So much of
this world is credited to the concrete, that it is real, whereas the unseen,
the amorphous, is insubstantially
futile because it has no visible seat in the
corporeal world. So much of this world
is powered by the surface of things, rather than from the depths of
things. We forget that the concrete
rides upon the streets of the
abstract.
People today tend to shun the idea of
abstraction. An essay cannot be abstract. A painting can
be abstract, but many have difficulty in liking it; often they force themselves
to like it but find it hard to maintain their interest. Abstraction is a mode of futility to some—it
says nothing worthy of time. Perhaps
they are right: it says nothing to those who have lived outside
themselves. But everything man has made
is run by abstraction; everything was created by it. Look around, and you will see that
abstraction far outweighs the tangible.
Look off into the distance at some obscure mountains. What is over there? You know that the mountain is not truly black,
or blue—depending on what time of day you are looking at it—and you know that
it is not flat, slick, or small. You
immediately recognize it as a mountain because you can see, in your mental eye,
the mountain up close. You can see its
rocks, its trees, its animals. You can
see the flowers and the many colors they produce. But you can not truly see it from a distance,
but you know it is there. Imagination:
abstraction. Maybe you know what you
will do in a few hours. You have
imagined yourself, to some extent, doing that very thing, whether it is going
to school, taking a drive, taking a walk, sitting and reading a book, or
watching a movie. None of this has
happened; none of it is real. It is
amorphous, without form, and to think that such abstraction is futile! Why without abstraction, the world would not
exist to us. The world acts upon the
foundation of divisionism, and the abstract is but a color in the collage, allotting
it as the factor that subsists in an equiprimordial existence. Without the abstract, without the irrational,
meaning would not have its humane ring.