“The only happiness lies in reason; all the rest of the world is dismal. The highest reason, however, I see in the work of the artist … Happiness lies in the swiftness of feeling and thinking: all the rest of the world is slow, gradual, and stupid.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
Reading Nietzsche – My feelings are twisted into a braid of hair drawn too tightly from both ends. Will these knots ever come undone should one paw at them or are we left with no option but to tediously untangle it one hair at a time. My reason/s for inquiring into one of the greatest minds of all time has different masks and it would not be easy to see their faces over and over less they become mundane and taken for granted. Reason has more than just a face and a matching mask. It can also be inverted but let us not make the mistake of assuming that it automatically becomes irrationality like some long ago Plato and neither can we write it off as a mere impulse—even though that could be one possible expression. NO – in the words of Madonna – let’s put our love to the test and hunt down these humpback desires that pose as shadows upon the ground—knowing full well that once we pounce on them then our shadow will mix with theirs, which may only convolute the matter. Let us instead wait the night long so that both shadow and darkness are as one. And then, when that fiery orb comes into play, we shall take our time watching the long spreading image return into nothingness. Once they are gone then we shall see the light of reason and speak of it without pretension. Not as we do now with open spaces and letters that convey meaning but the real thing—that which exists before we apply a secondary judgement. How we anticipate looking into the deep shallow eyes of reason and waiting for its pupils to dilate under the direct light of the sun.
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The photo above was taken in the fall of 2012 as an assignment for a photography course. My tareas was to arrive in a place at a certain time of the day in order to capture a significant shift in scenery. One could pass this specific area a thousand times during the daylight and never recognize the point of view by which this picture was taken. Neither can another fully appreciate my frame of reference and all that feeds it—for instance that this beach was home to many of my sweetest childhood memories. Try if you may to put your finger on Dead Man’s Pond, where the high tide once eroded the bank and took into its mouth many of corpses from the old Catholic graveyard above; an occurrence my Aunt Veronica made known to me in youth which has never been proven to this day as being so, and yet remains just as real to me now as it did back then.
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In some respects this image provides additional insight into the notion of perspectivism: both subjective and objective views are in flux. The chances of taking an exact picture are infinitely impossible and yet in some realities can be copied and pasted with astonishing precision. There are always two sides of a story remains perpetually false and simultaneously true in a relative sense. Just as the opposite sides of a circle hold two separate points of view and yet all 360 degrees along its circumference have their own purview. Not to mention the shapes and figures that can open up within the middle of the circle. Now just image the explosion of complexity should we open that circle into a sphere! No wonder reason takes delight in simplicity. By making sense of things it keeps itself open and not a mere mean between tyranny and slavery but flexible and able to dance throughout the openness without getting pin downed into bigotry or any single point of view. Happy go lucky—no—happy go free!
