picture post – Page 2

from walkabout.. driving by, during rain, went too quickly. These were the slower version, a day or so later. The blue windows got me. In the mist, they seemed bluer than in this AM sun.

Text on the table was Auerbach’s Mimesis. Picked up in Portland during 2014 trip. What does that have to do with the pictures … don’t know, yet.

mimesis notes -- prompts, since the answer changes more often than the question
-- what is reality
-- what is a portrayal (of reality)
math itself is an analysis, a synthetic formulation of reality./ it proves and approves itself
by definition... is math a science or a philosophy

LONG QUOTE, from the epilogue, which I took as my prelude around 1963..
"the interpretation of reality through literary representation or “imitation,” has occupied me[ Auerbach] for a long time. My original starting point was Plato’s discussion in book 10 of the Republic—mimesis ranking third after truth—in conjunction with Dante’s assertion that in the Commedia he presented true reality. As I studied the various methods of interpreting human events in the literature of Europe, I found my interest becoming more precise and focused. Some guiding ideas began to crystallize, and these I sought to pursue.
The ﬁrst of these ideas concerns the doctrine of the ancients regarding the several levels of literary representation—a doctrine which was taken up again by every later classicistic movement. I came to understand that modern realism in the form it reached in France in the early nineteenth century is, as an aesthetic phenomenon, characterized by complete emancipation from that doctrine. This emancipation is more complete, and more signiﬁcant for later literary forms of the imitation of life, than the mixture of le sublime with le grotesque proclaimed by the contemporary romanticists. "

My first visit to Marfa was early days of my Texas time. Living somewhere is better than visiting. Sometimes, some places, maybe not. One place means you can walk many times, using the same tripod holes. Wear them out, they are yours. Changing places starts with a blank paper. Most people revert; they go blank when they see a new place. Too frequently, they find the place as others have found it. The Card Shop Calendar.

— After my set: Wo Ist Tejas. Finding that all places share three versions of the world. In near space the differences blur until in intimate space they separate. The ring of awareness

I like grouping, at first, by pairs, later by parts; finding sets in dispersed settings. Not because of symmetry, but because of depth; I see very different depths in almost every scene, every part of the world. Seeing one thing, one city as two things, cities is innate. Progression between points is more than direction.