One, Two

I published one post here last year. This post will make two for this year.

Sometimes when there is one of something it makes that thing seem precious. Sometimes it makes it seem lonely. I am not sure which of those that post is.

"To call the ocean sublime we must regard it as poets do."

"Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck."Kant so often talks about the ocean. It is his most common example of that in nature which inspires a feeling of the sublime; something great and formless, beside which our own physical power fails, but which causes us to experience the supersensible via our reason. It is also his metaphor for the work of his life, metaphysics.


But Kant was born, died, and spent almost his entire life in the same city, Konigsberg (now Kaliningrad). He never traveled more than 70 miles from home in the course of this life, and he rarely traveled even that far. And so I keep wondering, while I read about the sublime and the beautiful:

Did Kant ever see the ocean?

It would have been the Baltic...

Wikimedia Commons

Steven J. Wilson

Wikimedia Commons

Metaphor Spit Bite

I saw this piece, Pendulum Spit Bite, by Terry Fox at SFMoMA last night. It is, I have read, about several things, such as the evolution of illness and wellness, the Chartres Cathedral, moving through a labyrinth. It is also very beautiful just as itself; the traces of acid dripped on paper. I also saw A Metaphor:Everything he made looks like a reflection.

Missing

This guy.

I got a camera

So I took some pictures.

Attempts

It is somewhat difficult to draw a feather.

But it is important to try.

Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes

'As a child, I was often and intensely bored. This evidently began very early, it has continued my whole life, in gusts (increasingly rare, it is true, thanks to work and to friends), and it has always been noticeable to others. A panic boredom, to the point of distress: like the kind I feel in panel discussions, lectures, parties among strangers, group amusements: wherever boredom can be seen. Might boredom be my form of hysteria?'