OPM 168, August 1st Meditation (2004 & 2014)

These ‘prompts,’ which I have been identifying for the past two months as sources that get my commentary underway, are usually literary encounters I have that jump out at me because they have an uncanny connection with the most recent work in the project.  Not every commentary is prompted, and, in fact, the earlier posts, which were written during the spring 2014 semester, are often summaries.   The writing that happened in this blog in June and July took on a life of its own, and most of that energy came from outside sources that became alternative paths from the trails I wandered on ten years ago.  So while some of the prompts have jump out from the original meditations, the ones I have in mind today of are those, like Warburg’s ‘old book,’ and Thoreau’s ‘dim and misty’ vision, that I encountered during a study session, when something I’m reading, observing, and even listening to (as with the bird songs one morning that gave me insight into the necessity of repetition) connects with the current movement of the experiment 2.0.  Last night I had such an experience when I encountered a citation of Ecclesiastes 7:24, in of all places, Susan Casey’s The Wave (a book I have cited before in commentaries on OPM 147 & 154).  As the epigraph for her final chapter, “At the Edge of the Horizon” she quotes Ecclesiastes:

That which is, is far off, and deep, very deep.  Who can find it out?

This citation caught my attention because just yesterday I wrote a bit on Heraclitus’ fragment “Nature loves to hide”.   Walter Brogan’s article caught my attention, specifically with his decision against translating or transliterating φύσις.   Brogan compelled me to read φύσις as a ‘sign’ and also to do some etymological work on it.  The result was that I learned that φύσις emerges from φύω (‘grow’).   In turn, I heard the fragment “φύσις loves to hide,” as something like “growing begins with sprouting,” and today, I am inclined to hear it not simply as complementing my reading of Thoreau’s writing as seeds that have long since taken root, but, even more to the heart of the matter via Ecclesiastes 7:24 I am compelled to read Heraclitus' fragment alongside Thoreau’s ‘dim and misty’ vision.  

“φύσις loves to hide.”  Indeed, “that which is, is far off and deep, very deep.  Who can find it out?”  Perhaps the one who goes to this depth, to these roots…with  these roots, that is,  “in a bark vessel sewn with the roots of the spruce…”   

To go with is to go below, into the dark where the primacy of the primal remains “obscured by the aeons” and “not brought down” to the present.    It, that which is, is not ‘brought down.’  Rather, it brings us down, taking us into the “Abgrund strictly ‘earth going down(wards).” 

When Thoreau declares that his vision “lives three thousand years deep into time, an age not yet described by poets,” he shares an experience is akin to Nietzsche’s, which also happened on a memorable hike: “That day I was walking through the woods along the lake of Silvaplana: at a powerful pyramidal rock not from from Surlei I stopped.  It was then that this idea came to me…it invaded me…That everything recurs is the closest approximation of a world of becoming to a world of being – high point of meditation.” Nietzsche’s vision is what Charles Scott describes as the sublime dimension of Dionysian memory: “This dimension of memory is not based on literal truth or accuracy.  It is rather an occurrence in which ‘something’ excessive to identity and individuation is manifest and in which the individual experiences loss of autonomy and control.  As sublime, an experience opens out to  ‘something’ beyond identity.’”(in D. Jacobs, ed., p. 251)   

"Inceptual thinking cannot at all be ‘explained.’ It must in each case only be begun; those who think it must think inceptually."  But this thinking is never begun  but initiated, pushed upward from below.

No poet, and certainly no philosopher, can describe what is disclosed in that moment, although both can try to convey poetically and philosophically the ecstatic memory, which akin to waking from and recalling a powerful dream.  

Before the re-telling of the dream, then, the lingering ecstatic vision remains under the force of that 'strange ownership,'  covered deep, very deep.   Here, I recall what I wrote in my commentary on OPM 165, July 29^th: “The 7/29/04 musings on the chase after Nature takes me back to ‘healing’, which I took up in my commentary on OPM 153 (July 17^th).  Chasing Nature leads to the discovery that ‘hiding’ is linked to ‘healing’: “To ‘heal’ is to ‘make sound or whole: to restore to health,’ but it also denotes ‘to cover (as in seeds) with earth.’  The latter is derived from the Middle English Helen which says ‘to hide, conceal, cover.’”(7/29/04)   Chasing is thus further preparation and anticipation: the attempt to re-connect so as to re-cover – become whole, sound.   All this relates to both desire for Contact! with the primal, which is not necessarily what Thoreau was referring to, but plausibly so.”  

We are taken deep, very deep, into the ‘ground,’ into the past, and our response is “one of awed silence, the speechlessness of the ones who encounter the ineffability of the ineffable” and thus we “identify the learner as the one who ‘keeps his mouth shut.’”(8/1/04) 

Contact! with the primal is thus a re-covering that takes  us “Abgrund strictly ‘earth going down(wards).”   Are we thus 'healed' when we are rooted?