self 2

11:02 PM Posted by James Owens


If the fall of man consists in the separation of god and the devil, the serpent must have appeared out of the middle of the apple when Eve bit, like the original worm in it, splitting it in half and sundering everything which was once one into a pair of opposites, so the world is a Noah’s ark on the sea of eternity, containing all the endless pairs of things, irreconcilable and inseparable, and heat will always long for cold, and the back for the front, and smiles for tears, and no for yes, with the most unutterable nostalgia.

--Diane Arbus

10 comments:

myonlyphoto said...

James cool photo, is that you? BTW interesting quote, and the longest sentence I ever seen yet, lol, tried to read twice without breathing. Anna :)

James Owens said...

Anna: Thank you. Yes, that is me. It is a long sentence -- and, would you believe it, I even cut a few words off of the end... But I came across it with an instant sense of recognition, in a book about Arbus. I think I have always felt what she is writing about -- this sundering, this exile -- even before the story begins -- perhaps a precondition before the story can begin....

Lady Jo said...

Hello James,

cette photo est vraiment très originale, j'espère que tu n'es pas tombé à l'eau ;-)on dirai l'écluse près de chez moi !
belle journée !

Marion McCready said...

Well this made me smile! What a great picture, the perspective is quite disorientating but tells so many stories.

S. Etole said...

the heart always seeking until it finds its rest ... in Him

James Owens said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
James Owens said...

Lady Jo: L’eau est profonde et rapide … mais non, je ne suis pas tombé. Ç’aurait été assez froid!


Sorlil: I’m glad you can hear some of these stories. I wanted a shot of this mirror for weeks, but none of them would turn out any good….


Susan: This restlessness seems native and woven into the day. “All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full …. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.”

Roxana said...

how different those stories would have been, told by the mirror itself, if the man hadn't been included, part of it - but he is there, focused, trying to compose, to unite the disparate parts into a single _meaningful_ image ("Einbildungskraft" - in-eins-bilden, the etymologie of the german word for 'imagination', to fuse, bring into one - which fascinated Coleridge so much :-).

i love it.

and what a tiny camera you have, it makes me smile to see it in your hands :-)

Roxana said...

ps. "with the most unutterable nostalgia" - the lament world, yes...

James Owens said...

Roxana: Thank you for the etymology. You know my fascination with such things :-)

“Einbildungskraft” is such a more suggestive (philosophical, poetic) word than “imagination.” Now I am having a little fantasy of (mis)translating Einbildungskraft as “at-one-ment-power” --- imagination is atonement, the healing of some rift/Riss…. A mis-translation, but close to the heart of something…..

You like my little toy camera? I am making plans (real plans!) for a real camera … soon….

Nostalgia and Klage … you see, of course, you see….