Jasper

Fiver (Vijfer)

Blackberry & Vermeer

Waterland

Over the watery marsh I soar
The soppy greens pull
At her velvet shirt
Streams pulse
Pent up in torrents
Unleashed, unbending,
Straps of wind in echoing cries
Her dreaming body is awake.
Tongues lilt lullabies
Flames of blue and orange
Lick and roll into the pitch night.

Tugging at surf’s edge
White seabirds lap at bubbles
the jellygreen slapping jetty
Pulses ruddy and red
Where salt brine ripples
Beneath fernfoil
Slippery fingers of stone
And veils of thin tissue
Silhouettes the flow
Like sheets blown on an early April day.

Raging, unchecked,
Pent up torrents of hurtled pieces
a world flung into gurgling surrender.
As in a dream,
An open door
I see her eyes in a painting
Hung on a fresh wall.
Waking on the new side
To enter the old day
Into a room of viewers
Who catch her stare
In the candle’s flicker flare.

Idolatry

Back to the point about Idolatry
Those ‘omni-’ terms with which some epithets given to God begin with, are in fact, ‘negative’ expressions, since they begin with a terrestrial, human bound concepts such as power (‘potentia’) or knowing (‘scientia’) or temporality and they say that ‘God’ is all ‘powerful’, all ‘knowing’ and eternal. The epithets negate the humanly grasped expressions: there is a tree, it is visible, it is present to my vision, it flowers in Spring and so on… God on the other hand is invisible, present to all places and times, capable not only of flowering but of making every tree that ever was or will be flower!
The negative expressions with which we refer to God are indeed the inversions of terms that make sense and ‘work’ in our ordinary language. An asteroid is pretty powerful and in its earth destroying capacity may be conceived a more potent than a nuclear weapon. In conceiving ‘God’ we take that power which the asteroid wields and ‘up the ante’ all the way to say that God is billions of times more powerful than the asteroid. We take the sun and say it is mighty but we say that God is infinitely more mighty (‘omnipotent’).
Hence, as long as we go down this road in attempting to describe God we do not possess a positive concept and these epithets do not add anything to the meaning of the word ‘God’. Medieval scholars such as Aquinas referred to this ‘negative’ attempt to describe God as ‘via negativa’.

The medieval scholastics came up with funny paradoxes based upon God’s omnipotence: for example, is God so powerful that he can build a rock so large that he cannot roll it up a mountain? Or can God create a particle so small that He is unable to see it? I think these paradoxes underscore the fact that ‘negative’ descripitions of God’s being lead us to.
Is there a positive way of describing God?Remember that ‘describe’ already has a connotation of ‘limiting one’s concept to a finite expression’---to sketch in, or outline (de-scribare). Perhaps it is better to say we are attempting to discover God’s Being versus defining or describing Him.
‘Discover’ is better in many ways: it does not imply that a completion of this activity could ever be achieved. True, when we see Him face to face, it may be close to grasping God’s Being, however, even then, there is still the separation of being ‘I’ and God being other, it is not commonly reckoned that we become God in Heaven but that we dwell more closely with Him.
Aquinas makes one of the few ‘positive’ attempts to speak of God---it is the idea that God is ‘esse’ or the meaning of the word ‘to be’. There is more to say on this theme, but let it suffice for now.

One question arises: is Being natural or unnatural. We must investigate what we mean by ‘natural’---is God radically other than Being as some philosophers (Levinas) have suggested? We must consider to what extent the ‘transcendent’ functions. Is there something totally transcendent to nature?

This question underlies the difference between Zen Buddhism and Judaism. In Zen Buddhism
there is no transcendence, or rather all is transcendence. In Judaism, this God ‘Yawheh’ exists, acts and functions outside of time, space, history, etc… And we discover ourselves radically immanent, within this created world of creatures that this omnipotent, and quite alien Creator has created, we must imagine for some good, at least for his good pleasure.Somehow it is this conception of God that is perhaps most ‘human’ sketch of God in the sense that the sketch of the form of god as a horse (Xenophanes) is the best a horse can do.

