It is never the thing but the version of the thing

 

 

Dry Birds Are Fluttering in Blue Leaves

It is never the thing but the version of the thing: 

The fragrance of the woman not her self, 

Her self in her manner not the solid block, 

The day in its color not perpending time, 

Time in its weather, our most sovereign lord, 

The weather in words and words in sounds of sound. 

These devastations are the divertissements 

Of a destroying spiritual that digs-a-dog, 

Whines in its hole for puppies to come see, 

Springs outward, being large, and, in the dust, 

Being small, inscribes ferocious alphabets, 

Flies like a bat expanding as it flies, 

Until its wings bear off night’s middle witch; 

And yet remains the same, the beast of light, 

Groaning in half-exploited gutturals 

The need of its element, the final need 

Of final access to its element— 

Of access like the page of a wiggy book, 

Touched suddenly by the universal flare 

For a moment, a moment in which we read and repeat 

The eloquences of light’s faculties.          

                                                                                    

 Wallace Stevens, 1879-1955

Only as a child we live through moments of true revelation, true originality, true first times. This is the time when we discover the world and for a while everything we experience is new, astounding, surprising, exciting and truly baffling.

Then, as time moves on and we get older and more used to this strange world we have been thrown into, things start to repeat themselves. We discover patterns, we create categories and pigeon-holes, we sample, classify and structure and weave out of this complexity a cloth of understanding in order to make this world comprehendible and endurable. Out of new, possibly frightening things we create less frightening, easily recognizable and manageable patterns.

This is the time when the world for most begins to loose its magic. Only a few preserve a childish sense of wonder. But if you do this, then the world never stops to surprise and everything, a flower, a landscape, an object, is not just something which falls under the category flower, landscape or object but is an individual manifestation out of the great variety of flowers, landscapes and objects.

The world is a conglomeration, a cumulation of varieties. There might not be such a difference between two flowers on a meadow but if you look closer there is all the difference. And most of times the difference lies within yourself. It is you who makes one flower differ from the other because you allow it to differ, you allow it to become an individual and not a category.

“It is never the thing but the version of the thing.“

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