To me Christmas invokes a particular imaginary. Because of historical reasons, both pagan and Christian, I associate Christmas with aggressively cold and tenuously white days of winter when the sun comes out for just a few hours, and solid darkness continues with no immediate end in sight. Uninterrupted silence makes the fierce winds and restless trees even more conspicuous. The ground is covered with a thick blanket of snow that creates a sight and a site that are both frightening and beautiful. This is how I imagine the valley of darkness and evil where power holds more power and injustice proves relentless. In order to become visible, darkness needs a stage.
And in the midst of vast darkness, emerges a couple of teenagers. They are poor, alone, and stand in fear. They have no home to go to, but need refuge because the girl is pregnant. As my narrative continues, the teenage girl gives birth to God incarnate: eternal and Utopian (no place) spirit becomes contained in finite matter. Ineffable, bodiless idea becomes violently inscribed in history not only in corporeal, temporal form but also reduced to a sign, a name: Jesus. What before simply was AM, without any reason or significance, now becomes subject to dogmas of cause and consequence, linearity, and justification. Now, he must bear all the eschatology of birth and death, and must bear it with purpose. Now, God must and needs to make sense. No longer can he remain AM, a phenomenon of being absolutely independent of the psychology of the I. And in such descension, AM necessitates a reason for being. Ceasing to be just AM, now he is being in the world, in this world more precisely. If before being existed without a defining image, in descension being adopted a rather worldly one; image, as some note, is not substance but an accident. And in one of those paradoxical turns, my story continues…
Realism 