The Mourning of the Unceasing Relinquishing of Each Moment to the AEther
mixed media on wood panel
40 ¾” x 49” x 2”
2023-24
The concept of presence—of being so deeply aware, so fully immersed in each moment, so attuned to the essence of existence—can give rise to an intense mourning for the passing of each fleeting instant as it fades into the AEther. This overwhelming compassion for the passage of time, the open raw heart, the inevitable loss.
Heraclitus famously stated that "everything flows," that constant change and impermanence defines the universe, Laozi describes the Tao as "the source of all things," an ever-present yet intangible force that underlies all existence. In “De Rerum Natura”, Lucretius presents a vision of the world as "nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion," depicting a universe in perpetual flux where moments are fleeting, and life is merely a temporary arrangement of atoms. T.S. Eliot, in “The Waste Land”, poignantly reflects on the fragmentation and impermanence of contemporary life, writing, "These fragments I have shored against my ruins". Søren Kierkegaard, wrote in “Fear and Trembling”, "It is man's lot to be reduced to nothing," and Friedrich Nietzsche, observed that "time is a thief of youth."
The unceasing relinquishing of each moment to the AEther, the continuous flow into the ungraspable expanse, the fading away into the infinite. The mourning replacing the moment.