Man conceives of God negatively and in terms of transcendence and as something alien and radically ‘other’. Certainly people may conceive of God as a ‘grandfather’ floating in an Empyrean Realm, but this is not in accord with how these same people conduct and view their lives and the activity of matter. It is thoughtless, since the same person is afraid to fall in an elevator shaft, and yet they conceive of God as a material being violating all of the rules of matter. Oxen conceive their gods as oxen, and men conceive their gods as men. As for us, we are not concerned with the anthropomorphic depiction of God, not even in its negative theology (im-mortal, omni-present, etc…) We want to know the truth concerning ‘God’, or simply we want to know the ‘truth’. Since it follows that if God exists, this must have some bearing on truth! And vice-versa. Hence we do not applaud well meaning attempts at religious folk attempting to legitimate their beliefs with false accounts, faulty physics, and anthropomorphic projections as great as the horse and oxen. No we are searching to discover the truth of God Himself!
IdolatryWe are well familiar with many versions of idolatry: flag worship, worship of one’s state and government, brand name coveting and shopping, children’s success and beauty to name a few more prevalent forms of idolatry in the contemporary US culture. The most original form and hence the most radical form of idolatry concerns the idolatry of God Himself. Incidentally it is on this score that God most vehemently protests.

We will find examples of passionate women saying that they “adore” and “worship” the ground their lover walks on, etc… This is a hyped up emotional lie since only the true God is worthy of such praise and no mortal man is worthy of such praise (unless they all are!).
Idolatry in the most radical sense stems from attempts to define ‘God’----every attempt I at best partial and by definition can never attain to the complete goal or grasping or understanding God.

When Christians speak of God in a manner that betrays that they grasp His identity and manner of operation, they are forming an ‘idol’. Examples of this are well meaning evangelists who argue that since the Word of God is inerrant, even God is bound to adhere to it…God Himself is bound by the Bible to execute His designs. What a classic example of anthropomorphism (oxen, horses) and yet what a classic example of idolatry. Xenophanes states: “The Ethiopians say that their gods are snub-nosed and black, the Thracians that theirs have light blue eyes and red hair.”
Here someone uses the Bible as technique of “forcing God’s Hand,” denying God’s freedom, and at the same time satisfying that all too human rational urge to see the paradigm through to the very end come “hell or highwater!”

Aesthetics (Lock Mountain)

Aesthetics
What most appealed to me in philosophy as schoolboy was the freshness and strangeness which adolescence consists of and to see this mirrored in the Greek Philosophy: Greek philosophy as a whole inseparable: from its mother culture: its Acropolis, its marathon, its plays, its oracles, Pinder, Aristophanes... When one meets philosophy early on in one’s path it is indeed a ‘blessing’. Still, this young person will never quite make it back home. The blessing falls to those who would follow philosophy, would follow its muse. The blessing is to see things in wholes as in painting and wholes within wholes, such that when one sees the forest floor in early spring, it is a perfect grasp of the essence, in a mood or feeling of music, this understanding is the philosopher’s main preoccupation. The philosopher looks around at other people and wonders why they are not enthusiastically pursuing philosophy as well, instead they are met with scorn and mockery for searching after the truth of being. It is altogether odd.

Still “those who seek, find,” Jesus always spoke in truths. If you seek, then you will find. ‘Find’ mirrors ‘seek’. Or another way of saying this: “seeking is finding”. The honest pursuit qualifies as its own achievement. But if ‘seeking is finding’ then we need to adjust our ordinary view---that is to say, seeking leads to a grasping and holding onto something concerning truth, beauty and God, so on…If ‘seeking is finding’ or ‘finding is seeking’ then we don’t actually get to an “answer” because “answers kill questions”. It is common to seek for a forgotten road, and then coming upon it, at that point the quest is over. The key thing with philosophy is its ‘freshness’ rash, impetuous, undisciplined, teaming with life, and early strains of romance, it doesn’t want to get to the end, or to get to the point when in fact it is always already right there in front of you.

Philosophy is the art of the question. Don’t race to an answer to stopgap, to cease thinking, satisfied. Philosophy is a poverty on the one hand and an incredible lush banquet on the other. So it goes on and around, and this is what drives the “lets play the game of society to the utmost” to anger and in part accounts for the scorn philosophers suffer . We’ve all been there and seen the scorn and often the mockery which the philosopher has to tolerate. And for what? Oh yeah he wants to help them discover the truth! For this he is mocked and ridiculed. We’ve seen the well meaning citizens dishing out their fair degree of stored-up malice, treating the most ethereal ‘space cadet’ with no shortage of enmity and rage. He must take it because he “ain’t goin’ back no more.”

