H. Adler - Panorama

Josef no longer tries to repudiate the dualism at the heart of creation, but there really is no contradiction between dualism and freedom, because no dissociation can continue to exist in the face of freedom. If Josef wants to feel grateful, no dualism can stand in the face of gratitude, for it knows no real contradiction, even if the language has use for the word “ingratitude,” which certainly makes sense and is true, but Josef feels nevertheless that gratitude and ingratitude cannot be set against each other as opposites, no matter how much logic may think they should be. The logical approach doesn’t reveal that there’s a spiritual contradiction between them, such that the spirit does not take its nature from matter, as the spirit is no less and no more a part of reality than is matter, they simply postulate each other through their mere existence. What isn’t a part of the opposition is incomprehensible, and therefore also cannot be logical. If it’s nonetheless put into words, then it appears above all to contradict itself, which is acceptable, though that doesn’t bother Josef anymore. As soon as he recognizes the limits of philosophy that make such questions unanswerable, then he no longer wishes to philosophize about that which is insoluble. Josef finds that philosophy is often refuted by life, which is full of contradictions and cannot be separated from them by any approach, though it doesn’t entirely rest in these contradictions, even if it cannot be freed from them.

Now that Josef has finally slept, there is nothing more for him to draw on for encouragement. He feels safe. He wakes up and looks around him with eyes wide open. Now he waits patiently, awakening takes time, a temporal activity, since it is steeped in memories. Consciousness tries to sense itself, checking to see if it is indeed there. It poses small and general questions in order to reassure itself, and in doing so turns to the past. Every awakening is a trip to a past that must be reviewed if it is to be completed. Only then is a person awake, after which he attempts his first steps in the new day and turns this way and that, it being good if he goes about familiar activities in order to find his place more easily, all the while new impressions readying him and sending him on his way. Then memory dissolves, though it saturates the subsurface of the new day, which without refamiliarizing itself with this realm would be plunged into chaotic ruins. Now, at last, everything is in order, and many experiences begin to build up, everything renewed as it returns once again, though not at the person’s insistence as he goes on his way, even though he is free and can believe that it is his own way. Then the person sees many potential outcomes as he moves on and is called onward, but he really doesn’t feel like it, since the questions have gone silent in him, having been withdrawn the moment that he thinks he can answer them. Yet won’t he still be pursued, won’t worry continue to haunt him?

Josef doesn’t dare decide, yet it seems to him that it has been decided anyway, since he has nothing more to say about it. He has remained calm and wants to fit in, for the inevitable will occur anyway. It’s a cause for concern, Josef grants, but it also leads one on, as it’s a doubtless certainty, a stream amid constancy that carries on, and in which also worry, also questions, and the insoluble are givens. Man is nothing if he has nothing to protect him, for even that Josef who was robbed by his brothers of his multicolored coat and thrown into a pit had to put on something before he was sold to Potiphar. Neither spiritual nor physical poverty releases human beings from the need to clothe themselves, and thus it was the nadir of inhumanity, a sign of the most shameless murder, that the most loyal of the conspirators stripped the lost ones of their garments and then shot them or slaughtered them, while other conspirators granted their victims a bit of time, though not out of kindness, as after their bath in the sauna they were handed rags, this being, without the conspirators knowing, a sign that man as a result of his having gained knowledge in Paradise had to wear clothes. Man may be humble and humbled, lost or forgotten, but he cannot be unclad, the heart also needing to be covered, about that he can do nothing, whether he is awake or asleep.

However man tests himself or is tested, he can always only give thanks, for thanks can accompany anything, gratitude being that which clothes shame and at the same time a kind of naked fervency, gratitude the victim who does not have to be afraid of anything or ever betray himself. Grief exists, but gratitude does as well. This arrangement goes on forever, and so does stopping and resting, there being no calamitous collapse that results, but instead a quiet joy arises, which grows and flows throughout. Is terror then banished? Are the horrible events over? Do my lambs graze in innocence? Does no one lift a sword against another? And is the sword melted down into a plowshare? Is there something that can at last console? Oh, if terror would not turn into new terror and would do away with grief! Josef wants nothing to do with empty equivocation leading to lame optimism or self-deception, wishing to avoid any kind of blindness. He follows because he is challenged to, he doesn’t withdraw, he is called, but not into the green sweet-tasting grassland of the fools who are not lambs at all. He is called to a decision that manifests itself every day, which is why he cannot stand aloof. The viewer is also the participant, there being nothing arbitrary, everything is tightly intertwined, thus forming Josef’s garments. Neither to extricate oneself nor to unite oneself is the first task, but rather to make something of it, no matter what it takes out of you. Sometimes it seems easier to judge the run of affairs than to take part in them, but nothing happens if one does, and sometimes that means entering the fray. It may be tempting to flee to one’s tower, but to do so is to sleep as the world goes by, and we sleep enough as it is, and thus we are compelled to be awake and to function, the piety of the solitary person shattered by the functioning of the world.

Josef gets up. Once more he takes in the view, observing it closely in order to retain it forever, he not wishing to forget anything and to hold on to the legacy of Launceston Castle, he wanting to remember it all forever, what he thought here and dreamed, though he also feels that now it is finally enough. He cannot stay any longer, everything is closed, while what he will keep is what has been these rich hours, invaluable moments of contemplation never granted him before, he never having felt so fulfilled and perhaps also so empty of desire, though it’s not something that can continue or be surpassed. Josef wants to stay a bit longer, he wants to consider what happened to him here, he wants to pass it on to himself, to lock it within, so that it exists within him, as long as he exists. He recalls the whining pleas of a child who always wants to do something fun again, again, again, and again, and then one last time, but Josef is not waiting for that moment, he wants only to extend one moment before the onset of another, always just a little more, just a little, then a little less, the taste of the end already a sweet and slightly bitter honey on the tongue, and then the finale, a last blow marking the end, an end, and the gong, and the Lord is in that blink of an eye a single Lord, and only for the blink of an eye, the little blink into the end before the final blink of an eye, for absolutely the last time, arriving at the end that has not yet occurred, the honey growing heavier, the bees already circling, an extension of the blink of an eye into the timelessness of the deepest perception, everything taken in with the highest intensity. Remain human, don’t keel over, don’t fall, quiet yourself within, so everything coalesces inside you, all that you possess and all that you do not possess, and now observe how the blink of an eye at the end opens and closes you.