It Comes to a Certain Point in a Quote by Andre Breton

 

"Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low, cease to be perceived as contradictions."

--André Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism.

Sounds Jungian, as if surrealism is a transcendent function. Sur also implies sub. Like subconscious, a popular cultural term for the unconscious. Often people think of trans to mean rise above, but as the I Ching hexogram of 'The Tower' tells us (Wilhelm edition), 'trans' means across and does not mean only up. The tower affords a wide view because of its height.

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This does remind me of a poem I wrote a long time ago about Indeterminism in poetry. It is all a vantage point but indeterminant poems do not exactly or quite have a vantage point. I wonder just how much of that began with the Language Poets when nothing else mattered much except for the language sounds. The Cocteau Twins songs have mastered the language poetry in their verses. The voice becomes an instrument. It conveys sounds, emotions, but no "real" or distinguishable meaning.

But this is different, this is transcendence. I guess that one way transcendence can be identified and then discerned in an indeterminatnt poem is when you have to ask transcendeing what? Whatever the symbol is even if you cannot quite put a finger on it. Then diuscern what in it is "real."

The main point here is, before I digressed, that Breton spoke of the poles of opposites as did Jung.

Fools in the Tarot--Then and Now

      

     Better late than never?!?! This is no April Fool's joke that finally at the end of April I can post some things about fools and foolishness because my phone cam started working again. So here is a painting I did way back when sometime during the 80s when I was taking drawing and watercolor classes at BGSU. I drew the sketch in a drawing from life class I took then painted it later using gouache in a watercolor class I took. At the time I was researching various historical Tarot decks and thought I would try my hand at creating my own deck. This painting was going to be The Fool card.

You can see that her hair looks a bit like a jester hat. There is a fire behind her either just catching flames or dying down (reader's choice), the fire can be indicative of the burn of embarrassment and/or righteous indignation, and she frowns because this upsets her pride. It also hints at feeling naked and exposed as a fool, reflective of people telling stories about dreaming of being naked in front of a group of people--and here was a model posing nude and unashamed. Fire here was not intended to indicate an astrological Fire sign; indeed, the model was an Earth sign and my fool-ish interp was not personal to her or what I thought of her, but because I had been studying Fool cards. Like many of my old paintings, this one disappeared, and all that is left of it is its image and my memory preserved in this photo. Thus you see the camera flash on the glass from its framing.
      I hope you have all had a Happy April Fool's month!
      Later I will try to find old European tarot cards of The Fool. I am searching for images without copyright. Italy and France both had old decks that I have seen before but cannot find them right now. I haven't been blogging because I have been trying to get a lot of my typing work done on my manuscripts. So I am not sure when I will get back to this--it is just that I came across photos of my old artwork the other day and when I had written about the tarot cards I was once upon a time designing...so felt like posting this.