Depression and anxiety are a symptom of too much consumption and too little creation.
Pentecost - ca. 1600 - El Greco
Veni, Sancte Spiritus,
Et emitte cælitus
Lucis tuæ radium.
Veni, pater pauperum,
Veni, dator munerum,
Veni, lumen cordium.
Consolator optime,
Dulcis hospes animæ,
Dulce refrigerium.
In labore requies,
In æstu temperies,
In fletu solatium.
O lux beatissima,
Reple cordis intima
Tuorum fidelium.
Sine tuo numine
Nihil est in homine,
Nihil est innoxium.
Lava quod est sordidum,
Riga quod est aridum,
Sana quod est saucium.
Flecte quod est rigidum,
Fove quod est frigidum,
Rege quod est devium.
Da tuis fidelibus
In te confidentibus
Sacrum septenarium.
Da virtutis meritum,
Da salutis exitum,
Da perenne gaudium.
Amen. Alleluia.
Veni, Sancte Spiritus,
Et emitte cælitus
Lucis tuæ radium.
Veni, pater pauperum,
Veni, dator munerum,
Veni, lumen cordium.
Consolator optime,
Dulcis hospes animæ,
Dulce refrigerium.
In labore requies,
In æstu temperies,
In fletu solatium.
O lux beatissima,
Reple cordis intima
Tuorum fidelium.
Sine tuo numine
Nihil est in homine,
Nihil est innoxium.
Lava quod est sordidum,
Riga quod est aridum,
Sana quod est saucium.
Flecte quod est rigidum,
Fove quod est frigidum,
Rege quod est devium.
Da tuis fidelibus
In te confidentibus
Sacrum septenarium.
Da virtutis meritum,
Da salutis exitum,
Da perenne gaudium.
Amen. Alleluia.
Old man naked in the sun - 1871 - Mariano Fortuny
Whatever this is that I am, it is flesh and a little spirit and an intelligence. Throw away your books; stop letting yourself be distracted. That is not allowed. Instead, as if you were dying right now, despise your flesh. A mess of blood, pieces of bone, a woven tangle of nerves, veins, arteries. Consider what the spirit is: air, and never the same air, but vomited out and gulped in again every instant. Finally, the intelligence. Think of it this way: You are an old man. Stop allowing your mind to be a slave, to be jerked about by selfish impulses, to kick against fate and the present, and to mistrust the future.
Whatever this is that I am, it is flesh and a little spirit and an intelligence. Throw away your books; stop letting yourself be distracted. That is not allowed. Instead, as if you were dying right now, despise your flesh. A mess of blood, pieces of bone, a woven tangle of nerves, veins, arteries. Consider what the spirit is: air, and never the same air, but vomited out and gulped in again every instant. Finally, the intelligence. Think of it this way: You are an old man. Stop allowing your mind to be a slave, to be jerked about by selfish impulses, to kick against fate and the present, and to mistrust the future.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations II-2Greek fresco in the Tomb of the Diver
The diver symbolizes the soul of the dead jumping into the afterlife.
The diver symbolizes the soul of the dead jumping into the afterlife.
What do you like the most?
Art or philosophy?
There might be those that think that such a question doesn't make sense.
Or that the reply is obvious, given how art runs through your veins.
I'm not so clear.
If I made myself the same question I wouldn't know what to answer.
Even though I don't have talent for plastic arts.
Even though I only pick up my violin once in a blue moon and I get desperate with the sound I produce.
Even though I'm nothing more than a dilettante of prose and free verse.
Even with all of this I wouldn't be able to place art before philosophy.
Nor the other way around.
But it wasn't always like this.
Even when the intuitions of our adolescence tend to be broadly correct, they need a thorough polishing that only the passing of time can provide until they smoothen and pick up all the shine they possess within.
In the past I thought I was Cartesian. That all that I needed to come close to truth was science and the study of matter.
I became an engineer when I still thought this way.
But something was fermenting inside of me.
And in some imprecise moment that mix exploded.
And I was no longer the same man.
I don't know too well what the trigger was.
Y believe that maybe it was the vertigo you feel when your feet meet the edge of the precipice and your gaze descends into the deepe void of theabyss.
There are few alternatives in that situation.
Jump.
Go mad.
Or turn around and retrace your steps.
Y chose the last one. I undid my path towards the origin of it all.
Like a digital Oysseus after almost having tasted the binary potion of the cyborg Circe.
At first the pain was troublesome, but it decayed with the passing of time.
It's always the same.
Vu, entendu, interré.
Time devours everything, also pain.
It happened that I never was truly Cartesian but only a badly trained platonist.
And that beyond science; beyond philosophy and art, beyond thought and beauty; there is something sublime towards which we can only come close in our solitude, our silence and our fasting.
And ineffable Logos of which we can say less the more we intuit.
Infinite Love.
Because of this, the disjunctive between art or philosophy makes no sense.
Because both things, beauty and goodness, are only two limited facets of the only Truth there is.
And with this the metanoia is complete.
Meta-idea.
Meta-thought.
Thinking beyond.
Not thinking beforehand.
Repentance.
But this doesn't mean that everything becomes easy from then on.
Maybe the opposite.
Meaning becomes clear.
Thoroughness becomes unrelenting.
Art or philosophy?
There might be those that think that such a question doesn't make sense.
Or that the reply is obvious, given how art runs through your veins.
I'm not so clear.
If I made myself the same question I wouldn't know what to answer.
Even though I don't have talent for plastic arts.
Even though I only pick up my violin once in a blue moon and I get desperate with the sound I produce.
Even though I'm nothing more than a dilettante of prose and free verse.
Even with all of this I wouldn't be able to place art before philosophy.
Nor the other way around.
But it wasn't always like this.
Even when the intuitions of our adolescence tend to be broadly correct, they need a thorough polishing that only the passing of time can provide until they smoothen and pick up all the shine they possess within.
In the past I thought I was Cartesian. That all that I needed to come close to truth was science and the study of matter.
I became an engineer when I still thought this way.
But something was fermenting inside of me.
And in some imprecise moment that mix exploded.
And I was no longer the same man.
I don't know too well what the trigger was.
Y believe that maybe it was the vertigo you feel when your feet meet the edge of the precipice and your gaze descends into the deepe void of theabyss.
There are few alternatives in that situation.
Jump.
Go mad.
Or turn around and retrace your steps.
Y chose the last one. I undid my path towards the origin of it all.
Like a digital Oysseus after almost having tasted the binary potion of the cyborg Circe.
At first the pain was troublesome, but it decayed with the passing of time.
It's always the same.
Vu, entendu, interré.
Time devours everything, also pain.
It happened that I never was truly Cartesian but only a badly trained platonist.
And that beyond science; beyond philosophy and art, beyond thought and beauty; there is something sublime towards which we can only come close in our solitude, our silence and our fasting.
And ineffable Logos of which we can say less the more we intuit.
Infinite Love.
Because of this, the disjunctive between art or philosophy makes no sense.
Because both things, beauty and goodness, are only two limited facets of the only Truth there is.
And with this the metanoia is complete.
Meta-idea.
Meta-thought.
Thinking beyond.
Not thinking beforehand.
Repentance.
But this doesn't mean that everything becomes easy from then on.
Maybe the opposite.
Meaning becomes clear.
Thoroughness becomes unrelenting.