The Petriverse of Pierre Jardin: by Paul A. Harris Main Menu Paul A. Harris

A Phoenix Flash of Reverie

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Stoned thinking unfolds as reverie: not a passive or undirected mental drifting, but an ascetic practice requiring both a concentrated will and deep listening. In Bachelard's formulation, reverie culminates in a specific temporal experience: reverie's equilibrium is punctuated by an "ephiphanic instant." This instant disrupts the “horizontal” flow of time and opens a “vertical” time, a moment characterized by “the principle of an essential simultaneity in which the most scattered and disunited being achieves unity.” Time ceases to flow; it suddenly shoots up (il jaillit) in an “inaugural” moment, a “phoenix flash” of cosmic time traversing personal time.


“When these flashes of fire, lightning or flight surprise us in our contemplation, they appear to our eyes as heightened, universal moments—not so much ours as given to us, moments which mark the memory and return in dreams, retaining their imaginary dynamism.  We might term them, in fact, phoenixes of reverie” (Fragments of Poetics of Fire 32).
 

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