º° ¶Ë º° (êüàø)

                                                                                          Shooting Star (Meteor)

                                  From the eternal world to the world of eternity

 

                                                                                                                                       Art Critic  Seung-Hwan KIM

                                                                                                                                       Prof. of Chungbuk Univ,

                                                                                                                                       http://web.chungbuk.ac.kr/~whan86

           There is a meteor a long distance away and time is winding down with a burning light as it arrives in this world. Humankind home planet could be a peaceful resting village of the shooting star and meteor showers. She burns herself on her everlasting fire and disappears into nothingness. It then reincarnates into another existence. Humankind and art are the same as a shooting star. Just like a meteor, humankind comes from eternity, and then moves towards an unknown future, taking a grand journey. Homo sapiens float little by little heading for the eternal spot where we realize that we're nothing and everything, without a doubt. Mankind is at the junction of despair and hope. In our awakening through truth, we can reach a graceful hill of vividness and reality.  

             There is a parallel relationship between stars and humanity. If one star is born in the sky, then one person will be born into the world. If one star collapses, then one person will pass away. In this cosmic relationship, one star could be one person, as well as one person being one star. Homo sapiens, a species of death, a creature of death, cannot avoid pre-destination, which is a return to the eternal. Death doesn't mean the end of the spirit and body, but a delightful rebirth into the original existence according to the cosmic principle. It could be a homological life cycle as one of each. Birth, growing up, living, and dying. It would be called God who created all things in this cosmos and controls every matter of the world.

           We can see a bright trail or streak that appears in the sky when a meteoroid is heated to incandescence by friction with the earth's atmosphere. On the open field or at the top of a mountain at midnight, we make ourselves master of the universe when we encounter a fantastic falling star, a meteor bursting and shooting a shower of light like the fleeting of time. All the small particles of matter in the solar system are very precious; all the phenomena are works of art composed by the cosmos. We are directly observable only by their incandescence from frictional heating upon entry into the atmosphere as fire in a dark sky, but we never saw such a magnificent and breathtaking cosmic show. It could be another form of our life as the eternal change to nothing and everything.

             We can see a meteoric shower parting from its own trajectory. The splendid meteoroid is splitting the dark sky. Finally, they disappear all of a sudden. It is the same trajectory as that of humankind. Even though the meteoroid looks to be gone, it turns into a gestalt of change into another form, like a meteoric stone. Alas, our fleeting life! All the desire, will, anger, wealth, novelty, prosperity, love, despair and sorrow will have disappeared according to the fleeting of time. But humankind, a helpless being, doesn't realize this. We, as beings of the cosmos, must burn out all things, and stop this short or long journey of life to put all things into the bosom of the cosmos.

          Humanity's destination has exactly the same fatal trajectory as that of a shooting star. Like splendid light and flaming fire, we will also pass away in anytime and space. It's nothingness. It could be a miracle of nothing and everything. Almost all things are nothing. Eternal change, eternal sameness and eternal return. After a glorious life in this world, everyone must return to the cosmos, which is the real destination of our lives and fountain of imagination. In returning to the real, invisible and multi-dimensional stage of this cosmos, we will awaken that ceaseless gestalt  a changing of everything has only one truth. In eternal time and space, we pass and change our ontological selves like that of a beautiful meteor. In this procedure, art is the same as a star setting itself aflame. 

There will be no trace. There will be no pathos. There will be no passion. There will be no desire. Only nothingness. Absolute nothingness. But then, only everything. Everything. We became nothing as was taught by nature, and finally, we will become everything with a notion of totality. Sitting on the lakeshore of Daecheong-Ho(´ëûȣ), we artists will burn ourselves as shooting stars facing the eternal future. For the single precious Art, we will burn ourselves out. Through such self-denial, we can prove our existence. Even though our lives draw a straight line in this real world, we erase all things, and then, we will launch our imagination and symbolic ideas to the unlimited eternal cosmos. That's our splendid flame of life and art. Art will be nothing and the real world will be also real.