and anticipate; for we are
such beings as interact elaborately with what
surrounds us. The limited actual world we successively
overcome by fictions and by the mind’s inventions
that cannot be quite arbitrary (and hence do reflect
the actual), but can escape the actual (and hence
may become art).
(William Stafford [source])
…and:
Be pleased yet once again to come down and breathe a soul into the newly formed, fragile film of matter with which this day the world is to be freshly clothed.
(Pierre Teilhard de Chardin [source])
