Timelessness

"You would measure time

the measureless and the immeasurable.

You would adjust your conduct

and even direct the course of your spirit

according to hours and seasons.

Of time you would make a stream

upon whose bank you would sit

and watch its flowing.

Yet the timeless in you

is aware of life’s timelessness,

And knows that yesterday

is but today’s memory

and tomorrow is today’s dream.

And that that which sings

and contemplates in you is still dwelling

within the bounds of that first moment

which scattered the stars into space."

- Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931) 

Autobiographical Memory

"When you summon up an autobiographical memory, you engage in a kind of mental time travel. You identify your current 'remembering self' with your past 'experiencing self'—like the self that was feeling apprehensive on the first day of school. These two selves are connected, not just through a continuously existing physical body but also through a somewhat discontinuous (because interrupted by dreamless sleep) stream of consciousness. The faculty of autobiographical memory allows us to understand ourselves as beings whose existence extends over time."

- Jim Holt (1954 - )

In This Is All: Memory, meaning, and the self

Visible Delineations

"You see what the eye does teach; and yet it would never of itself have afforded this insight, without something that looks through the eyes and uses the data of the senses as mere guides to penetrate from the apparent to the unseen. It is needless to add the methods of geometry that lead us step by step through visible delineations to truths that lie out of sight, and countless other instances which all prove that apprehension is the work of an intellectual essence deeply seated in our nature, acting through the operation of our bodily senses."

- St. Gregory of Nyssa (335 – 395)

Naive Realism

"We all start from “naive realism,” i.e., the doctrine that things are what they seem. We think that grass is green, that stones are hard, and that snow is cold. But physics assures us that the greenness of grass, the hardness of stones, and the coldness of snow are not the greenness of grass, the hardness of stones, and the coldness of snow that we know in our own experience, but something very different."

- Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)

Mental Constructs

"Perhaps we all lose our sense of reality to the precise degree to which we are engrossed in our own work, and perhaps that is why we see in the increasing complexity of our mental constructs a means for greater understanding, even while intuitively we know that we shall never be able to fathom the imponderables that govern our course through life."

- W.G. Sebald (1944 - 2001)

The Rings of Saturn

Origins of Form

"The evolution of all things animate or inanimate takes place within a sea of forces. Some of these forces are dominant, some are scarcely there at all, but all exert some influence on the changing form. The force might be a necessity for the placement of leaves to maximize sunlight or it might be a compression of space, a surface stress, heat, infusion with another substance, vibration, or sonic disturbance, wind, torsion, electrical charge, gravitational pull, or any number and combination of other mechanical or chemical forces. The substance can only respond and its evolving form is a reflection of the forces, like a patch of froth on a slowly winding river revealing the currents and countercurrents. When the forces are complex and constantly shifting, the developing form is unpredictable, like an old pear tree that has been broken, pruned, and buffeted by the elements, or the skin of an aged elephant. But when the forces are more constant and predictable the forms evolve into rhythm, pattern, and symmetry."

- Christopher Williams
Origins of Form

Wispy Living Metaphors

"We can express our feelings regarding the world around us either by poetic or by descriptive means. I prefer to express myself metaphorically. Let me stress: metaphorically, not symbolically. A symbol contains within itself a definite meaning, certain intellectual formula, while metaphor is an image. An image possessing the same distinguishing features as the world it represents. An image — as opposed to a symbol — is indefinite in meaning. One cannot speak of the infinite world by applying tools that are definite and finite. We can analyse the formula that constitutes a symbol, while metaphor is a being-within-itself, it's a monomial. It falls apart at any attempt of touching it."

- Andrei Tarkovsky (1932 - 1986)

As I've written about before (though it has been a while since I last visited these themes), a deep profound regret of my life - as a photographer and son-of-an-artist - is not ever having trained my camera on my dad while he worked in his studio (my dad passed away in 2002). I've rationalized away this grievous - really, unforgivable - omission on my part in countless ways over the years. I was too young; I was "afraid" of what he'd say if I asked; I was always "going" to do it, when I had a better camera; I was waiting for a chunk of time I could devote entirely to this series; ... none of it makes sense, of course, in hindsight, and the opportunity - opportunities! - are now lost in the mists of time. Oh, what I wouldn't now give to have a few precious moments with a camera in hand and my dad hunched over one of his canvases! 

The triptych above shows the only two images I have of my dad working as an art restorer (on the left, with a bonus capture of my mom - who passed away in 2017 - peering over the top left edge of the painting) and, in the center frame, as an artist - an image which I only recently "discovered" by chance while rummaging through old files. I could hardly contain my emotion when I saw this picture tumble out of one of my dad's old art books (that I still had wrapped in a crate I took from my mom's old house after she passed away, and hadn't seen in years). It was taken in the summer of 1984. The last frame shows what I believe is the image he was working on, on the easel (and appears in the watercolor section of the book my mom and I published on his art and life; note that the preview shows all of the pages in the book, in case some of you may may be interesting in perusing my dad's life's work). 

Which brings us back to Tarkovsky's quote. I agree, generally, with the sentiment that images are indefinite in meaning (were this not so, all photography would be reduced to sterile one-to-one mappings and transcriptions); and couldn't agree more that metaphors are an artist's preferred language. Indeed, my dad was — still is — a living metaphor for seeing, discovering, and communicating ineffable realities. And, just as all metaphors reach far and deep, but fall "apart at any attempt of touching" them, the images my dad gifted the world are now all that remains of his existence; the inexorable march of time turns even the brightest light into wisps of dust. Of course, my-dad-as-living-metaphor — as being-within-itself — remains undisturbed, forever tuned to ineffable realities, and timeless. For me, he is a metaphor for the creative spirit that permeates our cosmos.