I would even admit that there is something that troubles me about the project, the fact that its novelty as a work of scriptural art, in the tradition of illuminated manuscripts, is inextricable from my wish for it to be unabridged — that is, to dwell on and include every verse in John, and not to omit or skip any part of it, no matter how discursive or abstract.
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I actually don’t think I’ll ever finish illustrating it, in its entirety, considering the slowness with which I’ve been working on it, and the challenge of an unabridged rendering of it. And I suspect that a moment will arrive, as I move through the narrative, when I realize that I don’t know how to proceed, or that to proceed will seem to me disingenuous, in that to do so will belie the fact that I’m no longer certain that I can make a faithful or meaningful transposition of text into image.
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I continue to brood on it, anyway, even if I’m not at the moment furthering it.
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Though I suppose to be preoccupied with something is to work on that thing. So perhaps I haven’t taken a break from it at all.
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Which is to say that I’m preoccupied with the project even though I’m not exactly working on it.
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I’ve taken another break from illustrating the Gospel of John, meaning I’ve stepped away from it so that I won’t have to think about it for a few days, or for however many days this ‘break’ turns out to be, though I suppose I am still thinking about it now, or am sufficiently aware of it, somewhere in my mind, that the break feels provisional, or incomplete.
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Which theory and which notion have a bearing on the arts, I think, insofar as any given artwork, in its function as mimesis, is by necessity incomplete, as it commits itself, by the gesture we call ‘narrative’, or by the singularity of an image, to this subject rather than that, or to one thing rather than another, and not to all things, or all avenues of expression (which of course would be impossible).
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Though if we reflect on what physics can theorize, we might be comforted by the notion (or traumatized by it?) that all of those scenarios I mentioned (that are excluded from ‘occurring’ because some other variation of them occurs, instead of them), and that are exponentially large in number (maybe even infinite), do have a reality, at least philosophically, and perhaps even actually (if we can abide the theory of parallel universes, or of a multiverse, which allows that each strand of possibility, in each moment of time, somehow finds its own substance, and continues on, like a domino effect, into ethers of essentiality). Though the continuum of scenarios we regard as ‘our history,’ being self-contained and integral (and discontiguous with any other history), does not seem to permit us to experience any reality but one (the one that we are ‘in’).
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Meaning that each instance of reality, in its unfolding, confirms itself as one of innumerable configurations or scenarios that depends, for its causation, on whatever actions or events precede it (and they, likewise, the same, going backward in time), but that could have taken on, or assumed (had any given detail or decision of those preceding actions or events differed, or manifested as a variation of what it actually was) another form, or never have been brought into existence at all, insofar as the proliferation of reality, or of dharma (in one understanding of that Sanskrit word), involves a sort of birthing of facticity and materiality to the exclusion or obviation of that which those things, through the tyranny of articulation, are not.
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Though even if there were an answer to that question, or instance of wonder (and I’m not certain there is), the number of hypotheticals that could make themselves consequent to it could drive a person mad, or, anyway, to a discourse resembling madness, if that person were to attempt to describe those hypotheticals in such a way that the listener might begin to imagine the sequences, involving those shells alone, that could have occurred but didn’t occur, and then to extrapolate those ‘non-occurring’ sequences (which, if not infinite, are so mind-bogglingly many that they might as well be) to every other configuration of matter (involving those shells or not), and every duration of time, and order of causation, so that one would begin to fathom (with a faintness that is almost laughable) how the record we know as the ‘past’ is both singular and arbitrary to such an extent that, without the fact of our volition (which is sometimes referred to as ‘free will,’ and which most definitely is holy), it could be likened to the laying out, or expression, of some fantastic but meaningless program.
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Which I mention now because I wonder what it meant for those shells, to be there in my backpack, when they could as easily have remained where I’d found them, on the shore, near the ocean, which I suppose one could say was their home, if in fact they had a home.
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So, but anyway, yes…the seashells just then were in a small, zippered compartment in my backpack, which itself was in the spare bedroom of the house that I was visiting (in the neighborhood I was telling you about, where my friend and his girlfriend live), and I’d forgotten about them (the shells), or wasn’t thinking about them (for I was conversing with my friend on the porch, and was interacting with his dogs), though the shells were nearby all the same, in a new place, just like they would be later, when I got the backpack home to my apartment, in a city to the north, after I’d driven all that way (along highways and state roads, and thoroughfares and streets), and had unzipped the compartment and had let them scatter out, placing them side by side on the floor, to look at for a moment, before transferring them to, and arranging them on, the sill under the window where my A/C unit is, and on which there are also a few birthday and holiday cards that I have received over the years and have kept for sentimental reasons and am unlikely to get rid of, though by now their edges have curled and their colors have faded.
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Besides, to declare aesthetics trite is to forget the power of beauty to bring a soul into a state of recollection. In which state the virtues are most likely to flourish, and from which state they can proceed.
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And which, further, I feel almost disagreeable even talking about, or considering as a subject, in that aesthetics can seem so inessential and trite, in a world where there is suffering. And yet I’m trying only to follow the trajectory of the entries in this diary. And to articulate each thought as it appears in my mind.
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Which is understandable, and does not diminish character, and which can even be sanctifying in the case of individuals who, in a spirit of love, forgo the consolations of beauty for circumstances to which they feel duty-bound, but from which they would otherwise liberate themselves.
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Though perhaps what I should say is that while there is no causal relationship between wealth and aesthetic sophistication (so that excessive wealth may not more frequently make the mistake that I have described — the mistake of neutering or sanitizing nature), its instances of doing so are somehow graver, or more culpable. In that the unwealthy, or even the moderately wealthy, do not have the luxury of time that the extremely wealthy have. And are likely so harried, by the demands of survival, that they cannot give as much thought to the aesthetics of their circumstances as they might like to. And so they submit to what is convenient, tolerable, or within reach. Or they do what they can, while knowing they would like to do differently, if differently was possible for them.
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And maybe even more so (excessive wealth), because it has more time on its hands. And, in the absence of a conscience that wouldn’t have allowed it to become so excessive to begin with, tends to hide from itself in a needlessness of activity, like the manifestations of guilt or a neurosis.
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Though I suppose all I was saying, with that original statement, is that sometimes our attempts to curtail nature, or bring it to heel, for aesthetic purposes, can produce a feeling of estrangement and artificiality. And that, to my mind, excessive wealth is just as likely to produce this mistake as is wealth in moderation, or the absence of wealth.
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Besides, if one does not account for the disparities in opportunity and wealth (with regard to where a person can live in this country), and the caprices of fortune, and the degradation of cultural norms, one does not do justice, when remarking as I have done, to the aesthetic sensibilities of those who have been disenfranchised to such an extent that they could not express themselves in this regard, even if they wanted to.
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Which observation might say more about me than about the difference between such neighborhoods, and certainly says nothing about the difference in the character of the people who live in them. Because it is an aesthetic observation rather than a moral one. And even as an aesthetic one it is probably dubious and unnecessary, in that it comes from a person (me) who seems incapable of refraining from offering his opinion on anything that crosses his mind.