On Deers and Clearings
The clearing
To me, the relevant is to be found in the implicit. What really matters, any kind of truth, hides in the cracks of reality, in the moments of waking up or of falling asleep, in the intangible and undefined. It appears right on the borderline between that which is in context and that which is free of context and hence free of immediate meaning and form.
Yes, there’s a whole world out there that can be described in numbers and graphs. There’s a whole reality out there that can be grabbed by its mathematical ear and made visible, explicit, and unambiguous. It can be divided into parts, analyzed and made available.
But in moments of lucid dreaming, of a relaxed lack of attention, in moments that leave space for those facets of reality we cannot actively look for, in those moments, sometimes, a different aspect of the same reality shines through. We cannot invite it. All we can do is make space for it, let it appear by itself for a moment and passively enjoy its almost transparent presence in the shadows of our experience. Any sharp movement, even if only internal, any enthusiastic welcome will scare it away like a shy deer, grazing in a clearing in the woods and suddenly noticing a spectator. The attempt to think it, to lock it up in language, to make it stay by defining it is much too slow and crude for a deer as reluctant and timid. Before the first word makes its loud way onto the clearing, our deer has vanished into the woods and will probably not return so fast.
So all we’re left with is trying to breathe as softly as possible and let the deer stay with us as long as it wishes to. If we’re both quiet and lucky, we can enjoy its presence for a few moments and appreciate the fleeting nature of that meeting.
I believe this experience to be universal in essence, yet individual in form. Your deer may not be my deer and your woods may be far from mine. But we all have woods. It’s the trees our ancestors planted. I may enjoy your woods, I may love its smell or its light. I may even build my hut in it and live in it for the rest of my life. But in my own woods I can find the clearing. In my own woods I know how to step carefully enough to not scare away my deer.
When painting, I’m looking for deers. I’m deep in my own woods, planted by my ancestors, walking carefully between the trees, knowing that in these woods, there is no getting lost. On most days, all I see are tree trunks, undergrowth and moss. Once in a while, I think I see an animal from the corner of my eye, but when I turn around, all I find is a slightly crooked fir tree.
On a very good day, though, a deer finds its way to a clearing, careless and entirely uninterested in me, we share the same space for a moment and I can catch a glimpse of one of its legs or its antlers or maybe its tail before it makes its way back into the woods.
