Sometimes I find myself staring at things like books and wonder, what does it all mean, what does it all matter? And how did I get to this point? These thoughts flow through my mind, and I wonder, how did I get to this point? I have written my PhD, considering all a book in itself. A 100 000 words on a topic, a single topic, and still I wonder, think, how did I get here? I wonder sometimes, do I know anything?
I read the work of others, and the more I read, the less I seem to understand it all. I try to stomach through things, through life, through the thickest work, and while there are some sparks, some elements of “I finally got the answer!” these moments are fleeting, ephemeral, only short lasting. In the next moment, in the very next sentence I read, I feel the certainty of things slowly fading back to the obscurity from which I somehow got that sliver of sense.
The more I read, the less I seem to grapple with the problem, as everything seems to make sense at once, but everything seems to become blurry and fuzzy in the process of ascertaining certainty. A book is nothing but a conversation, one that has endless roots and stems sticking from it, even if the author did not intentionally do this. One might even think of a beautiful tapestry, a mosaic, in which the individual pieces does not fit perfectly, and which on its own does not have much meaning, but as soon as one “zooms out”, walks a bit backwards to see the “bigger picture”, it somehow begins to make sense. However, sometimes I focus so much on these individual pieces, the intricate balance of placing the mosaic piece, that I get lost in the detail, I lose sight of the beautiful artwork that tries to escape the individual pieces.
If you have ever stood in front of a pointillism painting or artwork, you will understand this problem. From up close, you can see the individual lines that make up the artwork. In this up-close perspective, there is beauty and symmetry, aesthetic balance that somehow becomes detached from the unitary whole. But as soon as you trace a couple of steps backwards, you will be able to decipher the strange mixture of colours, scribbles, dots, brushstrokes. (But I guess, every piece of artwork is like that. Every blot of ink or paint on the canvas, or every blot of ink for that matter on the page of a book, will look like nothing when zoomed in too much. I digress.) The beauty of the artwork is revealed with a stepping back, a moment of reflection, a moment of a seemingly inaccessible work of nothing but pencil dots and brush strokes. Somehow, it makes sense.
Reading a book is much like this. The individual words do not matter, it is mere dots on the page; in the whole, in the context of it all, it starts to make sense.
But how far back should we stand so that it might start to make sense? How far back should we step so that the context can begin to make sense for what we are doing? When might I stand back and see the bigger picture, where it starts to make sense again?
I find myself in the predicament that I am on the cusp of becoming “knowledgeable” (or can I dread to use the horrible word “educated”) but I somehow feel that I know nothing. The more I read, the more I question, not necessarily questioning the work, but a critical self-questioning in which I somehow try to make sense of the individual strands of my painting (work of art) but meaning and understanding drifts through my fingers like sand falling through your fingers when you try to pick it up.
And so, another sun sets over the ocean, itself becoming a piece of art, but somehow it seems to escape my understanding of it all. The more I read, the more I think, and the more I write (and publish) the less I seem to understand anything.
All of the writing and thinking (and mis(-non-)understandings) are my own albeit inspired by my profound lack of understanding. The photographs are also my own, taken with my Nikon D300.
