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The Body Feels journal

Eight ways into the subject.

A growing editorial map for readers who want explanation, not just advice.

01

TheFamilyDoctorNov2 1889page146

Attention before improvement

Notice the actual feeling before turning it into a project. Awareness is already a form of care.

Notice the actual feeling before turning it into a project. Awareness is already a form of care. The useful question is not simply whether an idea sounds right, but when it applies, what it leaves out and whose experience changes the answer. This entry places the issue inside a wider social and practical context.

Look for observable details, trustworthy sources and language that leaves room for revision. A serious account can be clear without pretending that every person or situation follows the same path.

02

"' Absence of Beauty was like Hell' " ) , by Erik Pevernagie (100 x 100 cm ) MEDITATION ON THE PAINTING When we encounter the spell of beauty, we can feel the wings of freedom. Beauty sets us free from the imprisonment of hideous tribulations and dreadful perceptions. We never come out untouched from the enchantment of beauty. Beauty challenges the ordinary while we break away from the commonplace, upscaling and veering from the trodden path. To encounter beauty is to experience an opening, widening our emotions' horizon and lifting us out of the narrow corridors of listlessness. It disarms the mechanisms of indifference and blindness, replacing them with awe, wonder, or a sense of transcendence. Beauty conjures poetry and infinity from the broken pieces of our humdrum lives. As beauty is in the eye of the beholder, we must heal our impaired vision, filter our perception, and sharpen the focus of our attention because willful blindness can never empower inspiring vibrations or awaken the twinkles of enlightenment. Beauty can transform the fragments of a lost heart into poetry, spiritually reconstruct it, and reimagine brokenness into a new reality. Just as in Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing pottery by embracing its breaks rather than concealing them, we celebrate its history and acclaim its imperfections. Beauty and art pull reality out of concealment, drawing us away from routine and predictability. They break patterns and shake our habitual perceptions. They don’t soothe but confirm reality and reconfigure it. But what do we do when the "sublime" is not found in nature but only in our ideas or minds, and beauty eludes us? Where do we turn when the allure of 'Botox' has faded? As many people are ready to die for beauty, they are prepared to go through an infernal desert of starvation. The absence of beauty means ultimate loneliness. The absence of beauty means guilt and exile into no-man's land. Life becomes an outcast's journey through a gloomy valley when beauty has forsaken." Beauty promises recognition, connection, and a sense of loftiness. It invites us to soar and transcend. Beauty lends magnitude to our lives, but we feel dislocated if we miss sense and substance. Its absence is like a fall from grace. Beauty is one of the last refuges against emptiness. Without it, we become void drifters in a barren world. Beauty is not a guarantee of well-being. So, happiness does not hinge on social success but is only legible via intricate, meandering discovery journeys in our minds. Beauty can dissipate swiftly, like a pair of trendy pants, or gradually fade with the weariness of age, the passage of time, the monotony of routine, or the harshness of mistreatment. If beauty connects us to the world and to ourselves, it also gives us a sense of belonging. It confers our place in the larger tapestry of life and fuels creative power and imagination, adding depth and meaning to our journey. If we don't cultivate beauty and recognize its transformative power in enriching our lives, our creative spirit shall wither, leaving our life patterns stagnant and barren. We must sink this in. Beauty empowers uplifting emotions and overwhelms us with spiritual fulfillment and transcendence. If we lack beauty, we remain disconnected and alienated, experiencing emptiness, sadness, or despair. This void creates emotional turmoil and plunges our lives into hell. When nature no longer enchants us, we must face disenchantment, the sense that the world has lost its wonder. If we suffer from the loss of authentic experience, it is because beauty has been commodified or simulated, and the sublime has become unreachable. Some display Potemkin's beauty and simulated happiness in the architecture of their lives. By hiding the dark features of their fair-weather condition, they prefer setting up a window dressing of fake satisfaction for fear of being rejected as emotional outcasts. Poet John Keats was fascinated by beauty. "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." Beauty is a source of recurring joy and happiness. Philosopher Emanuel Kant distinguishes the "beautiful" from the "sublime." The beautiful pleases universally. It is an object of constant delight. DESCRIPTION OF THE PAINTING "Absence of Beauty was like Hell" is a contemplation of the existential void that emerges when beauty ceases to serve as a compass for meaning. It is a meditation on absence—where structure remains, but spirit falters; where the aesthetic, once divine, becomes a silent geometry of loss. The artist explores the fragility of perception and the disquieting void left when aesthetic harmony is stripped away. This spatial tension suggests both architectural confinement and psychological distance, evoking a sense of isolation within order. Erik Pevernagie constructs a poignant meditation on the existential role of beauty—its presence as liberation, its absence as exile. The figure becomes an emblem of longing—for beauty, for identity, for presence, and appears suspended between vulnerability and longing, poised within a complex architecture of geometric corridors that seem to both frame and confine it. The surrounding maze of angular lines and layered color fields evokes a psychological interior rather than a physical space. These labyrinthine patterns suggest the mind’s own passageways, a structural metaphor for searching, yearning, and the inner wandering that ensues when beauty, meaning, or emotional nourishment is withheld. The figure is not lost—but neither is it free. It dwells in a threshold state, where the absence of beauty has hollowed out direction and infused the environment with emotional gravity. Two triangular shapes at the figure’s chest, rendered in bold red and green, become the painting’s emotional pulse: symbols of internal tension, the divided heart, the human capacity to hold contradictions. They might signify memory, desire, hope, or the remnants of beauty once encountered and now painfully recalled. Pevernagie often uses minimal markings to suggest maximal psychological depth, and here, these subtle geometric punctuations become the painting’s quiet cry. Beauty, in Pevernagie’s philosophy, is not superficial adornment but a force of emancipation—a gust of wind that sweeps open the caged psyche. When beauty strikes us, we are momentarily lifted above the monotony and hardship of the everyday, experiencing what he calls “the wings of freedom.” It challenges the ordinary, disrupts the habitual, and elevates our perception. It opens a path away from the commonplace, toward a more vivid engagement with life. But the inverse is devastating: without beauty, the world contracts. The absence of beauty becomes a form of hell—loneliness sharpened into emotional exile, a “no-man’s land” where connection, imagination, and hope dry up. The figure in this painting occupies that precarious zone, caught between yearning for transcendence and the weight of desolation. And yet, the painting is not devoid of promise. The angled lines, while tense, also guide the eye outward, hinting at escape routes. The luminous golden patch behind the figure’s head suggests memory, intuition, or the possibility of illumination. Even in the midst of confinement, Pevernagie leaves space for awakening—beauty’s delayed but potential return. “Absence of Beauty Was Like Hell” stands as a visual and philosophical inquiry: How do we endure when the world loses its radiance? How do we reclaim beauty when life feels stripped of it? Pevernagie invites viewers to recognize beauty not as luxury but as necessity : a lifeline that rescues us from despair, rekindles our humanity, and restores our place within the world. Phenomenon : Beauty, Happiness . Factual starting point : Woman' ' French Review : « L'artiste est constamment confronté au thème de la beauté. Non seulement Kant ou Keats, mais tant de philosophes et de créateurs ont tenté de définir ce phénomène. Selon l'artiste: « tellement de gens sont prêts à donner leur vie pour la beauté, ils sont prêts à passer par un désert infernal de famine mentale et physique. L'absence de beauté signifie l'ultime solitude. L'absence de beauté signifie culpabilité et exil dans un no man's land. Quand la beauté est sujet d'abandon, quand elle est victime d'une absence de "don", la vie devient un voyage de paria à travers une vallée ténébreuse". Dutch Review De kunstenaar wordt voortdurend geconfronteerd met het thema van schoonheid. Niet alleen Kant of Keats, maar zo veel filosofen en scheppers hebben dit fenomeen trachten te definiëren. Veel mensen zijn bereid te sterven voor de schoonheid en gaan liever door een helse woestijn van mentale en fysische honger. Afwezigheid van schoonheid kan ultieme eenzaamheid betekenen en kan schuldgevoel en een verbanning naar een nomansland tot gevolg hebben. Wanneer de schoonheid gefaald heeft, wordt het leven een doortocht in een schemerdal l ."

