Of Mere Being
Wallace Stevens had it right:
Of Mere Being
The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze distance.
A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.
You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.
The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.
The palm is at the end rather than the beginning, but maybe the beginning and the end are one and the same: the correlational circle absolutized. Thought is not equated with the bronze distance but is by necessity the contingent condition upon which all thinking of being is. The thinking of this object is without human meaning or feeling, it is deanthropomorphic and decenters the human from its authority over all judgements, be they aesthetic, ethical, etc. Because of this the reason of things slips and slides being contingent and momentary, and is no longer sufficient for founding the necessity of beings such as this gold-feathered bird through an obsolete metaphysic or ontology. What emerges is the translation of sound and visual keys through the thinking of being as it situates the palm on the edge of that correlative paradox in a non-metaphysical thought projected into the object itself. It is just here that the powers or capacities of contingent necessity move in the branches producing change and variation. The wind is both medium and agent of change, the carrier of the sensual objects that touch and connect and relate to all other things. The spark ignites the thinking of the thing-in-itself as the fire-fangled feathers dangle down without rhyme or reason. Instead revealing only the absolute contingent necessity at the heart of all real objects as they withdraw or relate through the powers or capacities of their mysterious core.
Of Mere Being
The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze distance.
A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.
You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.
The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.
The palm is at the end rather than the beginning, but maybe the beginning and the end are one and the same: the correlational circle absolutized. Thought is not equated with the bronze distance but is by necessity the contingent condition upon which all thinking of being is. The thinking of this object is without human meaning or feeling, it is deanthropomorphic and decenters the human from its authority over all judgements, be they aesthetic, ethical, etc. Because of this the reason of things slips and slides being contingent and momentary, and is no longer sufficient for founding the necessity of beings such as this gold-feathered bird through an obsolete metaphysic or ontology. What emerges is the translation of sound and visual keys through the thinking of being as it situates the palm on the edge of that correlative paradox in a non-metaphysical thought projected into the object itself. It is just here that the powers or capacities of contingent necessity move in the branches producing change and variation. The wind is both medium and agent of change, the carrier of the sensual objects that touch and connect and relate to all other things. The spark ignites the thinking of the thing-in-itself as the fire-fangled feathers dangle down without rhyme or reason. Instead revealing only the absolute contingent necessity at the heart of all real objects as they withdraw or relate through the powers or capacities of their mysterious core.