blawg

i like 'looking at' rather than 'see' because the preposition draws attention to, signifies, the third element of any experience: relationship between subject and object. the path between the two is not pure, but mediate. 'mediate' is meaty; i like that 'immediate' is expressed in the negative. why do we use it more than 'mediate' as an adjective? perhaps because all is mediated. the *immediate*, this big ugly meaty word means purely, without interuption in time or space, without modification, untouched, untainted. it is more easily explained in negative terms, you see. positive phrases sound vague, like whatever you want them to be: divine, spiritual, transcendent. 'immediately.' the very saying it muddies the listener's experience, stains him with mundane mediacy. we butterflies of faith, on the contrary, we want to flutter in the sunlight, dance amid the petrushent petals. freely fly among concepts and insights, alighting upon flowers and fences in leaps of wisdom. we have metamorphosed into a man. and all becomes muddy and morbid again. the mediate always draws you back down. always there, its heaviness, its ugliness, its beauty. aesthetics--i return. ugliness is a frame, and so is beauty; why not combine them? ugny. back to the desk. an aesthetic way of looking at the object of mediation, the mud. a swirling pool of life, a teeming spawn of earth, the mother.