Traveling Thoughts

I don’t know if you ever have moments in your life when time just seems to stand still. When it seems as though all wisdom and beauty and good has collected into one shining seraph and is staring deeply into your humanity. I experience these from time to time, and I had one today. In these moments I am struck with my finiteness and lack of capacity; My ability to intake and to absorb is so far limited from what I wish it were. These precious minutes that we see glimpses into the skirts of heaven that are only too fleeting.

I’m in New Mexico for the first time. I was flying into the Alberquerque airport on a cramped, loud, rickety plane.
I was immersed in a great book, and I happened to look out the window. The seraph was looking back in.

I was seeing Earth without her makeup. She was stripped bare and vulnerable, exposed. There was no pretense as to what She knew of herself. I felt beckoned and intrigued and inspired. The word that struck me: Vast. Vast earth and sky. Overflowing with the deep brown and golden hues spattered with the pockmarks of scrubby trees.

The translator of Dante’s Inferno, John Ciardi, distinguishes between translation and transposition in the sense that there are some mediums such as language that cannot be reproduced exactly. There are simply not exact translations of some words between different languages. He gives the example of a violin and a piano. A violin may transpose and create a music that is recognizably the same as that of a piano but is simply not able to voice it the same. When looking over a radically different earth than I have ever experienced through a small airplane window, I saw a transposition. When this earth was built, there were simple truths of beauty that humans have learned to recognize and are instilled in us. One of these elements is recognized as space. There are surprising similarities between the arts. One of these similarities is that visual art and music both share the appreciation of space. Whether it is called negative space or silence, great art utilizes the contrast between color and white, notes and rest. It helps us to see and hear. When I looked at New Mexico, I saw the negative space of creation. God was no fool when he created the beauty of earth. He recognized the need for the contrast between vast mountains and glorious sunsets and barren landscapes, neither being truly greater or more fantastic than the other. I feel like I have experienced a piece of great art. Like a painting that changes you or a song that moves you, this earth serves as a model of what great art should be. Artists are able to transpose but not translate. Our works are a glimpse of the foundation of what art is, but it seems like something is always lost in translation.

Despite this deficit in art, I am only overjoyed that I have a great teacher and a model all around me every day for me to enjoy even when my own craft seems to suffer. Even for those who are not artists themselves, the world is ingeniously crafted in such a way that everyone may partake.