AHR

  • WELCOME
  • ABOUT
    • Henry has a Masters of Architecture from UT Austin ...
  • The 5x5 House
    • 1. Overview
    • 2. Context
    • 3. Principles
    • 4. The Plan
    • 5. The Entry
    • 6. The Master Suite
    • 7. Version A / Version B
    • 8. Technical Details
    • 9. The Cost
  • WRITING
    • MY PHILOSOPHY
    • ESSAYS
    • FRAGMENTS
  • ARCH. SCHOOL
    • All Studio Projects
    • VII. AUSTIN MUSIC HALL
    • VI. Brixton Studio
    • V. One House, Four Rooms
    • IV. Santa Fe: Residency
    • III. New Braunfels: Hydrology
    • II. Austin: AEGB Headquarters
    • I. Lampasas: "Graduation Wall"
    • 0. Application Portfolio
  • CARPENTRY
    • ALL CARPENTRY PROJECTS
    • John John's Game Room
    • Front Entry, Seattle
    • Oak Bedroom Set
    • Bathroom Remodel
  • 35MM FILM
    • MOST RECENT
    • North America - 35mm
    • Japan - 35mm
  • MIXED MEDIA
    • ALL PROJECTS
  • (Re)SOURCES
  • WELCOME
  • ABOUT
    • Henry has a Masters of Architecture from UT Austin ...
  • The 5x5 House
    • 1. Overview
    • 2. Context
    • 3. Principles
    • 4. The Plan
    • 5. The Entry
    • 6. The Master Suite
    • 7. Version A / Version B
    • 8. Technical Details
    • 9. The Cost
  • WRITING
    • MY PHILOSOPHY
    • ESSAYS
    • FRAGMENTS
  • ARCH. SCHOOL
    • All Studio Projects
    • VII. AUSTIN MUSIC HALL
    • VI. Brixton Studio
    • V. One House, Four Rooms
    • IV. Santa Fe: Residency
    • III. New Braunfels: Hydrology
    • II. Austin: AEGB Headquarters
    • I. Lampasas: "Graduation Wall"
    • 0. Application Portfolio
  • CARPENTRY
    • ALL CARPENTRY PROJECTS
    • John John's Game Room
    • Front Entry, Seattle
    • Oak Bedroom Set
    • Bathroom Remodel
  • 35MM FILM
    • MOST RECENT
    • North America - 35mm
    • Japan - 35mm
  • MIXED MEDIA
    • ALL PROJECTS
  • (Re)SOURCES

My second meditation on the deity

4/15/2008

 
Do you want to know what I really think?
Nietzsche tells you: “this is my way, what is yours?”
You respond: “I think that I’ll go with Christ.”
But Nietzsche says: “No, not with him. You can go anyway you want, but not with him. To hell with Christ.”
But you say: “Well, to hell with you.”


What I really think is this: Nietzsche would probably smile. He would eventually look up and catch your steadfast gaze, not just a little fire in your eye, and look away again. And then he would begin to laugh. Slowly at first, and not audibly. But then you would catch on, and begin laughing too. Soon he would look at you again and then it would be all over, the two of you laughing away, no longer quite sure why anymore. And it is one of those laughing fits that picks up again once it starts to die . . . So it would be: you and Nietzsche, that furious little man, sitting across a table, cracking up.

Walla Walla, WA
April 2018
*

my first meditation on the deity

4/1/2008

 
In every human being there is an irreducible strength. There is a stability that cannot be shook, a foundation so sound that no force can uproot it simply because this is impossible — it is not a question of magnitude for the foundation is not set upon rock but is set upon itself. It is pure, self contained, self sufficient: irreducible.

In every human being there is such strength.


To abide at this center, in this center, is to abide in the strength of god. Or, at least, this is what I wonder. I do not propose to claim that this is god, but I wonder at least whether this is the place in which we find god, where we connect, are bathed in glory and grace. Ideally.

Already though in so speaking I lose the moment. Of which it cannot be spoken, for every word and every thought is a movement toward and this point is purely receptive. It receives the world in its purity and it receives even one’s own thoughts, as part of this world.

Is this perhaps the inchoate idea embodied in that line from “A Story for Our Time,” which reads: “in how much vain is beauty proclaimed, insofar as it aims to appropriate” — ? For is not all thought appropriative in the way in which it fits itself to a situation? This is how it is, the thought says, and tries to articulate the moment; it tries to condition the moment; it tries to claim the moment. But its efforts are, to be sure, in vain.

For beauty is untouchable. Untouchable, it is unrelated. Unrelated, it is meaningless.


But what is little understood is that it has much less to do with the content or quality of those thoughts then most people believe, but rather, with their direction. We sit at the center point while we let our thoughts run wild, as it were, over the surface of the world, with all their haste, caprice, and passion . . . there they go.

And so this center point must be separate. Separate, because it cannot participate. It is not one among any series of relationships but always and ever only the return. All things return to it but it does not lead anywhere and only thus is it so stable. It is infinite patience. Infinite calm. Infinite peace. Something like waking death — ?

Yet that is beyond knowing. Perhaps it is an articulation of an answer to the question posed at the end of “Lonely One,” in which it is asked: “Oh christ, you who refused the title / and least innocent of all / who is that third beside you?” Although I myself am unclear as to exactly what these words mean, this was in a way satisfying to me. For I didn’t want to clearly articulate the problem, for a clear articulation would presuppose an answer, only, an answer which had not been arrived at, was lacking only because of contingencies and limitations.

No: it really is a question. Who is that third one? Beside Christ. Surely, don’t ask me.


This center point cannot be arrived at, but only be returned to. it is only a backwards movement, and there is no arriving. It retreats from every situation. It receives every thought but only in secret. Just so long as that thought doesn’t turn around but rather slows down, still believing in itself, curls up and nestles at your foot . . . unaware, and still believing. 

At this center point it is supposed one may find god: epistemically, indistinct from infinite peace. Backwards moving always, only moving backwards maybe this peace is made possible. We have found a way to forgive the invariable trespass that is living itself — consciousness and knowledge of self. And it involves neither reconciliation nor resolution.

Every thought presses forward. Every thought presses forward.

Walla Walla, WA
April 2008
*

    CREATIVE 

    some things are hard to say using academic conventions: the logics of argument, the stipulations of grammar ... 

    Archives

    September 2019
    September 2017
    April 2008
    January 2005

© A. Henry Rose, 2021. Excerpts and photos may be re-published provided that full and clear credit is given and directly linked to the original content.