The Sublime and the Truth of Uncertainty
In this time of uncertainty, I find myself recreating a memory from 10 years ago:
I am standing at the gaping maw of Iguazú Falls at the border of Argentina and Brazil. Fathomless volumes of water roar off the edges of two nations into a boiling pit of river hundreds of feet below. The perpetual motion shatters planes of water into countless white droplets, some liberated for vaporizing seconds only to crash back into the deluge, others sublimated into the steaming jungle air.
As I look out over the railing of the tourist viewing point, I feel the seductive truth of entropy. I say to myself, “It would be great to just dive in… to get with the rest of the molecules leaping and crashing out to sea. This is the way the matter is giong…” I feel the pull and I remain on the platform.
60% of the body is water. It’s no wonder my molecules felt the pull of their kin. I choose to identify as human, though I am more than half water.
There are butterflies everywhere. They congregate on the dirt paths and on the calves and clothing of tourists licking salt or some other mineral with their proboscises. We wonder at their beauty then feel unsettled by their intimacy. Everything in this hot jungle wants to dissolve membranes. New growth is already springing from the inside of all that was a moment before.
This is the experience of interbeing -- the dissolution of the edges of the separate self into the vastness of all that is.
Through the experience of uncertainty, we get to see and feel how stability has always been an illusion. Knowledge of “how things are” is a production of the mind exercising its ability to create habits and assumptions that allow us to coast through volumes of complex functions while creating abstract thoughts: daydreams, scenarios, plans for the future, memories of the past.
Crises bring us into intimate relationship with now, as the imagined stability of the future dissolves and we realize that life is happening now... and now... and now. This dissolution holds no comfort for the guarded “I” -- built from experiences of the past and projected into the future. Instead, an endless field of possibility arises: I am a fast-moving river, we are in this together. This is the condition of the sublime. When we experience the sublime, the separate self dissolves into the flow of the everything. It feels scary. It is also the reality of interconnection, equanimity and love.
As we slow down, stay in, and keep physical distance in the coming weeks, I am committed to creating connection -- to creative flow in the studio and to you, my community. I will be offering Museum of Me, a guided visualization, via videoconference tomorrow evening at 8:30 pm Eastern, 5:30 pm Pacific. Museums may be closed, but since we are all collections of precious things and stories, we can take the opportunity to travel our interior galleries. Scroll down for full Login information or visit this link. I look forward to seeing you.
As Above, So Below (Crazy Mountain). 2019. Oil on Canvas. 30" x 36"
Every molecule of matter consists of subatomic particles that dance through time and space between and among all objects, beings and exchanges of energy. This painting is part of a body of work that uses specific images and symbols as an invitation into this teeming void. The mountain and glacial lake form an archetypal pair: the blue of the ground of being extends from sky to water while the landscape offers an invitation into the fathomless space of the sublime.