Never just give anything away in a relationship. With the growth of any relationship, but particularly as concerns the more intimate variety, there is inevitably an economy of trust and control, the former being traded for the latter back and forth across various contexts. Indeed this is what it means for a relationship to grow: for our expectations of, and allowances for, one another to grow into a stable system of mutual influence. This is the potentially frightening aspect of a growing relationship, for as it grows all reservations must eventually be lost when that special someone whispers in your ear. Such reservations need not be cast off begrudgingly, however, nor without gain; concessions to intimacy and control are valuable, after all, and may be traded like any commodity. Indeed, the skill at making such trades responsibly determines much of what there will be of mutual respect within the relationship.
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Friday, May 1, 2015
Canvas
Reality is ephemeral; it is only our ideas of it that have any solidity to them.
I've always enjoyed unfinished paintings.
My first was a portrait of George Washington that only came down to the tops of his shoulders; if you ever see the full canvas the painting is on, you can see that there was room left to include his whole body, likely seated. I used to pass the time in class imagining what might be there; what sort of chair, or sometimes bicycle, he'd be sitting on; various outfits and poses; several ancient pencil sketches of our first president surfing were born of such musings, I admit. And yet anything like the truth of the image was long since lost to its artist's death; the blank of the canvas can host any picture an onlooker might see fit to imagine there, as indeed may the scene beyond the frame and on to the whole of post-revolutionary America. To be sure, there would be little value in pictures beyond the aesthetic if it were not for our capacity to see past them.
Such is my sense for the "realness" of reality, and of thought. The myriad images which might decorate an unmarred canvas, these I call the truths of the natural world; as there is a bounded infinity of pictures one may display with a particular paint and canvas, so there are a range of logically justifiable "truths" or interpretations of the natural world. In painting, however, and however carefully, we find ourselves backing into a corner.
I've always enjoyed unfinished paintings.
My first was a portrait of George Washington that only came down to the tops of his shoulders; if you ever see the full canvas the painting is on, you can see that there was room left to include his whole body, likely seated. I used to pass the time in class imagining what might be there; what sort of chair, or sometimes bicycle, he'd be sitting on; various outfits and poses; several ancient pencil sketches of our first president surfing were born of such musings, I admit. And yet anything like the truth of the image was long since lost to its artist's death; the blank of the canvas can host any picture an onlooker might see fit to imagine there, as indeed may the scene beyond the frame and on to the whole of post-revolutionary America. To be sure, there would be little value in pictures beyond the aesthetic if it were not for our capacity to see past them.
Such is my sense for the "realness" of reality, and of thought. The myriad images which might decorate an unmarred canvas, these I call the truths of the natural world; as there is a bounded infinity of pictures one may display with a particular paint and canvas, so there are a range of logically justifiable "truths" or interpretations of the natural world. In painting, however, and however carefully, we find ourselves backing into a corner.
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