Friday, August 31, 2012

we pass through the edge of the world to reach its heart




9 comments:

  1. can i say only this and can i say it briefly before i am swallowed up by this photograph? the dual worlds, the mouth, the point of reflection, the spinning place - in this moment of seeing this photograph i am quiet, for everything everything everything is already being uttered.

    stunning. stunning!))) not as ego, as in you took a stunning photograph but rather as though you did not exist at all to take this photograph. (you understand.) this photograph, this time, this place, is all.

    xo
    erin

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. erin: out of the spinning place and then back into the spinning place ... i want only to look into the landscape and see this movement ... and yes, it has nothing at all to do with me :-)

      i come back to simone weil, from gravity and grace (as i come more and more to her, in so many ways):

      Let me disappear so that these things I see should become -- because they will no longer be things that I see -- perfectly beautiful.

      I desire not at all that this created world should be no more sensible to me, but that it no longer be to me that it is sensible. To me, it cannot say its too lofty secret. Let me part, and the creator and his creation will exchange their secrets.

      To see a landscape as it is when I am not there....

      When I am somewhere, I sully the silence of the sky and earth by my breathing and the beating of my heart.


      .

      Delete
  2. Your titles are always great James, this is a cool shot, I love reflections!
    To tell you the truth, I'm obsessed with reflections, shadows and silhouettes. ;-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. lucia: reflections, shadows and silhouettes --- they seem to be opening into another world, do they not? perhaps into a more real world ...

      i share this obsession :-) i think this is what i want to photograph -- not this world, but the world behind this one ...

      .

      Delete
    2. I totally agree with you!
      And yes, I loved your words! :)

      Delete
  3. I am humbled when I come to you, and to erin. I sincerely feel I know nothing, absolutely nothing. And please don't protest. It is a very good thing, and is usually washed in a mist of tears. What could be better?

    These are the edges we pass through, the ones that matter.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ruth: it seems that none of us knows anything, and i find myself more and more glad for this -) or perhaps we all know everything, and we remember but slowly and with effort .. essentially, it doesn't matter what we don't know ... we enter and pass through, wondering ....

      ,

      Delete
  4. To see a landscape as it is when I am not there

    but this is never possible, is it? this is the excruciating longing, forever... even when i want to say that i am speechless in front of the photograph, and i truly am, i am still within and bound by the act of seeing... in the novel that i am now analyzing for my book, by cartarescu, there is this little boy caught in his world of dreams, and haunted by one essential question: how do these flowers, these objects, how does the world look like when i am not here to look at them, when nobody is here to look at them?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Roxana: yes, it is impossible, and yet the longing is equally impossible to escape, and so we try to contain it (or liberate it or destroy it or die in its arms) with poetry, with photographs, with love

      of course, i also want to see myself as i am when i am not there :-)

      i more and more think that i will have to read that cartarescu novel some day ....

      .

      Delete