Bubbles and Breath

"The child stands enraptured on the balcony, holding its new present and watching the soap bubbles float into the sky as it blows them out of the little loop in front of his mouth. Now a swarm of bubbles erupts upwards, as chaotically vivacious as a throw of shimmering blue marbles. Then, at a subsequent attempt, a large oval balloon, filled with timid life, quivers off the loop and floats down to the street, carried along by the breeze. It is followed by the hopes of the delighted child...when the bubble finally bursts after a trembling, drawn-out flight, the soap bubble artist on the balcony emits a sound that is at once a sigh and a cheer."

"While exhaled air usually vanishes without a trace, the breath encased in these orbs is granted a momentary afterlife. While the bubbles move through space, their creator is truly outside himself---with them and in them. In the orbs, his exhaled air has separated from him and in now preserved and carried further; at the same time, the child is transported away from itself by losing itself in the breathless co-flight of its attention through the animated space. For its creator, the soap bubble thus becomes the medium of a surprising soul expansion. The bubble and its blower coexist in a field spread out through attentive involvement....All eyes and attention, the child's face opens itself up to the space in front of it. Now the playing child imperceptibly gains an insight in the midst of its joyful entertainment that it will later forget under the strain of school: that the spirit, in its own way, is in space. Or perhaps one should say that when people referred in former times to "spirit", what they meant was always inspired spatial communities? As soon as one begins making concessions to such suspicions, it becomes natural to investigate further in the same direction: if the child breathes air into the soap bubbles and remains loyal by following them with its ecstatic gaze---who previously placed their breath into the child?"
---P Sloterdijk, Bubbles (1998)

"The vessels thus filled with You do not render You and support: for thought they perished utterly, You would not be spilt out. And in pouring Yourself out upon us, You do not come down to us but rather elevate us to You: You are not scattered over us, but we are gathered into one by You."
---St Augustine, Confessions Book I, III

"And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."  Genesis 2:7

I have read and re-read the first 50 pages of Sloterdijk's book. These passages (he's the one connecting St Augustine's words with his own Spherology) are among the few that keep knocking the pause into me. The artwork here is, of course, Joseph Cornell. Should I be surprised soap bubbles were a common theme in his artwork? Each time I swear there is no possible way I could like his work more, I discover another reason to love it. Really, the sustained relevance of his antique boxes remains uncanny.

More from the amazing book later....