Beauty is a dynamic event that occurs between you and something else.  Beauty can spontaneously occur at any moment given the proper circumstances, context, or point of view.  Beauty is thus an altered state of consciousness, an extraordinary moment of poetry and grace.

Leonard Koren, Wabi-Sabi (1994)

He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging… He must not be afraid to return again and again to the same matter… For the matter itself is only a deposit, a stratum, which yields only to the most meticulous examination what constitutes the real treasure hidden within the earth: the images, severed from all earlier associations, that stand - like precious fragments or torsos in a collector’s gallery - in the prosaic rooms of our later understanding.

Walter Benjamin, “Berlin Chronicle,” in Reflections, 26
via Svetlana Boym

[Image: Remedios Varo, “The Encounter” (1962)]

Sisyphus by Titian

“The Myth of Sisyphus”

In the essay, Camus introduces his philosophy of the absurd: man’s futile search for meaning, unity and clarity in the face of an unintelligible world devoid of God and eternal truths or values. Does the realization of the absurd require suicide? Camus answers: “No. It requires revolt.” He then outlines several approaches to the absurd life. The final chapter compares the absurdity of man’s life with the situation of Sisyphus, a figure of Greek mythology who was condemned to repeat forever the same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll down again. The essay concludes, “The struggle itself…is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine (~1340)
Barna da Siena

Saint Catherine’s first visceral experience between her and Christ was at the age of five.  He appeared before her, smiled at her and blessed her.  It was enough to leave her in a state of euphoria.  Soon thereafter she devoted her life to him.  Who wouldn’t?  A source of jubilation that is as intangible as it is real, absolutely beyond the material world.

Striving for completeness, she sacrificed everything for him.  She concentrated her virginity to Christ.  She flagellated herself in an effort to repent her sin and the sin of all man.  She became mute for years on end and fasted for weeks at a time.  But deep within her was a sense of doubt.  She once confessed that she felt possessed by evil spirits, not by the love of Christ.  An imperfect belief drove a wedge between her and the feeling of inimitable, eternal love. 

Catherine of Siena had the resiliency and faith within her to eventually overcame this sense of doubt.  After years of devotion, she was finally ready to consummate the union between Christ and herself.  Her trials had only brought them closer.  In 1367, at the age of 20, she became the bride of Christ.  In the small wedding ceremony, attended by select friends and family and presided by God, Jesus perfected their love by placing a ring made of his own foreskin on Catherine’s finger.  This act was founded in the Christian belief that God resurrected Christ and took his body to heaven.  Thus the only part of Christ’s body that remains in this world would be the result of his circumcision.

She proudly wore the ring that no one else could see and only she could feel.  A symbol of her quiet, everlasting jubilation.  Despite of, or because of, her intimate relationship with Jesus, she was canonized by the Catholic church in 1461.  In 1940 she became a joint Patron Saint of Italy along with Saint Francis of Assisi.  Then in 1970 she became the first woman to be named a Doctor of the Church.  Finally, in 1999, Pope John Paul II made her a patron saint of Europe. 

The smell of autumn.  The sound.  Endless poetry has been written.  It is one of the joys of the four seasons.  It reminds us of the importance of the senses - there is a vitality in the changing seasons. 

The colors of the leaves pictured above.  The sound of walking through them.  The smell of the earth in the crisp air.  The tactile sensation of the experience goes far beyond what can be communicated in image and yet more and more of our time is spent looking at things and less is spent touching things.

The Onion ran one of my favorite headlines in recent memory: Report: 90% Of Waking Hours Spent Staring At Glowing Rectangles. 

I imagine that the next generation - the generation which lives in an increasingly virtual world of digital books, digital games, distant friends - may revolt.  There might be a movement of the real.  Like the Hollywood New Wavers of the early 70s trying to get at the human experience itself rather than derivative man-eating sharks and laser-zapping ships whooshing through space.

Or maybe not.  Today, the greatest asset of these glowing rectangles is not the experience they provide but the accessibility.  The ease of escape.  The low investment.  One thing that cannot be argued about even the most advanced digital media of 2009 is that it has a lower resolution than even everyday occurances - the touch, the smell, the sounds and even the visuals - and yet it is the primary way that some of us navigate through our weeks.

[Photo: 35mm Fuji Velvia]

“Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves. Even when we had Penn Station, we couldn’t afford to keep it clean. We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed.” — Ada Louise Huxtable.