NEW SNOW, January Basecamp & 100 MINIATURES 75-85

from 100 MINIATURES

(75) Imagine Nature reduced to a place filled
with straight, dry, brittle stems covered from
root to crown with prickly thorns. That is
what we ourselves become when we lose the
complementarity of masculine and feminine
principles.

(76) In the present era, we abandon each other
so readily because, both individually and collectively,
we deserted long ago the very earth upon which
we stand.

Without a soil made rich by generations of devotion
and care, even the most heartfelt feelings can find
no place to set root, no place to call home.

(77) Without a shared sense of natural limit with
regard to the genders, there is a danger that mere
competition between the sexes may take the place
of a much deeper complementarity. Once
competition has become the dominant force in
relationship, division and fragmentation will
necessarily increase to the point that both men
and women alike cannot help but move—even
when sharing the same household—in their own
largely isolated different directions. Children are
the ones left to suffer—suspended as it were—
in the chaotic, empty space which results in
between.

(78) The Dionysian longs for the cold
crystalline nights of high mountain Winter,
and the steady measured movement of ordered,
silent stars;

The Apollonian longs for the rushing sound
of glacier torrents, and the wild rhythms
and summer passion of earth-bound fire.
What Man or Woman, or Art, or Culture,
would not sanction their perfect, fertile
union?

(79) Consonance in Music is like measured rhyme
in the rhetorical Arts:—We desire and are comforted
by smooth, even, regular sounds, and a harmonious
embracing of similar movements. We can go too far,
however, as monotonous periodicity becomes the norm,
and we get fat and lazy on too much sugar and cream.

Dissonance in Music is like violence in the literary
Arts:—We want grit, edge, reality. Again, this can
go too far, as hypertension becomes habit, and we
rigidly stare down dangerous streets full of nothing
but barbed wire and shards.

Balance between the two? Observe the marvelous
middle way of natural language, where soft, sensuous
vowels dance arm in arm with the consonant’s strong,
persistent—noisy drum.

(80) Aphorisms? The place where Logic follows
the markings on the flower of Poetry to
embrace in the sweetness of new meaning.

(81) Difference between limit and control?

Control imposes order from without by projecting
the predetermined thought, conditioned by the past,
of what should happen. The need to control invariably
increases as the disorderly, unexpected, side-effects
of past efforts accumulate, which results in ever-greater
unnecessary difficulties or complicatedness;

In contrast, limit allows order to emerge from within
by determining only what at any given moment
should not happen. Limit is therefore open to the
future, and tends strongly towards ever-greater
simplicity.

(82) Form emerges out of movement; it is the
outward envelope of the rhythmic pulse of life.

The river creates itself the boundaries of the bed
that order and give structure to its flow.

(83) Time folds into Space like a thread wound
into a skein; The one-at-a-time folds into and
becomes the all-at-once, and the myriad differences
become co-present. Listen to the notes of Melody
wind round themselves, becoming Harmony, as
the piano’s sustaining pedal is pushed down.

That’s the sound of Time becoming Space!

(84) In Praise of the Economy of Buds?

Store up the light and quick energy
needed for next Spring during the slow
and easy months of high Summer;

Prepare for the worst of Winter by making
oneself small and motionless against the twig;
Forget about absolute size and rigid sequence,
knowing that beauty resides in the measured,
rhythmic unfolding of the well-proportioned
web.

(85) Pictures for sale? Nothing fades faster than
an Art that has descended to the level of being
no more than its own commercial.

See the flower cluster that advertises itself with
showy, yet infertile blooms along its periphery.
No need to remind it that real nectar must be
offered at its center to attract for long.

100 MINIATURES please preview
my little book of aphorisms &
sayings in prose [opens in new window]

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The avian soloista featured here are the
Western Meadow Lark, and, at
the very end, the Eastern Meadow Lark.