Laterally

Share this post

What paints are on your palette?

laterally.substack.com

What paints are on your palette?

Thursday Theses: The ways we see the world

Clayton J. Hester
Nov 17, 2022
1
1
Share

For the Romantics, the natural world was a place of depth and distance.

It was a place of the “sublime.”

Thanks for reading Taking It Laterally! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This word held a particular notion, distinct from beauty.

Beauty is when you look up into the night sky and see a glowing parade of lights stretching to the farthest heights of heaven.

The sublime is when you look out into the night sky and see a void sprinkled with sparks that goes down and down in what seems like an endless abyss.

The sublime is that bigger thing than you. 

The thing that imposes itself on you and bears down on you.

Beauty is, yes, still bigger than you — even in a simple dandelion, it’s bigger than you.

But it calls you up, like a gust that would elevate you into itself. 

The sublime threatens you; beauty invites you. 

So which do you see when you look at the night sky?

Do you see heaven? Or the abyss?

I’ve written some about this before with regards to how we see the world.

I have a friend who is deeply paranoid. 

A lot of things, I suspect, play into this.

But there’s one thing I always urge him to take account of: how do you look at the world?

Is the yard free and open, something you, even as an adult, would leap into and run barefoot in?

Or is it insect-infested, maybe with a few rocks you’d step on and injure your feet?

These things, ultimately, are for you to decide. 

You’re not fabricating some fictional world for yourself. 
You’re not looking at the world through rose-colored glasses.

Why is cynicism the default?

Why aren’t we all allowed to be a bit more like Robin Williams’ Dead Poets Society character?

Can’t we climb upon our desks and see things a bit differently?

Again, you’re not inventing a reality of your own.

There are hot dogs and salads in the world.

Which of these you put into your body, that is your choice.

There’s negativity and there’s positivity.

There’s a world of problems and possibilities.

You get to choose which of these you put into your mind. 

But you also can see ravishing beauty and the chilling sublime, all in one place.

-Clayton

P.S.

Auguries of Innocence, William Blake

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower 

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour

Thanks for reading Taking It Laterally! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Twitter avatar for @claytonjhester
Clayton💡📝 🎥 @claytonjhester
One of the great problems is the assumption that size is a metric of value or importance. The ant worries not that he does not matter to the elephant. The microbe does not worry he does not matter to the blue whale. Go thou, do likewise. You are relevant because you are.
Twitter avatar for @AshleyPurdy
☆ 𝗔𝗦𝗛𝗟𝗘𝗬 𝗣𝗨𝗥𝗗𝗬 ☆ @AshleyPurdy
We are just a spec of dust in an infinite vastness of space. We are irrelevant. Live and Love while you can 🤍 ✌🏼 https://t.co/Bpk8P1LWOR
12:28 AM ∙ Nov 15, 2022
Twitter avatar for @claytonjhester
Clayton💡📝 🎥 @claytonjhester
When the only scale we care to juxtapose against our own experience is cosmic, we lose sight of the finer details.
Image
12:31 AM ∙ Nov 15, 2022
Twitter avatar for @claytonjhester
Clayton💡📝 🎥 @claytonjhester
The feeling of sublimeness brought on by realizing the vastness of our universe is a treasure. But it does not make us irrelevant.
12:33 AM ∙ Nov 15, 2022
Twitter avatar for @claytonjhester
Clayton💡📝 🎥 @claytonjhester
After all, what have we ever heard on a cosmic level that is "relevant"?
12:33 AM ∙ Nov 15, 2022

1
1
Share
1 Comment
Derek Sleater Cook
Nov 22, 2022Liked by Clayton J. Hester

Orange is the first color on my pallette since age 11, as I first recall. It was the t-shirt color I chose to have my horse's name "ironed" on. Red emerged later, even while my university color was blue. My creative compass guided me back to orange, in large part thanks to its presence with chartreuse and purple pervading Paris and a large gym bag in Central Park carried by a trio whom I serendipitously met at Club 51 later that night and my Amici Italiani they became!

Expand full comment
Reply
Top
New
Community

No posts

Ready for more?

© 2023 Clayton J. Hester
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start WritingGet the app
Substack is the home for great writing