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The Mystic

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true artand science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonderand stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”

– Albert Einstein

Regardless of technology and science the mystical will always be.

Linear vs Cyclical

Around twenty years ago, a Marxist friend accused me of “linear thinking”.

I am coming around to understanding what I think he meant…it takes me a while sometimes.

I think that a person can view history either as a linear progression or a series of cycles in which civilizations are formed, mature and decline and return to barbarism.

Thinking back, I was thinking linear. Not so much anymore.

Big Box

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy?

– Isaiah 55:2

Nightshade

“No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
       Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d
       By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
               Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
       Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
               Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;
       For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
               And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.”

from Ode on Melancholy by John Keats

I feel like I have given poetry short shrift. I don’t know much about Keats. I see him as a mystic, a knower of things that are from beyond.

Embrace the melancholy. All beauty contains melancholy.

Maybe, it’s possible to somewhat bypass fear and anger by embracing the melancholy…let it in.