A Convergence
of Convergences:
A Contest.
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For more information
about this contest,
click here.
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Contest Winner No. 34.
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Papal Fire
(Papa Lux).
By Nick Feia of Atlanta
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These are actually before-and-after shots, and you'll notice it also works if you read right to left. This is, of course, the CliffsNotes version of the World's Greatest Story, in which the cold, established old guard finally becomes soulless enough to BURST INTO CRAZY FAST CHAOS AND REVOLUTION before simmering and establishing a new (c)old guard.
Questions: Fire and the pope seem pretty different at first, but are they really? Is being the pope better than being on fire? Should "pope" be capitalized?
Answers: The tingly-godly feeling you get when you settle into some Xtreme prayer is probably the same as the burny-dancy feeling fire gets when it's on fire. That is to say: being on fire is not better than being the pope (or vice versa), since both have similar spiritual goals. Therefore, "Pope" makes just about as much sense as "Fire," unless speaking about specific popes or fires (e.g., Pope John Curtis Jr., the Iroquois Theater fire, etc.).
Cool fact: Fire and the pope need each other. Without fire and dynamic beauty, there would never have been such a thing as religion in the first place. What message of love and greatness would have been worth writing down if not for fire? The only reason they were written down at all was because fire has such a short life span, and retelling the story is a way to keep the party going. Sacraments became the way to preserve and reconnect with that fire in the cold times. But, as time goes on, something happens: the sacraments start getting really boring. The solution? Burn it all down! The pope is standing on kindling for a reason.
Thanks,
Olai Feia of Atlanta
P.S. Please don't discount my entry just because I'm a kid and you find my writing annoying. I promise I'll keep practicing. Someday I hope to be good at it.
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Weschler Responds.
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OK. Pretty cool indeed.
But, first off, what exactly are we looking at here?
A quick Web search reveals that the left-side image was taken by a certain Gregorz Lukasik at a bonfire celebration in the mountains near Katowice, Poland, the birthplace of Pope John Paul II, on April 2, 2007, the second anniversary of the pope's death. (The picture on the right was taken during a papal audience six years earlier.) Mr. Lukasik suggests that he only realized what he had after he got home and reviewed his pictures. He began showing the picture around, the church and then the Vatican got wind of the images, the Vatican News Service posted them, and websites throughout Europe began crashing in the ensuing ecstasy.
So: that's what we are looking at.
Now, as for Mr. Feia's commentary, beginning with his P.S., I am reminded of a passage at the outset of a book by French phenomenologist Gaston Bachelard:
We have only to speak of an object to think that we are being objective. But, because we chose it in the first place, the object reveals more about us than we do about it. What we consider to be our fundamental ideas concerning the world are often indications of the immaturity of our minds. Sometimes we stand in wonder before a chosen object; we build up hypotheses and reveries; in this way we form convictions which have all the appearance of true knowledge. But the initial source is impure: the first impression is not a fundamental truth.
The introduction continues apace like that for several more paragraphs, before zeroing in on its subject:
We are going to study a problem that no one has managed to approach objectively, one in which the initial charm of the object is so strong that it still has the power to warp the minds of the clearest thinkers and to keep bringing them back to the poetic fold in which dreams replace thought and poems conceal theorems. This problem is the psychological problem posed by our convictions about fire. It seems to me so definitely psychological in nature that I do not hesitate to speak of a psychoanalysis of fire.
And, indeed, the spare text that follows, The Psychoanalysis of Fire (1938), is just teeming with stuff that I suspect Mr. Feia would find of (shall we say) consuming interest, including chapters on the Prometheus complex, fire and reverie, sexualized fire, idealized fire, and even a side treatise on spontaneous combustion, which Bachelard (citing centuries of authoritative theorists, all the way up through Zola) simply attributes to the ingestion of way too much alcohol.
So there's that. And then, with regard to prior reveries on the fate of this particular pontiff, I can't help but be reminded of Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan's hauntingly enigmatic sculptural tableau, The Ninth Hour, from 1999 ...
... which, incidentally, when shown in Poland back in 2001, managed to get the whole gallery shut down. Why people should savor an image of the pope exploding into fire but be scandalized by one of him felled by a meteorite is a subject for meditation. Any thoughts, Mr. Feia?
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OTHER WINNERS.
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1. Evolving, Evolved by Charlie Hopper
2. Primal Forces, Basic Colors by Andy Hunter
3. The End of the Beginning by Holly Dunsworth
Intermezzo by Lawrence Weschler
4. This Is Not an Ad by Jimmy Chen
5. Catskills Vagina by Dan Clem
6. The Antipodes by Chris Zic
7. Self-Made Constriction by Sam Gaskin
8. We Are the Son by Danny Erker
9. Painfully Unaware by Dan Park
10. Gutshot by Jason Torchinsky
Weschler's Second Interlude
11. Love and War by Kim Wood
12. Inside and Out There by Lena Webb
13. The March by Emily Marvosh
14. Feminine Divine Triptych by Margit Christenson
15. Time's Deliberate Convergence by Steve Denyszyn
16. A Rousseau/Hirshfield Convergence by Adam Webb
Beirut/Warsaw by Lawrence Weschler
17. Clothesline Raising Over Carlisle, Indiana by Charlie Hopper
Carnival of Convergences
Weschler's Fourth Interlude
Aftersquib to the Foregoing
18. Pelvises All the Way Down by John Peter Rickgauer
19. Ovary Night? by Maya Muñoz
20. Christ in Space by Jonathan Shipley
A Pair of Convergences Off of Tina Barney
Another Carnival of Convergences
21. Moral Confusion: Iraq, Munich, and Vietnam by Donald Rumsfeld
22. Seeing the Tree for the Forest by Walter Murch
An Addendum to the Foregoing, and a Visitor Challenge
23, 24, and 25. Far Out by Michael Benson, Brian Christian, and Walter Murch
26. Jewish Bunk Beds by Monica S. Bland
Those Damn Swedish Trees, Take 3: Convergence of the Blogs
27. Degenerate Boogie-Woogie by Lisa Lee
Carnival of Convergences No. 3
28. Sand and Moon by Alison Cornyn
Actaeon: An Ovidian Impromptu by Lawrence Weschler
29 and 30. Hoods and Veils by Vero Testa and Lauren Redniss
The Onion/Bickle Convergence by Lawrence Weschler
31. The Lone Figure Against the Armored Swarm by Michele Siegel
32. Muscle and Flow by Benjamin R. Cohen
An Addendum to the Foregoing: Cities, Brains, Orchestras by Lawrence Weschler
Saint and Princess by Lawrence Weschler
Beauty Queen and Baghdad Hummer by Lawrence Weschler
Carnival of Convergences No. 4
Laughing, Clapping, Constantly Forgetting: A Trill of Readerly Associations by Lawrence Weschler
33. Lithographica by R.A. Villanueva
34. Papal Fire (Papa Lux) by Nick Feia
Addendum to "Laughing, Clapping ..." and, More Specifically, to the Stalinist-Applause Anecdote by Lawrence Weschler
35. Disseminations: Internet, Dandelions, Flight Paths by Sarah Daegling
36. Black and White and in Color by Walter Murch
Carnival of Convergences No. 5
Lee Friedlander's Visionary Trees: An Addendum to the Last Chapters of Everything That Rises by Lawrence Weschler
37. Shipwrecked Desperation by Charles Mudede via Matt Haber
38. Life Forms by Ariel Winter
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