Robert: this question comes to me very often. perhaps it shouldn't matter who takes the picture -- isn't the world in front of us the world as it is? and yet ... if two people photograph the same landscape, make portraits of the same subject, etc., the photographs will be different ... do we ever reflect the world as it simply is, or is this impossible because we are always closed inside our own subjective view of reality? i don't know. i don't know.
or perhaps we are here for precisely this, to reveal what it is that we see (or choose to reveal to others in the form of photographs or poems) because of our own subjective view of reality? nothing else is possible, "to see a landscape as it is when i am not there..." is not possible. when we are gone, as simone weil writes, the interference (us) disappears, "If only I knew how to disappear there would be a perfect union of love between God and the earth I tread, the sea I hear...May I disappear in order that those things that I see may become perfect in their beauty from the very fact that they are no longer things that I see."
but isn't existence a series of intertwined tensions or acts of discordance? if god is hidden then isn't it our specific job inside of these specific beings to find him out? as you say, each one of us reveals a special glimpse at the whole. for us to behold the whole as The Whole, we would burn up. incrementally though through the divine act of the holy and small man might we glimpse the tails of the shirt of the great wonder that moves beyond/within and throughout. every damn seemingly inconsequential piece is necessary)))) (or so it feels this moment as i sit beside the bed and watch you sleep.))))
You wouldn't believe how often this question made me unable to press the shutter, yet the picture won't leave me mind.
ReplyDeleteRobert: this question comes to me very often. perhaps it shouldn't matter who takes the picture -- isn't the world in front of us the world as it is? and yet ... if two people photograph the same landscape, make portraits of the same subject, etc., the photographs will be different ... do we ever reflect the world as it simply is, or is this impossible because we are always closed inside our own subjective view of reality? i don't know. i don't know.
ReplyDelete.
or perhaps we are here for precisely this, to reveal what it is that we see (or choose to reveal to others in the form of photographs or poems) because of our own subjective view of reality? nothing else is possible, "to see a landscape as it is when i am not there..." is not possible. when we are gone, as simone weil writes, the interference (us) disappears, "If only I knew how to disappear there would be a perfect union of love between God and the earth I tread, the sea I hear...May I disappear in order that those things that I see may become perfect in their beauty from the very fact that they are no longer things that I see."
ReplyDeletebut isn't existence a series of intertwined tensions or acts of discordance? if god is hidden then isn't it our specific job inside of these specific beings to find him out? as you say, each one of us reveals a special glimpse at the whole. for us to behold the whole as The Whole, we would burn up. incrementally though through the divine act of the holy and small man might we glimpse the tails of the shirt of the great wonder that moves beyond/within and throughout. every damn seemingly inconsequential piece is necessary)))) (or so it feels this moment as i sit beside the bed and watch you sleep.))))
xo
erin