Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1913 (Heft 41))

THE MINUTES

THE Minutes I have found to be living things. Each Minute has a
personality; each Minute has a mood; each Minute has an eternity
behind it — a private eternity, a private oblivion, a private destiny.
They are fatal chalices, powerful telescopes, horoscopes of the past. They
soar everlastingly out of the unconscious mind into the ether of the conscious
mind and fade into the noumenal void. They are like a rush of rockets into
the air, breaking into the flame of moods. Minutes are the facets of Time,
as moods are the facets of the soul. The passing Minute is a king, or maybe
a jester, from the courts of the Past, or again, an invitation to visit Hell.
My Minutes are heretical—each one denying the other, each playing
the apostate. They neutralize all dogmas. Some have lived at the poles of
the Infinite; others have lived on the equators of Time. Shining oases and
poppy-wreathed gourds across the sand wastes of a dismal eternity! Fragile,
immortal ephemerides! Writhing prisoners of form! Unkempt, murderous
Minutes! Marmoreal, hallucinating Minutes! This is Walpurgis Night, and
you shall unriddle yourselves to me!
And the Minutes spoke:
A Pilgrim Minute:
I am the pilgrim Minute of Eternity. I have tiptoed through all the
corridors of your ancient incarnations with a lighted candle in my hand
looking for God!
An Eternal Minute:
I am the mirror that no breath can mist. I glow like the full moon
behind the rush of moods. I may be veiled, but cannot be obliterated. I am
the eternal spectator of change.
A Frozen Minute:
I am Reason—the winter of the emotions. I am webbed in algebraic
formulas and cadenced in syllogisms. I have no power over man, for I have
no soul.
An Obscene Minute:
I am the veiled wanton that came to you in your youth. My body is
en fete; my mind an obscene kermess; my heart a monstrance where the
Host of hell reigns. I am Lilith.
A Black Minute:
I am Ennui, the spring of the ultra-modern intellect, the frightful gar-
goyle that completes the Temple of the Hours, the creator and destroyer of
worlds, the black snowflake.
A Desolate Minute:
I was once a fly in the empyrean and I walked on the ceiling of the universe
flywise and glanced into the Golden City. Since, I am the Niobe of Minutes.