The Elegance of the Hedgehog

a quick excerpt from The Elegance of the Hedgehog, regarding Art, and what it fulfills in us. I love this passage...

...within the frame lies the plenitude of a suspended moment, stolen from time, rescued from human longing.

Human longing!

We cannot cease desiring,

and this is our glory,

and our doom.

Desire! It carries us and crucifies us, delivers us every new day to a battlefield where, on the eve, the battle was lost;

but in sunlight does it not look like a territory ripe for conquest,

a place where -- even though tomorrow we will die -- we can build empires doomed to fade to dust,

as if the knowledge we have of their imminent fall had absolutely no effect on our eagerness to build them now?

We are filled with the energy of constantly wanting that which we cannot have,

we are abandoned at dawn on a field littered with corpses,

we are transported until our death by projects that are no sooner completed

than they must be renewed.

Yet how exhausting it is to be constantly desiring ...

We soon aspire to pleasure without the quest, to a blissful state without beginning or end,

where beauty would no longer be an aim or a project but the very proof of our nature.

And that state is Art.

Photos: mirrors on building: Stockholm architects Wilhelmson Arkitekter housing project, blond found on visualizeus.com, balloons- Le Ballon Rouge (Albert Lamorisse), Angel of Death, Image of London Library after bombing, Sunrise - Gloriosity LCT Indiana 2009, Solstice Moon at Cabo Sunion from observatorio.info, Shelley's Ozymandias, Childhood Memories by Alicepopkorn, Auspicious Dawn by Peter Kurdulija, homework- pokkisam.com, All the Books of My Life by August Brill, Tired No More Please reblogged from audreyhepburncomplex, girl in field from iamblessed.com, louvre eva green film