James Joyce speaks of moments of revelation, beauties engorged with life:
“…the instant wherein that supreme quality of beauty, the clear radiance of the aesthetic image, is apprehended luminously by the mind which has been arrested by its wholeness and fascinated by its harmony is the luminous silent stasis of aesthetic pleasure...”
Joyce describes these experiences of beauty, of beauties, as epiphanies: "a sudden spiritual manifestation... the most delicate and evanescent of moments". Epiphanies should be apprehended with extreme care, should they vanish for ever…
Italy…In the shimmering orange heat of this August evening I hear the crickets mingling with the distant echoes of urban noise whilst the smoke of an opium/hashish combo to strong to inhale pierces my lungs. I look beyond the balcony at the heat ridden city and back again within the yellow-orange obscurity, within the room occluded by mad gyrating fans (where)…a languid body exhausted by pleasure and pain slightly moves through breezy sheets of perfect white…all this is enough for an unforeseen pattern to emerge, nothing more, nothing less…an epiphany for an instant of eternity…"the luminous silent stasis of aesthetic pleasure"…this is "it"…pure Zen…
