A Moment

I am intensely interested in the idea that a frisson is a 'distance' which can be close and/or far and that the space between is replete with anticapatory energy. For instance the moment before a romantic kiss, when the distance between two people is physically close but not closed, is full of heightened anticipation and possibility. This brief moment ‘sees’ time and space dancing with each other causing a rich frisson where everything seems to stand still and the world seems distance-less.

This new painting above is called 'A Moment' and I wanted to give the impression that time and space dance intimately in a suspended frisson. I wanted to 'picture' a moment. I have used my much loved tree-of-life motif to represent past and future. I also deliberately used the circle to represent time as cyclical rather than linear. The circle also reminds us of the rungs of a cut tree. These rungs tell us how old a tree might have been, thus are indicators of earthly time passing.

Yet, time may not exist at all beyond this mortal existence. I am reminded of a few lines in a poem called 'Out There' written by my grandmother D.E Ross, [the entire poem is copied below my post]

Time is not negotiated
wasted or lost:
an hour rates high in our accounting here:
yet a thousand years
could be held as a breath on the wind
Out There.

If time does not exist except perhaps 'as a breath of wind', one then has to question the existence of distance and thus perspective, both being some kind of temporal and spatial measurement of perception. I wonder if both distance and perspective are necessary processes and/or processors we need to move towards a 'knowing' which goes beyond human perception. After all we must know who we are not before we can truly know who we really are. With reference to my last post 'In the Garden Of Eden' I am reminded that Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden to experience good and error [I prefer error to evil] in order to know who they are not so they can know who they are. The story is a parable to propel us in mind and soul beyond to 'Out There'.

The tree-of-life in 'A Moment' is like a gossamer creating a veil. This veil is time. Once the veil is lifted I can imagine distance, space and perspective collapsing into a non-existence which paradoxically remembers them. Thus they exist in absentia. In fact, my grandmother's poem in stanza two clearly irradicates boundaries created by compass points or positioning. My grandmother wrote this poem about death, but to my mind she wrote about a 'knowing' of another life...


Out There
By D. E Ross
[copyright]

1.
I do not cringe before the opening door
to Outside,
but brace muscle and mind
to meet
the open horizon
its fresher winds
the brighter light
undreamed of in the chrysalis:
each cloud a carriage
each breeze a wing
each star a stepping stone
beyond Time
-before and after-
toward the secret
of its source
and mine.

11.
There are no boundaries
Out There
but the original laws
that devised
creation.
neither north nor south
or east and west,
above
below
or here and there
No tides,
but streams of power forever flowing.
Time is not negotiated
wasted or lost:
an hour rates high in our accounting here:
yet a thousand years
could be held as a breath on the wind
Out There.

111.
There is no waste in God’s economy.
New solar systems
gather grace in space
[along with waste
from our allotted span of influence].
In God’s eternal meld
of warp and woof,
of foul and fair,
we have each one of us a share
in a new heaven and a new earth
aiming for birth
Out There
somewhere.


http://twitpic.com/photos/brimblecombe