Living by Observing

Collage Poem: 2/20/2025

May Day 2002 - The Monument à la République - Paris

Living by Observing

Perhaps one of the least noticed
comes just before the most noticed.
We take pleasure in beholding,
to get straight in our minds
this power of the imagination,
seeking order or fittingness
well worth all the toil and anxiety.
How things should fit together
that match the imagined patterns
to set them all in their places
[with] no sense of displacement
comes immediately to mind.
What all of us might be inclined towards,
the same regard to the beauty of order, of art.
It makes more sense to speak
[in] a voice capable of astonishing
could be carried too far
A consequence of an act of imagination
as a reaction to it.
There may be differences
[but] we can ignore those subtleties.
Simplicity desires pushing towards its end.
even as the first desire remains,
pursuit of that imagined life,
the pursuit of an imagined order of things;
tranquility and repose,
something grand and beautiful and noble.
It is rooted here
under such titles as “spectator”
by consulting this judge within
who judges impartially
with our own eyes.
The occasion for assessing
proceeding accordingly
applies to everything we might encounter
learned from experience,
focusing mostly on
living by observing
exercised through spectating.
Acts of the imagination,
our experience in light of it,
are no doubt the most profound.

Snippets gathered from here and there.