Swimming in Thought

For Giggles

It is not our purpose to know every thought that can be thought; it is to recognize each thought as it arises, to learn to see the thought and honor it for what it is: the thought you didn't heretofore know existed, the thought you now know exists, a different thought than you were having at the moment you came upon the thought, a complement to the thought you were having when you came across the thought, and the thought you thought and is now part of your thinking heritage.

For HistoRomancical Appreciation

Portrait for Strand Magazine

Sidney Pagent

(where the famous "detective hat" first appeared)

When I look at this painting of Herr. Hermann Hesse:

I see Watson:

*sigh

Who serves as a conscience for Sherlock Holmes, and metaphorically as our own. In Ritchie's first "Sherlock Holmes" film, where after getting thrown in prison Watson says: "I've been analyzing why I do all the things you ask of me. And my conclusion is: I'm psychologically disturbed." 

'I'm psychologically disturbed' becomes a meta-comment on Watson's strange unstoppable loyalty to Holmes. Place Watson as a metaphor for our conscience, and we see why. Watson is a loyalist, in this case, a loyalist to our thoughts as they arise. He is us viewing experience from a space of existential awareness. 

Existing in a state of existential awareness feels like swimming in one's own thoughts until you fly away with them. 

The existential point of reference held in these thoughts is an inherent recognition of the existential thought inherent in every thought, its highest conceivable ideal as well as its more lofty ambitions. Which lofty ambitions get acted upon depends on the inherent nature of the essence exisentializing, which could range from playful to organic to inquisitive or indulgent. 

If one is in possession of a highly sensual side, one might paint or sing or otherwise physically engage in a medium that can shape the many thought-feelings human beings experience, making them visible for others, satisfying a self-hedonistic impulse. 

If one is in possession of a highly analytical side, one might align with a character such as Watson in order to vicariously, and sometimes actually, live out one's own imagination though the actions of feelings of a thought under examination. 

If one participates in Sherlockholmesian adventures ~ and is in possession of a highly analytical side ~ and is in possession of a highly sensual side ~ and is in the habitude of positioning oneself in the space most conducive to those which produce the experience of epiphany ~ one exists in a state of existential creativity, wherever that state continuously exists in the cumulative essence that is the being in present engagement. 

This highly illuminated state lightens the otherwise intolerable nights and is comforting and wonderful. It is sweet and bitter according to our own making, to our own inclinations. Fate might have an inexorable trod over our external existence, but the experience of 'freedom of self' trumps the notion of non-existence. It is similar in sentiment to the statement: 

Better to have loved and lost 

than to have never loved at all. 

Such is the profundity and fecundity of existential existence. Awareness of awareness, irrespective of how long it may or might not exist. 

Existing inside ...

and outside ...

And ...

That is where my dearest and brightest dreams have ranged ~ to hear for the duration of a heartbeat the universe and the totality of life in its mysterious, innate harmony. 

The Three Graces (1504-05)

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (1483- - 1520)

Musée Condé, Chantilly

The excessive radiance of such moments cast eternal shadows on our other thoughts. The feeling of enchanting liberation, of suspended bliss, is akin to seeing the world through butterfly wings: stirring at the faintest hint of movement, hastened by each experience, vanishing into each as they arrive and finally, flying away. 

இڿڰۣ