Whatever it is that pulls the pin, that hurls you past the boundaries of your own life into a brief and total beauty, even for a moment, it is enough."
- Jeanette Winterson
Whiskey River
When I read the quote from novelist Jeanette Winterson I heard a sympathetic echo of the poem “at least” I posted recently. The thing that “pulls the pin” for me is a craving for dissolution into the world around me.
It’s that craving, the source of all suffering, that gets me out of the house and staring at things. While I might well not be doing much for any next rebirth I may (or may not) have, when I stand and look deeply at the world it feels like the hard edges of the ego-driven self soften and sometimes disappear. For a moment perhaps, there is no-roy. In those moments of looking I am relieved of physical pain and the daily laundry list of emotional injuries – real and imagined. Whatever images are captured are a distant second to the act of looking itself and are more often than not disappointing doppelgangers.
So – why not just put down the camera and go out and stare? The short answer is that after these sessions of no-roy, I snap back to being the ego clinging lump with a need for people’s reaction : “Oh that’s a nice shot” or “I like those colors.” Maybe somewhere down the road, I’ll be able to put it all down and be like the laughing tattered hermit in his cave on Cold Mountain:
verse 264
I sit on top of a boulder
the stream is icy cold
quiet joys hold a special charm
bare cliffs in the fog enchant
this is such a restful place
the sun goes down and tree shadows sprawl
I watch the ground of my mind
and a lotus comes out of the mud
For now, I make do with occasional fleeting encounters with the mute-making beauty of the world and the peace and rest found in laying down my endless loop of woes.
