A face is still implied when most of it’s erased. Can a life seem whole when death and absence leave it incomplete? The imagination takes time to overcome limits and fulfill canny promises.
A person presents multiple simultaneous rhythms having begun in different ways and interpenetrating. One rhythm may be lost while another tries to find it. One may be feeling attaction while another revulsion. Some may be in harmony and others in discord. The goals of these rhythms are not necessarily the same.
In this crazy world a person can stand tall only if he or she knows just what he or she is about. Other structures repeat themselves indiscriminately. Others share the same angles, the same line weights, and spread across the floodplain, but the tower is unique.
Who cares what I sing in the shower all alone? No one’s listening at the bathroom door. There’s only me attending to the sounds in my head and imagining an intermingling of thoughts.
Patterns on the moon repeat on the plane. Morning light casts long shadows. My skin seems rough in the mirror as I shave.
Cliffs like sentries resist entropy. They don’t slide into the valley but sleep silently on their feet.
The light comes from behind casting halos and shadows. Most angles are unsuitable for normal photography. Glass is seldom a good subject, only the things it reflects.
Forensics unrolls the burn scene like a fragile papyrus scroll on which events had been inscribed in a language that’s been lost.
One little fir tree on a mountain speaks a language that others don’t understand. Thousands of fir trees in a wilderness of trees help this little tree stand out.
The mind abstracts and misrepresents like an artist. You’d prefer reality, but reality is impossible, while the artist trains the mind for deeper connections.
The machine has broken and will never work again. The boat has sunk to the bottom and is covered in mud. The war was hell and nothing is whole. We see how entropy eventually sinks it all into layers of brown.
Elemental forces don’t seem like magic. Clouds float above the lighthouse, above the graveyard, like souls without identities, impossible to embrace.
Life is like earth; life is like water; life is like air. Our fate is to dig, to sink or swim, and to be blown away. Like worms and gnats, our scopes are small and our lives are brief, while no element or realm, no means of movement is actually denied to us.
Fantastic foliage lives on air, floats on ponds, hangs on rocks, and extends its roots, tubes, and shoots. Plants take joy from every element and display it as bells, pinwheels, pennants, feathers, flags, and spines.
The same forces apply to the work of art, to life on Earth, and to the cosmos. Over time, everything moves toward reconciliation.
An individual is never fully at one with spines and fangs that draw his blood. Hiding behind trees and brandishing a stick is often a wise move. Wild animals have teeth and claws, while he has knives and teeth.
An artist can draw peaks that can’t be climbed, caves that can’t be explored, screes hidden in mists, flooded chambers without exit, jagged threats, fears without hope.
A spring in a stream affects the lines of flow. A meteor hits the atmosphere to inscribe its path of fire. Air runs and eddies like kittens in play.
Inside the topsoil, pores and wormholes, inside the flower stem, cell walls and channels, a living garden depends on interpenetration of layers.
The act of seeing uses the mind’s eye, so inner images act much the same regardless of their origin. We call one reality and the other fantasy when both are equally real.
Thoughts of Klee