The Arcades of Emptiness

Again the summer heat gives us some refreshing evening breeze on the terrace. Softly the voice of Placido Domingo is singing a Cantido of Augustine Lara. Willemien has her Youtube on while doing her Home Work. Mostly I prefer listening to the silence and the natural noises, some cracking in the forest or birdsongs. But for the moment no bird comes along. No shrieking swiftly turning swallow. Not yet a bat flittering around the roof. It is a quiet Saturday evening.

This morning down in town, I tried to snatch that wild bunch of swallows, speeding around, up and down Bridge Street. Impossible. Only blue skies. But on our way to the river, as we passed the arcades at the corner of Weser Street, I suddenly was struck by the view and perspective, the shadows and the structure of this colonnade. I know it for years already, passed a thousand times, inside and outside, summers and winters. And yet today’s view took my breath away. Why? Perhaps for no reason at all. Perhaps it was the emptiness. Maybe accidentally. But it drew my attention on this mid season Saturday morning. No tourist hiding in the shady coolness of the arcades. Therefore the title of this entry will be: The Arcades of Emptiness.

Why not call it The Empty Arcades? Is that your poetic weightiness? Instead of keeping it Simple, Short & Light? Maybe. Perhaps it was my unconscious association with my experience on that hot summer day in Athens long ago. Walking with little Mischa and Willemien through the Stoa of Attalos. That memory of a very old dream. A schooltime dream: to tell my child about the birth of Greek philosophy. Walking in the coolness between the shady colonnades at the market place. The meeting of masters and students on a free basis outside the confines of school buildings or institutions. That was what the great “peripateia” (walking around) meant to me. Comparable to sitting under a Tree - or meditating on a Tree. Or practical philosophy as a form of meeting while working in the Garden.

That was my Dream of the Peripateia. An impossible dream. Throughout my learning and teaching years at school, university and some “alternative” academies, I have finally learned that this ‘classic’ form of free and life bound education is no longer possible within the mass educational systems of today. Perhaps, somewhere in this world there does exist a workable example of that free academy of art&plilosophy. And I will be happy to hear more about it from you when you know an exception. But again, understand me well, I’m not feeling bitter about this experience of disappointment. For I did never give up, to do my daily exercise in alternative forms of philosophical practice. To start from Zero or Emptiness and then meditate on the go, walking around through the Arcadian Arcades, following The Way, my Small Philosophers Way. As my writing tonight and posting my Journal to you is a form of walking through the Shadowy Arcades of Emptiness.