Midwest Revolution

In a previous post I quoted an author who thought that there are quintessentially Midwestern tropes of “growth, decay and rebirth through cyclical nature.”  Midwesterners, more than other United States citizens, live in cyclical, not linear time.  This is mostly due to our unrelenting seasons. 

Cyclical living might seem redundant, but it actually leaves more opportunity for revolution.  The very word revolution alludes to the necessity of repetition to lay the ground work for true change.  Revolution quite literally means to both repeat (the a wheel’s revolutions per minute) and change (the French Revolution). 

In the midwest, we are getting close to another revolution.  Fall.

~Schmüdde

[Image: Nikolinerlr]

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)]

What we fear most cannot be seen.  It is not the dog we fear, but its intention.  It is not the present state we fear, it is the future.  It is not the light we fear, but the dark. 

Fear is an invisible illusion.  So we must combat it with invisible faith:

From the Christians:

The LORD is my light and my salvation -
whom shall I fear?
The LORD is the stronghold of my life -
of whom shall I be afraid?
- Psalm 27:1

From the Buddhists:

Mind is best recognised in daily life through identification with a compassionate Lama who is beyond fear.
- Diamond Way Buddhism 

From the secularists:

Confidence.

~ Schmüdde

[Image: Max Klinger, Opus XI, Vom Tode. Erster Teil (1898)]

When Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten was considering the philosophy of aesthetics in the 18th century, he thought of it as the science of sensations.  Thus aesthetics is not only about what you see but it is also what you hear, taste, smell and, perhaps most importantly, what you feel.

author:

Things that occasionally make a person disappear:

1.
Let’s say a woman comes home after a weekend away to discover an unfamiliar pastel-colored toothbrush sitting expectantly by the sink. No questions are necessary. The woman does not unpack.

This is not personal enough, is it? Not quite enough of the truth, but enough of it to not be a lie.

2.
Let’s say there is the uncomfortable realization that your lungs have grown larger than any of your other organs and are now selfishly taking up far too much space in your chest. Breathing is now the only thing your body wants to do.

3.
You say you want nothing on your birthday but that is false. You want what everyone else wants. You go out to dinner and it’s nice enough, but then you’re sitting on a couch next to the person you love and they’re someplace else again and they won’t even touch you, as if they’ve forgotten how, and it’s not that you wanted it all wrapped up in pretty ribbons, but because it seemed like today was the sort of day to feel something important from somebody else.

A moment frozen it time.  Tension exists in a painting because we know it can have no détente.  This is something cinema cannot provide.  Something must happen unless it is the final frame.   

Readers Digest Condensed Books

Illustrated by David Blossom

1975