There is within the ungodliness of my latest tactile absorptions (the visual, the mechanical and the artistic) an identifiable yet complicated scientific feature, the exact nature of which I know only by the very pleasing effect arising from its impenetrable cause. Isn’t that so often the case!  How willingly ignorant we are of origin yet how shamelessly avaricious we are for its reverberations, those fountains of transparency and brilliance from the wellspring. Thankfully there is no imperative to connect the two. The tolerance of rendition howsoever kindled is but an accepted convenience of society.

In physics, absorption of electromagnetic radiation is how matter (typically electrons bound in atoms) takes up a photon’s energy — and so transforms electromagnetic energy into internal energy of the absorber (for example, thermal energy). A notable effect (attenuation) is to gradually reduce the intensity of light waves as they propagate through a medium. Although the absorption of waves does not usually depend on their intensity (linear absorption), in certain conditions (optics) the medium’s transparency changes by a factor that varies as a function of wave intensity, and saturable absorption (or nonlinear absorption) occurs.

There are those who cleverly dissolve the incitement of fuel to its constituent particles. Those mischievous scamps!  How ingenious they are to penetrate the obfuscation surrounding the event! Therein lies the nexus between the superfluity of expression and the underlying groundwater. The unearthing of purpose behind the motive. The elucidation of transparency beneath the obscure poetic manifestation.

A subterranean river is a river that runs wholly or partly beneath the ground surface – one where the riverbed does not represent the surface of the Earth. It is distinct from an aquifer, which may flow like a river but is contained within a permeable layer of rock or other unconsolidated materials. A river flowing below ground level in an open gorge is not classed as subterranean.

The analysis has its elevating imaginative theme as well. Consider for example Greek mythology which included the Styx, Phlegethon, Acheron, Cocytus and Lethe as rivers within the Underworld even so far beneath as subterranean Hell – a certain metaphor for its irreligious nature.

The river Alph, running “Through caverns measureless to man / Down to a sunless sea” is central to the poem Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

The more toxic terrestrial representation of this poetic allegory is no less than the unremarkable but tantalizing carrot cake! When once one has temporarily exhausted the spiritual manifestation of materiality there is the further though blunt stimulation of carrot cake. How I adore its thick creamy icing and its moist substance within! The unparalleled Sacrament of Heaven!

But I am not long returning to the depths of spirituality I call my library of dynamizing things. It is a sinful reverie. It doesn’t for example compete with the celebrated devotion to grandchildren, gardening and sunlight. Nonetheless I have abandoned the complication of inspiration no matter whence it derives. Who among us can restrict or predict the source of one’s happiness? Does it matter how trifling or profound it may be? The answer of course is, Yes! Yet never have I imagined that one compares with another. Nor should that be the objective. Though man does not live by carrot cake alone, it is for some both an incomparable and incalculable pleasure.

Excerpt From
Anatole France. “Le livre de mon ami”