Once onto philosophy it is a habit that’s pretty hard to shake. So, no, don’t worry about the philosopher even though he’s an endangered species---you know like a Dicey-eared platypus…It’s a marsupial, not even a mammal. Don’t worry about that guy with the odd glare, like Aqualung, grubby vermin, Thunderbird swilling…[…]
Yes, this effort to end the dialogue, kills the spirit of philosophy, hence the innate dislike of fussy housekeepers dead set on having meals at the same time, the practice of philosophy is always a ‘persona non grata’ with domestic life. Wives cannot bear it, mothers cannot bear it, businesspeople, men of affairs and practical minded people cannot bear it---I do not simply mean that they will not participate in philosophy, but that they will do everything they can to send it out of doors. In the thousands of tables and kitchens I have visited in my life, there were only one or two which tolerated and even welcomed honest philosophical inquiry without application to “real life”, without application to some contemporary social or political question, without some interruption for work or school or lawnwork. I daresay there have only been a handful of truly philosophical discussions in my entire experience. The philosopher is an endangered species.

The Good Use of Reason
It becomes clearer as we venture further into the future constructed upon technological applications of reason that what worked in a moderate sense and for a time being, does not work when pressed to the limit. For example, yes labor saving devices freed householders from work both inside and outside, and yet, the amount of projects to be done also multiplied. Instead of using the ‘free time’ for recreation or even self-improvement, contemporary man simply works on more projects with the time “won back” with labor saving devices. Further, such things as washer and dryer or dishwasher cost more, and this requires more wage earning. The idea of humanistic psychology failed terribly. I for one was taught that the time won back from ordinary labor tasks would be used for the enhancement of human life. This is blatantly not the case!

It is difficult to argue that life was better in the ‘70s or in any other previous era (“The Golden Era is always behind us.”), but in my view the ‘70s had a lot more to offer in terms of simple decent civility.

The Flight from Labor
American citizens are on the flight from honest, hard work and labor. The use of equipment renders digging holes irrelevant, now the task becomes the rental and transportation of a large John Deere digger. It would appear that the contemporary citizen is lazy, afraid of having to do the difficult work that immigrant laborers thankfully contribute to the American culture. Instead their tasks consist in handling phone calls, programming data in air conditioned cubicles. This we are told is ‘work’! If this is work then every computer user should be paid for simply using their computer since their “work” contributes to the overall emerging structure of the internet.

Leaning on technological strategies for purifying the water we drink, testing the safety of our food, the safety of materials to build our homes, we become a cog in a wheel in a grand culture of conformity to “progress” and technological monoculture. As more and more of our ordinary life is relegated to this type of ‘rationality’, we become dependent (literally) on a monolithic technological expert society, and this is not even the government, per se. That is, it is not democratically sanctioned, to the contrary, it is corporatist, for profit and extremely elite with no polling. It is a ‘plutocracy’.

When we think about the humble and independent roots of American individualism as beautifully stated in Emerson, we find that America 2007 nothing could be farther from being American. These are as unlike as day and night. Whatever obligation may have existed to honor the American government in the past no longer exists, because it is no longer ‘America’ we are talking about.

Show me your independent and autonomous citizens! Show me a man or woman who can think for themselves. Show me a citizen educated in the traditions of his ancestors. What I would not give for freedom of speech as it existed in the ‘70s. Fascist “newsreporters” such as O’Reilly or Sean Hannity mock, deride and rudely insult anyone who would question the state generated view, the official sanctioned ideology . Sometime I will write more about my experience in the Soviet Union in the early ‘80s, when the madman Reagan declared “the bombing begins in 15 minutes.” That made my trip so safe and secure, thanks Ron! At any rate, Soviet life achieved a high degree of moral functioning as I observed. This is the fact the “cold warriors” cannot admit to themselves: the Soviet “experiment” was (despite blatant and gruesome failures) fairly successful in promoting a common cultural and social life which was even law-abiding. Morever it was a bold experiment for which no precedent had existed. The U.S. is not so opposed to communism ideologically, for if they were they would have been better educated in Marxism, as it is wie to understand the opponent. No, the real issue was not communism vs. capitalism but world domination. The Soviet Union harbored a messianic agenda as did the U.S. Herein lies the collision of these governments.

Now that the “bipolar” state of global domination has been reduced to a self proclaimed unipower (NeoCon Preemptive Dogma), it has (lo and behold!) seen fit to assimilate a great deal of the terrible Soviet human injustices while relegating the positive achievements to the dustpan of history (undergraduate American education). Now we have incarceration techniques at high schools, we have ‘extraordinary rendition’, we have ‘political correctness’ (Stalin’s ‘politicheskii pravitelnost’), we have 24/7 propaganda concerning freedom and democracy, while the citizens are dumbed down to be ignorant of the contents of the constitution, we have internal spies, neighbor watch, presidential elections that are rigged, the president speaks in a technological jargon devoid of meaning, waging world wars without any desire to end them, we have more working people spending more of their wages just to maintain what they had before, appalling medical care, appalling standards in the government agencies, Neanderthal standards in education, …need I go on?

