"To see things whole is to be whole."
Henry Miller, Big Sur
Henry Miller, Big Sur
This is a very "journey's end" type of picture. Having driven across the country, north to south, east to west, in some gigantic genuflection on the map, this is where I ended up: The Coast. Specifically the coast at Big Sur, California - the "Big Land of the South." Journey's end - except of course that it didn't end there because there's always the next place; the story doesn't end, just a place you stop before what happened next... But in terms of my time on the road this marked the end of one journey before continuing on.
Sean, who had travelled across the country with me, had by now flown back to England and I was headed to a retreat with the hermits of the New Camaldoli. Kairos, the name of my trailer-hermitage, the time to stop and be still and process all of this "road going." The fullness of the present moment after the onrush on the road.
Sean, who had travelled across the country with me, had by now flown back to England and I was headed to a retreat with the hermits of the New Camaldoli. Kairos, the name of my trailer-hermitage, the time to stop and be still and process all of this "road going." The fullness of the present moment after the onrush on the road.
"Seeking intuitively, one's destination is never in a beyond of time or space but always here and now. If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things. Which is to say that there are no limits to vision. Similarly, there are no limits to paradise. Any paradise worth the name can sustain all flaws in creation and remain undiminished, untarnished."
Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch, p.25
One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things. Somehow in this kairos fullness of the moment everything was pregnant with meaning; everything was pointing the same way, saying the same thing over and over. A new way of looking at things - that was the recurring theme right from that snowbound day at The Beaches, Toronto and the Leuty Lifeguard Station - dismantaling the illusions of displacement; opening my eyes in the ice world of Gethsemani; and startlingly in the reflection in a Cadillac fender outside the Sun Studios in Memphis, Tennessee...
Zen photography? Perhaps. Certainly a new way of looking at things after driving eighteen hours from the frozen north through the night to arrive in the springtime of the south. And I love the image simply for what it is quite apart from the many associations it has for me. No limits to vision.
Henry Miller first went to Big Sur in 1944 and lived in various locations before settling on Partington Ridge in 1947 where he remained for many years. He would have been there in January 1949 when Kerouac and Cassady made their epic journey across the country; he was still there in 1960 when Kerouac spent some weeks in Bixby Canyon just up the coast in Lawrence Ferlinghetti's cabin, the scene of his own harrowing as related in his book, Big Sur. For Kerouac the experience was a season in hell; for Miller it was paradise as reflected in the title of his experiences in Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch - in his triptych "The Millenium" Bosch used oranges and other fruits to symbolize the delights of Paradise.
No limits to vision ... no limits to paradise. One's destination, Miller wrote, is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things; and he links this new way of looking at things with paradise which I understand as a way of being - being at peace - a beatific state, a beatitude. A new outlook on the world and what happens in our lives - a new way of looking at things which is to say there are no limits to vision. Similarly, there are no limits to paradise. Miller's words and my own become intertwined, as his thoughts reflect my own and at the same time guide them along new pathways and give them shape and expression. He continues:
"Any paradise worth the name can sustain all flaws in creation and remain undiminshed, untarnished."
Reflections in
"This contemplative picture was taken mid-morning after Sean and I had visited the legendary Sun Studio in
Zen photography? Perhaps. Certainly a new way of looking at things after driving eighteen hours from the frozen north through the night to arrive in the springtime of the south. And I love the image simply for what it is quite apart from the many associations it has for me. No limits to vision.
Henry Miller first went to Big Sur in 1944 and lived in various locations before settling on Partington Ridge in 1947 where he remained for many years. He would have been there in January 1949 when Kerouac and Cassady made their epic journey across the country; he was still there in 1960 when Kerouac spent some weeks in Bixby Canyon just up the coast in Lawrence Ferlinghetti's cabin, the scene of his own harrowing as related in his book, Big Sur. For Kerouac the experience was a season in hell; for Miller it was paradise as reflected in the title of his experiences in Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch - in his triptych "The Millenium" Bosch used oranges and other fruits to symbolize the delights of Paradise.
No limits to vision ... no limits to paradise. One's destination, Miller wrote, is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things; and he links this new way of looking at things with paradise which I understand as a way of being - being at peace - a beatific state, a beatitude. A new outlook on the world and what happens in our lives - a new way of looking at things which is to say there are no limits to vision. Similarly, there are no limits to paradise. Miller's words and my own become intertwined, as his thoughts reflect my own and at the same time guide them along new pathways and give them shape and expression. He continues:
"Any paradise worth the name can sustain all flaws in creation and remain undiminshed, untarnished."
Big Sur, p.25
Wow! This is heady stuff. We tend to associate ideas of "paradise" with "perfection" by which we often mean "without flaw" but here Miller challenges and changes that perspective. True paradise can sustain all flaws in creation and remain undiminished, untarnished, because it depends on how we see, how we look at things, whether we see them as flaws, imperfections or not. Once more it is about dismantling our illusions and seeing clearly.
The very next page Miller writes:
"There seems to be an unwritten law here which insists that you accept what you find and like it, profit by it, or you are cast out."
The very next page Miller writes:
"There seems to be an unwritten law here which insists that you accept what you find and like it, profit by it, or you are cast out."
Big Sur, p.26
You accept what you find and like it, profit by it, or you are cast out - out of this paradise, that is. What he means here is not that someone is judging and casting out, rather we cast ourselves out of paradise by how we relate to it - "we make our own heaven and our own hell," he even quotes the popular saying. Once again we return to the theme of acceptance and surrender and embracing the fullness of the present moment to arrive at a new destination, a new way of seeing.
"Sit in your cell as in paradise."
(From a card on the table in each hermitage/cell at New Camaldoli, Big Sur)
DOXA - GLORY
(From a card on the table in each hermitage/cell at New Camaldoli, Big Sur)
DOXA - GLORY
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