John Dunn

Apparition

Friday, 17 April 2020 at 18:05

Jasper Johns “Untitled” (2017)
Jasper Johns/VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY; via Matthew Marks Gallery










Apparition

I looked over the still dark waters and saw you there,
Eternal, wild, and infinite.

Angel of the noosphere

And did you really appear?
Was Chaos so ordered at that moment
That you held entropy at bay?

© John Dunn.

Salvific glance

Monday, 13 April 2020 at 21:55

All the presuppositions,
all the idolatry,
brought low by a salvific glance.

Chance encounter, unrequited,
unresolved-ever,
rain drop to the seed.

Incomplete,
unfulfilled,
ever-unfolding,
being.

I get it, the danger of idolatry. In order to eliminate the possibility of self-idolisation there must be no presuppositions. Look what happened to Giovanni Gentile; all the logocentrism.

What there must be is an encounter.

Is it an awakening to something that was there all along? No - that would be slipping into idol worship.

Encounter, unrequited, ever-unresolved, brings to life the process of on-going creation. There must be nothing complete or fulfilled in being. Fulfilment is non-being, Chaos.

The Gnostics misread John’s Gospel, imagining the Logos always being there from a beginning. They made of it an idol outside them, never realising that they had access tothe ever-present Logos inside them; there in the sense that the present is eternal where love is present.

God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
(1 John 4:16)

There must be encounter and love; and the ever-present encounter is love-unrequited. Not to have loved is to have existed, not lived.

Picture:SARAI SHERMAN (1922-2013), AMERICAN I Am The Rose of Sharon and the Lily of The Valley, Plate I from the series The Song of Solomon, 1966
MeyerP. and Vivian O. Potamkin Collection at Dickinson College.

© John Dunn.

Chaos brought to order

Sunday, 12 April 2020 at 18:09

Nightmare, Helen Frankenthaler, 1989












Imagine not having met you;


The nightmare would have raged on,

Crying into the night, 


Blind fear as the idols advanced towards me.

Keep them away from me, those children of Ananke.




As it was I came to consciousness,


I awoke to your warm embrace.


New life,


Chaos brought to order
,

Demons gone, or held at bay for now.


© John Dunn.

Back to the self

Friday, 10 April 2020 at 16:05

What is the alternative to emanationism? I came across a lecture on YouTube given by Rocco Buttiglione on Personalism. A lead might come from this to add tomy own thoughts on the matter as expressed in Child of Encounter. In essence he asks us…

…to put in brackets all that you ‘know’, all that you have heard, been taught etc. to let your human experience speak, to become attentive to what you really are, to what the real given is, to what the fundamental demands of your heart are.

Experience a first ascetic moment in which you learn to go back to yourself.

Understand the self, recover the self and, only then, a turn towards the world outside of you.

Only by starting with the fundamental evidence and demands of your soul can you understand the world outside you.

Then life becomes a learning process.

Reality is the most important text and learning should be measured against the demands and learning of your life, so that knowledge grows together with your life.

Penetrate the depths of yourself, or live on the surface only. If you do not understand yourself then you do not understand the world and you live a confused life in a world that becomes more and more irrational… in the sense that the world does not relate to the true demands of the self.

© John Dunn.

…In Love

Wednesday, 8 April 2020 at 17:48

…In Love

An Artemis of breasts aplenty,

Mother Earth, nourish us all.

The serpent in you tempts me

To pull on your bull-dugs and drain to empty,

Then bite the fruit that Eve gave to me,

That I might fall…

© John Dunn.

Eros Debased

Sunday, 5 April 2020 at 17:25

"I am all that has been and is and shall be; and no mortal has ever lifted my garment."



















Your soul remained as still as Isis
Whilst my passion was brought to crisis.
Pity me goddess, forgive.

For as long as there’s a veil to lift,
Debased adoration is my only gift
And Eros will live.

© John Dunn.

Time

Saturday, 4 April 2020 at 16:35

No matter how infinitesimal,
The great cosmic wheel of time
Wobbled a little
When our eyes met.

And now… a gentle breeze ripples the veil of Sais
Each time I look back with regret.

© John Dunn.