As I said, unfortunately we did not assimilate the positive features of Soviet Communism: superior education, idealism based upon truly Christian tenets, and in may ways we can say that the Soviets were toughminded and honest. In the case of the U.S. we want to hold on to the nostalgia and good times feeling of the ‘70s, i.e. as “PR”, while in fact our government performs all of its
atrocities hidden far from view (Guantanamo, Abu Gharaib) while it depicts the president at May Day parades or in classrooms with children and attempts to portray him as human or ordinary or even “American”. In my estimation our government officials no longer deserve to be considered American citizens, since they have violated the essence of democracy with the Patriot Act, spying on citizens, arrest without warrant, to mention a few of their fascist agendas---and not to mention the mad urge to create identification methods for every citizen which unifies every aspect of their communication and shopping tendencies, library books, etc… A veritable fascist panopticon to use Foucault’s expression.

Why are we any further from God now (since He is everywhere and at all places) than in the future?

Xenophanes

I have often begun an introductory class in philosophy with the Famous quote of Xenophanes (d. 480 B.C.) which states: “But if cattle and horses or lions had hands, or were able to draw with their hands and do the work that men can do, horses would draw the forms of the gods like horses, and cattle like cattle, and they would make their bodies such as they each had themselves.”
Each species would form their own god in their own species’ image. What an amazing figure must exist for rabbits! And whales!

You may think I am pushing my undergraduates to a form of radical relativism with Xenophanes’ quote. Certainly it can be read that way. However, my goal is to demonstrate the utter lack of conformity to reality of any species-bound attempt to depict god, i.e. to render one’s god in one’s own image.

Are mortal men constructing God in their own image? Unfortunately, and in almost every case, the answer is a resounding “yes!” The expression ‘flowering lilac tree’ captures to a certain extent the phenomenon it refers to.
The expression ‘God’ refers also to this ‘flowering lilac tree’ in the sense that ‘God’ refers to the Being which creates and sustains all other ‘beings’, including the lilac tree. And yet, ‘the expression ‘God’ refers to more than this---a unified entity, eternal, omniscient, omnipresent, etc…

To construct an image of one’s God is by definition ‘idolatry’. The real violation here being that one places something else before God. This is more common than you may imagine. Every time we say ‘god’ we are in some sense making ‘god’ work or make sense in our language, obviously our language will fall short of expressing the fulfillment of being, pure beauty, in short ‘awe’. (Awe is the term that describes the appropriate human response to God’s Presence.) We cut short, truncate, hypostasize, the ‘momentary glimpse’ and make it function in a predicate-verb syntax.
One day Professor Franz Mayr and I were discussing Plato, and he made a very insightful remark concerning a very small detail (it seemed to me) in the Plato text, I can’t remember which dialogue, we were discussing this ‘momentary glimpse’ or shall I say ‘momentary grasp’. It is something you catch ‘at the corner of your eye’ a momentary arrest of the ordinary and a glimpse into true goodness and a grasping of the kingdom of beauty. For Plato, this is what philosophy is all about---getting this ‘glimpse’ out of the corner of one’s eye---not a resolution, or answer, strategy or plan. Philosophy according to our culture has almost nothing to do with ‘philosophia’ for the Greeks. An analogy that may hold: the devoted Bach listener when confronted with contemporary street pop ‘music’ honestly wonders is music the same in both cases?
How many academic philosophers have you met, read or studied with sparked “a sense of wonder”? Well if they did not, then you deserve your money back, this is ‘pedagogy’ or learning of some sort but it is not ‘philosophia’.

Twelve Trees of Life

Close of Day

"Fear Not"

Weathered and Striped Cross

May Queen

View over Altoona, PA from the Buckhorn

I am experimenting with this technique which I call 'digital oil'. I aim at an oil painting using the digital camera and "manipulating" the image. I aim to give the effect of 'analog' grasping the entire phenomenon in its moment of manifestation.

Carrolltown Series

In the first place an advertisement for tobacco. Years later, a kind of 'relic' of a bygone era which prove that art wins out in the end. Ironically we cringe at the contemporary ads violating nature and view this as somehow 'art'.

Angel's Light

Graves in May

The Fabric of May

Angels Abiding

Vincent (as a bunny)

Woodpecker at Work (digital oil)

Mystic Knoll

In Council

Pennsylvania Roadside Series

Rabbithenge

Mystery Lilacs

Just Beyond Focus