Intellect by itself (not that it ever really is a function by itself) is not the only way, and not the best way, that we navigate reality, that we determine what is valuable or decide what action is best.  Within what I’ve called the higher function, there is a capacity to sense non-conceptual, experienced resemblances, affinities, correspondences, a capacity like what we call intuition, but more than intuition.  I’ve already written a bit about this in earlier posts (in July through October of 2011 – you’ll find a timeline in the column to the right of this post).  But now I don’t want to try to discuss it, but rather to give you a related line of illustrations from my life.

When I was a boy, often troubled by loneliness or terrors, I often sat in my bedroom at night, at my triangular corner desk (which I still have, in this study!), in the soft light from a shaded lamp.  That was where I did much of the reading that entranced and helped to save me, and most of my writing.

Sometimes, though, I liked just to sit there at night, listening to the Wind and the noises of traffic from two intersecting highways a block away.  That was a sound of things continually coming and passing, of open spaces, reaching through the sky, softened by the darkness that I knew was out there, that I seemed to feel without needing to look through the window.

I could try to find ways to talk about that pleasure, though it was other and more than pleasure that I felt.  Both its effects inside me and the causes of those effects were and still are part of the Mystery.  I still have that desk, I still live within a block or so of a major highway, and I still listen to those sounds in my study at night or in bed before I fall asleep.  It’s a comfort and a kind of inspiration, though of or to what I can’t say.

Analysis or naming or description won’t capture it, but it reached out and found a kinship over the years with certain words that I found in my reading.

I’ve quoted before in these posts this short Chippewa poem, precious to me, adapted by Robert Bly from a prose translation by Frances Desmore:

Sometimes I walk about pitying myself,

and all the time

I am being carried by great winds across the sky.

I’ve also quoted for you these words that I treasure from the conversation that Jesus had with Nicodemus, a member of the Sanhedrin (the Jewish religious council) in Jerusalem, who came to Him at night with his questions, because he was afraid to have his orthodox brethren see him with that “heretic” and “blasphemer” Jesus:

The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.

John 3:8.

Lastly for now (and I imagine this will resonate with many photographers, poets, or other artists who may read it), here is the opening from the first of several travel diaries by Matsuo Basho featuring his haiku interspersed with his prose.  The book’s title was rendered by a translator, Nobuyuki Yuasa, as The Records of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton:

           “In this mortal frame of mine which is made of a hundred bones and nine orifices there is something, and this something is called a wind-swept spirit for lack of a better name, for it is much like a thin drapery that is torn and swept away at the slightest stir of the wind.  This something in me took to Writing Poetry years ago, merely to amuse itself at first, but finally making it its lifelong business.  It must be admitted, however, that there were times when it sank into such dejection that it was almost ready to drop its pursuit, or again times that it was so puffed up with pride that it exulted in vain victories over the others.  Indeed, ever since it began to write poetry, it has never found peace with itself, always wavering between doubts of one kind and another.  At one time it wanted to gain security by entering the service of a court, and at another it wished to measure the depth of its ignorance by trying to be a scholar, but it was prevented from either by its unquenchable love of poetry.  The fact is, it knows no other art than the art of writing poetry, and therefore, it hangs onto it more or less blindly.

            “Saigyo in traditional poetry, Sogi in linked verse, Sesshu in painting, Rikyu in tea ceremony, and indeed all who have achieved real excellence in any art, possess one thing in common, that is, a mind to obey nature, to be one with nature, throughout the four seasons of the year.  Whatever such a mind sees is a flower, and whatever such a mind dreams of is the moon.  It is only a barbarous mind that sees other than the flower, merely an animal mind that dreams of other than the moon.  The first lesson for the artist is, therefore, to learn how to overcome such barbarity and animality, to follow nature, to be one with nature.”

In my next post, I’ll bring you what Charles Baudelaire wrote about “Correspondences” in the realm beyond the terms, categories, and analyses of criticism and intellect.