Metaphors on vision (1963)

knees, hi anger at his uneternalness, that he'll never see his biography unless he autos it himself, the aesthete begins cocooning toward his Innards by demanding immediate Internal return, release in creation/ self-knowledge, etc. When each expression refuses echo and he discovers art unmirrors, this budding Narcissus either builds a boat, sits banked waiting his reflection, or plunges b\. From here on out all endeavor depends on depth, and aJ I reasoning only confuses each issue. He exhausts excuses until each art work seems more sneeze than statement. His entire being becoming Instrument for the expression of Incomprehensible forces, he finds these, not his, expressions mold him after the fashion they will any attenuated audience. Being the medium, however, he's more familiar with the material then most, inherits worlds of words If poet, sounds if composer, etc., these gifts, given only when unasked after, exclude from the early epileptic "fallout," the floater, and the reflective one. Yet*all fall, the artist "!n,rand only surviving thru a formal resistance granting the illusion of bottomless descent. My eye, tnen, Inspirallrng, frictionlng style-wise, being instrument for striking sparks t is bequeathed visions at every illumination it's struck to create ... Similar vistas being available to any viewer willing to release his eye for comparable movement. My eye so lost in space that fall feels ascensional, so style-beguiled as to know no "reality," sea running down-up hill willy-nilly, waves not known by their phosphorescence but thru aesthetic reflection only ... similar illuminations possible for any viewer capable of understanding his very vision as a metaphoric creation either directly inspired by nature or watered down by the cliche sights of others. My eye, then, sky-wards, relaxed, all cloudless, mind as non-reflective as possible^ (where will I find the words to describe it), my wakeful awareness ... non-blue, near gold of It, God in it, flakes of God-gold of It falling as if down from it into my eyes. In non-chicken-littleness, my eye opening out to it, now hedging wording it, mind's eye narrowing down to it, destroying it. Imagine the headline: THE SKY ISN'T BLUE, discovered by — on ~ while— etc. Impossibility of all of it. I sky-hypnotised, my eye involved without view, seeing thru the so-called color of it, discovering light, now sighting it doWn to "flakes," "God-gold," "falling," "down." Metaphors — feathers, snow, reign/all golden. My best descriptive is still the negative — "non-blue." Best sense of it — "discovering light." Best sentence — "Impossibility of all of it."* Still there's some possible, even historical, precedence for it, i.e., human, world -making, "reality" to it. There are some cuftures whose extensive scribblings never refer to the sky as blue, some who refer rather purely In terms of light. Look it up, if you will; or, better, look up to it, see for yourself. (In its deepest sense that would mean, forget all I've here written.) Additional note for parents and teachers: Please don't force your militantly Prussian or goblin Cobalt or any other kind of crayon bluing into the drawings of yellow sky happy children, respect those young ones who use any and all of the wax spectrum, and marvel at those who remain still representational ly dissatisfied. Closing these eyelids, shutting Pandora's trap for awhile, believing even in the reality of it, thwarting thought awhile, traveling thru the blue subterrain? — marine? — what? seeming tunnels of It, (utterly unable to photograph any of It), purposeless In my wanderings around, seeming to be splraling at times, timelessly, encountering shapes (indescribable), passing thru them, or were they passing thru me? or was a corner somewhere turned? into an unrepresented dimension, sometime, in this non-time, even the human drama projecting into these spaces, as if here too there were curtains to rise and fall, entrances, exits, and a feeling of interrelation, some of these as-if shapes as if to be avoided, some of these imaginary colors unimaginable, alien even to this alien landsea-what scape. I remember a once-upon-a-time shut-eye (but not sleep) adventure when I absolutely knew a certain very convex-or-concave hypothetical^ approaching, with marine-like motion, shape must not overcome me, i.e., envelope the entire field of eyelid vision, and my finally opening my eyes in an almost sexual sweat, wondering for hours how the drama had continued without me, whether eye-opening had excluded me, etc. There is a definite intent to manipu'ate these, mind's eye?, patterns and without hand in it or bodily weight, freedom from the physical world?, to influence this internal?, destiny as one humanly imagines any control, among infinite possibilities?, and a definite retention of imagisttc, external?, superimpositions once eye's opened to the feeling of having cheated, having broken some original law?, in the act of opening eye. Thus the desire to rationalize the eyelid into a simple projection screen of one's own thought-provoked but rather irresponsible doodles ... a thought having nothing to do with these sensory experiences other than the mind manipulating to escape them, ~ the realization of them, the eye open escape, being too difficult without physical paraphernalia (lacking a camera, etc.) — the illusion of complete avoidance, unconsciousness, sleep,