1, 2, 3: Image, Method, and Mirror

What marks off the "self" is method; it has no other source than ourselves: it is when we really employ method that we really begin to exist. As long as one employs method only on symbols one remains within the limits of a sort of game. In action that has method about it, we ourselves act, since it is we ourselves who found the method; we really act because what is unforeseen presents itself to us. (emphasis mine) -Simone Weil from Lectures on Philosophy

... at bottom the principle of non-contradiction is a principle of grammar. -ibid

Complementarity and uncertainty ask us to hold mutually exclusive ideas together--the basic idea behind a Zen koan. -Gary Lachman, from this article

Paradox has been defined as "Truth standing on her head to get attention." -GK Chesterton, from When Doctors Agree

I do not think
I am thought
not by a thinker
who would, too, be
thought
I am thought in action
(emphasis mine) -Brion Gysin, from an untitled poem in Here To Go

Remember Ms. Weil said, in action ... we ourselves act.

1) Image: "I" is a word. "I" is a thought.
I am thought in action.

When you start thinking in images, without words, you're well on the way. -William S. Burroughs, from this interview

All creatures are one pure nothing. -Meister Eckhart, from In Agro Dominico

Wait, go back to the Burroughs quote. When you start thinking in images, without words, you're well on the way. You're well on the way to what?

2) Method: "I" is a word. "I" is a thought.

They, then, who see their own mind, in whatever way that is possible ... and do not believe it to be an image of God, see ... a mirror, but do not see [God] through the mirror ... They do not even know the mirror [is] an image. And if they knew this, perhaps they would feel that he too whose mirror this is should be sought by it, and somehow ...seen. -Augustine, Book 15 of On the Trinity



excerpt from the film Mirror, written and directed by Andrei Tarkovsky

I had the greatest difficulty in explaining to people that there is no hidden, coded meaning in [Mirror], nothing beyond the desire to tell the truth. Often my assurances provoked incredulity and even disappointment. Some people evidently wanted more: they needed arcane symbols, secret meanings. (emphasis mine) -Andrei Tarkovsky, discussing his film Mirror in his book Sculpting in Time

Wait, what did Simone Weil say again in the first quote in this post? As long as one employs method only on symbols one remains within the limits of a sort of game. In action that has method about it, we ourselves act... (emphasis mine)

Art is action with method.
What is Tarkovsky showing us in Mirror?
3) Mirror: "I" is a word. "I" is a thought.

Images taken from the painting Christus im Hause seiner Eltern by John Everett Millais