The Sublime
The shock is the thing, the delirium tremens of existence. A sunset when you are at risk of falling off a cliff. The moon observed at four in the morning, hauntingly. Mist in the woods. A beach at dawn. To discuss such things, to analyze them, is to render them comprehensible, ordinary, mundane. This isn’t a crime so much as a dissipation of the experience. Afterwards, it may be a way to keep the extraordinary alive.
The significance of the experience is overwhelming, but its meaning is tenuous. A child screaming at the sight of the abyss. Watching someone we love die. Not sights for a tourist, not even an intellectual and well-informed one. An experience of pushing beyond limits, not necessarily of dissolving into the scene, but of facing it, being subsumed by it. The Romantics knew this, it was the basis of all they did. Not merely the beautiful, something radically transcending that, something to be written about only circumspectly. The sublime, it is said, resides on the border between life and death. The consciousness shatters, the scene fades.
Just published in July 2026 by Chax Press, you may purchase this book HERE.