Shadows in eternity
We found a little video this week with birds flying together; they make patterns of the universe, vortexes, three-dimensional parabolas, they all fly in and out of pattern is sorts of cone forms, impulsed by the most minor of turns by any one of the birds and the others follow; full forms of flight and yet like dust in the sky, everything is in their flight and yet it is nothing in context; gone a minute later.
It reminds me of the nomadic tribes or the patterns people make from living in cities. Like dust the patterns disappear. The birds show us what nature does in fast motion. The birds remind us of the essentially ephemeral existence of our entire being which is (with few exceptions) now reliant on living together in large groups.
And this sort of thing excites me because it reminds me we are like these animals in our essential terms; requiring the company and efforts of others but resisting this. One slight move may influence the others; to seduce the others to come a certain way within the construct of our physics.
This ‘resistance’ is our creative urge; “suffering” through this is part of this resistance and part of our nature.
Nothing of matter can be seen to be eternal and our efforts are like rising dust with only few brilliant examples in architecture and art.
Conversely, in the gypsy culture where people don’t easily settle in places to build large structures as testimonial to their race, there is a tale whereby God had run out of room for souls in heaven. One day he heard a child sing a song. The song was so beautiful that he spoke to the child and asked her where did this beautiful song come from? The little child kept singing. God then chose to allow this race of people to die and not go to heaven or any other place but rather, in their death the essence of their life was kept in the song and that is how the gypsies maintained their eternity.
There are many ways to determine our space on this earth. To enable a shadow of eternity to touch our existence and give it light. Buildings are only but one fallible way.