The Power of Horizons
Here's my working definition, for the time being:
An identifiable line marking the edge/beginning of an adjacent region absent of detail.
The VW van picture has two horizons: one horizon outward beyond the hill crest, and one inward into the VW bus interior (and 'inward' into the vegetation and ground). When looking at 3D graphics especially, as you look more closely, you quickly and obviously get to the end of any detail: you can't see anything beyond the crest of the hill, and you can't see any detail of the VW van beyond the basic shapes; you can't see the texture of the seat fabric, or the weathered pitting in the black rubber seal around the front windshield, or lettering on the tire sidewalls, etc..
That clear demarcation is the horizon, where perceptual detail ends.
Another sample: In the older "Peanuts" comic strips, which I read as a kid, you can see the same thing: a definite, obvious - and in most of the cases in these examples, literal - horizon, which marks the edge of nothingness, of disappearance of detail. Again, two horizons: at the line where sky and earth meet; and then inward beyond the simplest, most basic outlines of characters and objects.
As a kid, these horizons hit me aesthetically, not cognitively, but as a mood. Paired with the very adult and rather melancholy text, these obvious horizons made unspoken claims on my imagination.
Why? Because of the lack of detail. Because of horizons, there were no planes in the sky, or power lines or billboards.
Because of horizons, there is only featureless grass - no dog poop, no weeds, no sprinkler heads. The trees aren't rotting. The kids' clothes don't have holes or missing buttons.
Life and reality, in this view, is very simple. Very colorful, yes. Lots of funny words. But the sense-perceptual field is left featureless.
For twenty years I lived in Missoula, Montana, a small-ish town completely surrounded by mountains. There, I felt the natural horizon strongly, and it prompted and supported deep meditation on what a horizon was, and why it did to me what it did, emotionally - soul-sensually.
At the same time, my grad school reading of Sartre's Being and Nothingness, and the very beginnings of awareness of phenomenology, and brain-cracking sessions of reading and writing on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, directed much of my thinking, and writing, for sure.
But even before I understood any philosophy, as I looked up at Mount Jumbo's treeless, grassy prominence 800 feet above me, where it's silhouette edge lay right against/on-top-of the featureless blue sky, day after day after season after year, I felt the magic, heard the still small voice of.....peace? Infinity?
Joy?
And why there? Why, right at the seam - invisible by definition - between the mountain and the sky?
Before I move on, one objection: a horizon isn't 'real', in the sense that you can walk up to it and touch it. It's like a rainbow, or a constellation in the sky: a horizon 'appears' as it does, due to the relative size and location of the composite elements. If I could travel to another position in the universe, and looked into space to find the constellation Orion, I'm going to be disappointed. The stars that make up Orion, as they're seen from Earth, are real, and can - potentially - be touched. But Orion cannot.
Since Orion 'really isn't there/really doesn't exist', then, in the same way, the horizon doesn't exist, and therefore can't be exerting any influence - emotionally or soul-sensually (!) - when I'm looking at it. So this whole 'horizons' thing is bunk.
To be continued...
Comments