To Serve a Higher Cause

One would think after six months of intense mental, spiritual, and intellectual workouts the fat would all just fall off. All that strain, all that labor, pressured into a blade that just slices all the undesirable stuff right off.

And yet for some reason the enigmatic paper proposal goes half written. I waded through all of my collections of knowledge. I purged it forth, supporting my ideas purely with legitimate quotes and about seventeen opening lines later I come to the real Maleficent, enchantingly beautiful despite the green skin. Why in the world am I writing a paper proposal for a cause that can be answered with one drawing?

How, in the light of the Restored Gospel, do we portray the Divine? With respect, in its purest form. Points. Lines. Planes.

So give me something to believe 'cause I am living just to breathe. And I need something more than what I'm breathing for, so give me something to believe.*

While sitting here in my sweats, channeling Carrie Bradshaw with an unblocked writers block, one has to wonder: when will the believing really kick in.

Then I realize that it already has. And while I may not really care to finish the paper proposal, I do care to find out exactly what prompted me to begin one in the first place. The girl working the graveyard shift at the local McDonalds would not care to deal with a subject so obscure. Kandinsky. Human Bodies. Why would anyone care about one or the other?

But the girl who will not settle for the lesser attentions of a man, the girl who shows up to work five minutes early, the girl who will give anything for what real relationships she has created her entire life. That girl I shake my finger at, for she is trouble. Man-eater, heart-breaker, untouchable copy of what has been, will be, and simply is somewhere other than here. I sigh at her, at the notion of extreme cost. Breaking, broken, raw. Raw in its pinkness, bloodiness. Raw in an open wound gaping in expression of pain, joy, ecstasy.

She is waiting impatiently for me to retch my guts out and return, water bottles, Tylenol, blankets and all. More, more, always more. There will always be something more. Is it enough to breathe? Never did anything require such a high price. For what must give for a single shallow breath? How many people lie in beds selling their souls for just one more? How many hoarde it in anticipation, fear, selfishness?

In, out, one two three four, in, out, one two three four.

It will not be wasted, not yet. Not yet. Not yet.

*From "Believe" as performed by The Bravery

A little bit of Theory

Wulf Barsch von Benedict once told me to go read Kandinsky’s Point and Line to Plane. It was the hardest thing I think I have ever read because the concepts were so incredibly simple. I gave a copy to Dan Muhlestein and I think it made his head spin too. Wulf said that in the Bauhaus, where he went to school, everyone had to go through what they called the Fundamentals, and no one touched a pencil until they had. Wulf decided that since Kandinsky taught him the fundamentals, Kandinsky might as well do the same for me. He did let me touch a pencil during that period though, if only to make up for lost time.

Kandinsky says that a point does not exist, at least not a geometric point. I’ll explain why: any given point on a plane is bound within a plane. A line is composed of the moving, changing point, or a collection of points composed in a linear fashion. Thus the point has one set property. Except in this form it is not a point. A point actually appears at the intersection of two lines, or two planes, if we’re talking about using the third dimension. Because this is the only existence of the point—at the intersection of two lines—the point both exists within the planes, but at the same time does not exist at all.

To an English major a point (.) is a period. In itself it means silence in language. In context it acts as a barrier between thoughts, to signify the end of one, and at the same time allows for the beginning of another. Thus it is part of language even though it doesn’t actually say anything. Kandinsky says this is the inherent nature of the point. That within it’s boundaries it exists for and to itself, yet like being on the inside of a window, it can still play a part in it’s surroundings merely through existence.

Keeping that in mind, what if time was linear? What if the timeline my high school history teacher made me draw was actually how time works? What if there was another line that moved down that timeline, through the events, and that line was me? I then have two lines and at the intersection is the present moment. And it is completely independent either line. On the vertical—time—there is all that has happened and all that will happen on either side of “now” and on the horizontal—self—there is every decision I have ever made and every lesson I have ever learned and on the other side is every decision I will make and every lesson I will learn. And where “now” rests is dependent on time and where my mentality is at the moment.

And what if that is broken? What if time isn’t right and what if I’m not making decisions at all? What will I use to define my present? What if the past is missing? That is why constructing the narrative is important. Because without two lines, the point does not exist. And so when, in war, the time aspect is completely incomprehensible, soldiers like O’Brien and Jimmy Cross are grasping at the physical materials because they exist and use them to find a bearing place in that linear system. And from there they can find a place on their linear self to use to define that point, to create a present and therefore have truth and all that other stuff that postmodernism is constantly trying to find.

Transverse Line by Wassily Kandinsky, 1923.

In Arcadia by Wulf Barsch von Benedict