Portal, Dunedin North Cemetery, May 2009, JB
In the passing of things is also a liberation. Even that which is most loved can weigh heavily. An idea, a theory, a place, a person. The realisation of absence brings a certain latitude within the compass of the self. The passage of that which is loved is thus both a pit and a portal.
The liberation that comes with absence is vertiginous. But the gift is in what you give away, what you allow to depart. Whether the old cliché of love ('set it free') or in the setting aside of the manacles of theory, crossing the threshold is fearful. To lose something and to be lost are not necessarily one and the same.
Losing follows loosing. The occlusion of one oculus, the closing of an o, leads elsewhere, another way. Exceeding a diffident disengagement, the committed contemplation of absence is not for the fainthearted. The way through leads to other realms, not to nothing, or at least to a kind of 'nothing' that is something, that which ripples with the numinous, within underground seams of awe...
Absences are new presences.
[For an Absent Friend]
3 comments:
As an errant observer I had noticed a change in the tone of your blog of late and maybe too late to suggest you should try reading Dark as the Grave Wherein my Friend is Laid.
Also late, I did have in mind to suggest earlier that should an area of conflict exists in your life you might ask yourself "is it a secret" or how much of it is a secret to begin to quantify it and by doing so to put it into the wider world in a sense proper.
I've used all my wayward tokens up now for a while.
absences are new presences... i feel myself resisting it, but will try to hold this meditation today...
i like how it's all in the 'o' of your photo, too.
manuela
(arriving here through roxana, and glad for it)
Hi Manuela ... thanks.
Yes, the meditation, mantra, incantation ... is perplexing. An attempt to find conviction...
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