ETHEREAL TIREDNESS
& HOROSCOPES WEEK OF JANUARY 29
Spring workshop: MYSTICS & HERETICS
Alchemy of the Word Recordings
“The deeper meaning of truth is a shared mood between things. Truth and beauty converge in friendliness. In the landscape of inactivity, things are wedded to each other. The landscape shines.” — Byung-Chul Han, Vita Contemplativa: In Praise of Inactivity
The deafening noise of the internet!
How to find silence—another noise running counter to daily grinds?
Yesterday was the fourth and final Alchemy of the Word class, lovely. We spent January thinking about: the symbology of the raven as the melancholic start of an (artistic) process, alchemical vessels and furnaces, container as content, Mercury as medium, madness, and memory, and the elusive philosopher’s stone in relation to finishing a work/locating its fuel. Elixir and rock. (Kate Finazzi wrote a very interesting account of her experience in the class, and clinical psychology as prima materia, here.)
In his new book Vita Contemplativa: In Praise of Inactivity (which I talked about with Barrett on CONTAIN this week) Byung-Chul Han expands on Handke’s ethereal tiredness which, he says, “signifies spirit in the mode of contemplation.” Landscape mingles into one married thing, glimmering as in a Cézanne painting.
The ethereally tired don’t produce themselves. The ethereally tired are suspended in a zone of inactivity, impressionistic and without grasping. The ethereally tired loosen their hold on reputation and identity—maybe loopy, funny. Still but not stuck exactly.
Today’s brief horoscopes take Vita Contemplativa as their point of departure. Horoscopes as a few words to contemplate for a week. Horoscopes as letters to stare at until they go blurry. Horoscopes as hour makers-markers, bolting and unbolting what’s around. Made under the influence of my own (ethereal??) post-alchemical tiredness…..
