The Arts ... Nature's Intimations

The Tatie of Nymphs Series : IIX

 In nature... the tallest mountain … biggest tree … largest river … greatest ocean … always carried a unique attachment to our view. It formed a reference for our thoughts about the world.  In the human it was sometimes the oldest … and for no other reason than that.

 

The Japanese point to stone markers on hillsides where the hill stopped a tsunami.  In much the same way … the strength of nature's gifts on the man are sometimes so awesome … in beauty … size … shape ... intelligence … that only nature can return to deal with it.  It is a clash of the giants.

 

Our past consists of a world of whims … the weather … seasons of specialized activity … man and beast living together … in a raw primitive experience in which the power of father ruled. A child learnt survival skills at a young age … sometimes fighting the father to do so … in a society in which the word … once spoken … intimated the desire and will of the speaker … that cannot be withdrawn … without the anguish of the untrue.

 

In imitating nature … man willed himself to be the greatest King … the mighty saviour … the astute law maker  … and directed himself to more and more … till he came to perceive the light of glory … in a heaven that was more to life than the world he lived in. We continue that tradition in some ways today … inadvertently sometimes … like a boat torn from its moorings … tossed by the ocean of restless thoughts … seeking answers.

 

Thoreau's famous quote ... ' Most men live lives of quiet desperation ' …  hit us with a wake up call … and then faded into that special category of remarkable quotes … leaving behind a society that may have come to doubt the biggest anything thesis … and substituted the rising wordless void with new labels … new words … expressions randomly … from the mouth of babes … babel.

 

Our screen presentations continue to delight audiences with toothy aliens eating their way out of the body … inexplicable … uncommunicative … don't know what … don't want to know … get rid of it! But the pharmaceutical companies aren't complaining ... it was one of the first guides brought to man … how to heal with medicine … drugs and narcotics sometimes … to see with eyes other than our own. Nature intimates … man thinks!

 

In the Indic experience … man tries to prove the point … by building a huge flame … and then jumping into it. They say Herakles did the same thing.  And from the ashes … … … perhaps I can put it another way … its like giving tongue when kissing … we make contact with the flame of the thinking human … and expand the experience of the lick. It may not be the slick … but the proper pronunciation of the words … with which passion expresses itself.