Hiking Above the Bay of Salerno

Words, images and perception are the trinity that dominates what I aspire to use to harness creatively and feel I am squeezing the best out of life.

Words and, their usual presentation, thoughts, were for the better part of my life how I perceived the world of experience. Words were the raw materials both for academic performance and imaginative activity. Words were the vehicles by which I enjoyed fiction, poetry and, later, nonfiction. (Who would have thought back in my late teens and early twenties that I would someday prefer "essays" to "fiction"?) Words carved my worlds of imagination. Even today words can conjure a more tangible feel (perception is not quite right in this case) for a story I am reading. Words are hardwired to by now a near infinite array of possible associations.

In the 1980s, after a pivotal introduction to the consciousness-changing technology of Buddhist meditation I discovered a way of "thinking" that was "neither perception nor perception." Thoughts exploded into wordlessness and the effect was powerful.

Just as the dominance of words and thoughts was being toppled, some friends introduced me to Jungian theories and myths. I became aware of images. Years earlier I had subscribed to a MOMA series of books on modern art. I couldn't make sense of them. Myths provided me with a framework for understanding, or short of understanding, appreciating images. Becoming aware of images opened me to the world of visual art. Colors, lines, shapes were astoundingly different elements of consciousness for me but I was fascinated as one is fascinated by what he barely understands. It's like the foretaste of a feast that one sensed would last the whole night and here it was, just its aroma barely enticing the nose before even the far-seeing eye can perceive it.

Since then I've felt myself challenged to enter the world of images. My earliest successes in life, few as they are, were in the domains of words and ideas. After some initial success I failed miserably in making any more substantial headway. The idea was born that somehow I was in the wrong place, somehow I was seeking fulfillment pursuing the wrong star.

To date, the exercises I've taken in exploring images has produced no less mediocre results as those of the first two-thirds of my life. I always feel somehow that I'm missing the boat - maybe by inches, but missing it anyway. I am too cautious, too timid, not used to taking risks and letting my limits go as some people naturally can do from early in life. The artists I admire seem to have found what energized them and there was no turning back. Their passion surged and limits just fell away.

2009 has just begun. In the nonhuman world January 1 does not exist but those of us who are tethered to human conceptions can find in the date the stimulus to try again with greater effort and achieve the goal we know we don't really know. One day at a time we push ourselves although frankly the push seems to come despite ourselves. On this note I might find optimism, what others might call hope, to keep nicking at my own rock-hard limits.