Salzburg, Austria, December 1971. A young Austrian girl, radiant and beautiful, walked into the kitchen. I lost all desire for the food I had prepared. My soul sprouted wings. The visible beauty triggered a memory of a timeless Beauty. Anamnesis pierced for a moment the amnesia induced by the bodily senses.
Dayton, Ohio, 1978. Gripped by the audible beauty of the Beethoven Violin Concerto in D major, the solo passage near the beginning of the Larghetto (26:33), upon return from a long, hard run, I could not eat the huge salad I had prepared. I set it down, my appetite gone.
Simone Weil (FLN, 318): "When once the whole of one's desire is turned toward God, one has no desire to eat when one is hungry."
The metaphysical elsewhere: beyond space, before time. Space- and time-bound as we are 'at present,' we must use spatial and temporal language to point beyond the spatiotemporal.
The intimations are rare. Don't ignore them, record them, honor and remember them. To dismiss them as the worldly are wont to do strikes me as the height of spiritual foolishness.
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