Monday 13 November 2017

The divine behind the everyday


From https://www.facebook.com/BillArkle/

This was one of William Arkle's most frequent themes - an ordinary, everyday scene of a breakfast tea set, but illuminated by divinity. For me it captures the 'holiday' feeling of (potentially) any morning in which we awake with a proper understanding and attitude to Life. 

It also reminds me of the delicious Foreword to A Geography of Consciousness (1974), which I believe to be a collaboration between Arkle and Colin Wilson:

Imagine that you open your eyes in a dark bedroom. You know it is morning outside, because you can see the cracks of light at the edge of the heavy curtains; it looks like a cold, grey light, and you suspect it is raining. You think of the things you have to do when you get up, and they all seem dreary.

Finally you yawn, cross to the window, and draw the curtains.

Sunlight streams in, marvellously warm!

You open the window, and the air smells warm and fresh. The feeling of dreariness vanishes. It is replaced by an eager desire to get your breakfast and get outside.

A moment before, your consciousness has been 'hanging back', like a dog that doesn't want to go outside on a cold day. Now it is straining at the lead, pulling you forward.
 

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