I came across this painting—Starfall—by Anselm Kiefer yesterday. Seeing it made me feel completely like the subject in the painting, laid flat against the vast mercy of the infinite cosmos.
I’m also reminded of the hermetic maxim: As above, so below.
The human connectedness to the cosmic All, the neoplatonic One, is constantly bumping up against us if we are open to see it.
In moments when I am taken by art, a catalytic response often follows and I am thrust down a rabbit hole of thought. Riding that inspired, daemonic moment, I ended up with my face buried in The Poetry of Rilke, a beautiful translation by Edward Snow, stopping at this poem:
Breathing, you invisible poem!
Worldspace in pure continuous interchange
with my own being. Equipoise
in which I rhtymically transpire.
Single wave
whose gradual sea I am;
of all possible seas the most frugal, —
windfall of space.
How many of these places were once
in me. Many a breeze
is like my son.
Do you recognize me, air, you, full of places once mine?
You, once the smooth rind,
orb, and leaf of my words.
– Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, Second Part, Number 1