Mike Rathbun

department: Art
office: 103A Fields Center
mailbox: 92
phone: 503-768-7395
e-mail:mike@lclark.edu
Web: http://www.mikerathbun. com

The very posture of search, the slow movement with the head down, seems to draw people. 'What did you lose?' they ask. 'Nothing.' 'Then what do you search for?' And this is an embarrassing question. We search for something that will seem like truth to us; we search for understanding; we search for that principle which keys us deeply into the pattern of all life; we search for the relations of things, one to another, as this young man searches for the warm light in his wife's eyes and that one for the hot warmth of fighting. These little boys and young men on the tide flat do not even know that they search for such things too. We say to them, 'We are looking for curios, for certain small animals.'

-John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez

I am trying to find Epiphanies. These are moments when for reasons that I can not explain, I seem to be connected to something outside of myself. This happens when a set of circumstances arise and are triggered by something: a song, a view, an idea. I then feel an emotional swell that is so profound that it becomes physical. I experience a moment of clarity; clarity about what I don't know. It is a glimpse of something that seems to be the most important thing! It is like something that is up and just to the right of my vision and when I turn in that direction it seems to move and keep pace with my turning. Then another set of circumstances cloud it and it is gone. The feeling lingers and leaves me with a hope and a feeling that it is something bigger than I am. It is like waking from a dream. The longer I am awake the less I remember, and the more I try to remember the less sense it makes. But, even after the specifics of the dream are gone, the way it made me feel can last for a very long time. What is that thing, that clarity? I find that I am driven to find out.

-Mike Rathbun