Alexander Duncan (April 9,1954 / Toronto, Ontario, Canada)

A granite stone cube half buried in a sandy beach towers against the plain expanse of blue sky. Or is it merely infinitesimal in a world of stars? Perspective blushes the imagination. The universe crushes all experiences to sand, even a granite stone cube or an 'I.' We capitalize the term, we speak of 'an I.' I ruminate upon a granite stone cube, infinitesimal in a world of stars, being crushed to sand, and I understand, perceiving meaning in an arbitrary act that beggars the imagination against the plain expanse of blue sky. What artifice is this ant tracing, of what origin and for what posterity? Being answers naught. The mystic knows naught. The mystic seeks in some vain yet vital cave of the heart the answer to the riddle that he himself poses, constructing spider's webs of language, himself the spider and the prey. He sucks himself dry in his chimerical pursuits, only to discover the ashes of nothingness, his webs traceries of charcoal. But he who neither knows nor speaks dwells in the perfect emptiness of mind that is bliss. That bliss is present, even now. It is the presence of sentience, the vacuity of being, the being of mind, the mind of bliss; sentience, devoid of self or thought, being purely present to itself/being in perfect simplicity of being itself.