The Visual Lover (II)

And I avoid spinning webs of fantasy around the figures I contemplate to entertain myself. I see them, and their value for me consists only in their being seen. Anything I might add to them would only diminish them, for it would diminish their ‘visibility’.

Whatever I might fantasize about them would instantly hit me with its obvious falseness; and while dreamed things please me, false things disgust me. I’m enchanted by pure dreams, those which have no relation to reality nor even any point of contact with it. But imperfect dreams, which have their basis in life, fill me with loathing, or would fill me with loathing were I to indulge in them.

I see humanity as a vast decorative motif that lives through our eyes and ears, as well as through psychological emotion. All I want from life is to observe humanity. All I want from myself is to observe life.

I’m like a being from another existence who passes, with a certain amount of interest, through this one. I’m alien to it in every way. There’s a kind of glass sheet between me and it. I want the glass to be perfectly clear, so that it will in no way hinder my examination of what’s behind it, but I always want the glass.

For every scientifically minded spirit, to see in something more than what’s there is to see it less. Materially adding to it spiritually diminishes it.

This attitude is no doubt responsible for my aversion to museums. The only museum for me is the whole of life, in which the picture is always absolutely accurate, with any inaccuracy being due to the spectator’s imperfection. I do what I can to reduce that imperfection, and if I can’t do anything, then I rest content with the way it is, because, like everything else, it can’t be any other way.