Rest is not a reward

A nervous system cannot be permanently productive. Rest belongs inside life, not after everything is finished.

A nervous system cannot be permanently productive. Rest belongs inside life, not after everything is finished. The useful question is not simply whether an idea sounds right, but when it applies, what it leaves out and whose experience changes the answer. This entry places the issue inside a wider social and practical context.

Look for observable details, trustworthy sources and language that leaves room for revision. A serious account can be clear without pretending that every person or situation follows the same path.

03

Pu-tai, a chinese monk who, for his contented nature, was and is well known as the "Laughing Buddha". To laugh is - following many Zen Masters - the most ancient meditation.

The honest version of gratitude

Gratitude can sit beside grief. It should widen experience, not silence difficult truth.

Gratitude can sit beside grief. It should widen experience, not silence difficult truth. The useful question is not simply whether an idea sounds right, but when it applies, what it leaves out and whose experience changes the answer. This entry places the issue inside a wider social and practical context.

Look for observable details, trustworthy sources and language that leaves room for revision. A serious account can be clear without pretending that every person or situation follows the same path.

04

Boundaries without bitterness

A clear no can protect the conditions in which a sincere yes remains possible.

A clear no can protect the conditions in which a sincere yes remains possible. The useful question is not simply whether an idea sounds right, but when it applies, what it leaves out and whose experience changes the answer. This entry places the issue inside a wider social and practical context.

Look for observable details, trustworthy sources and language that leaves room for revision. A serious account can be clear without pretending that every person or situation follows the same path.

05

This plain Sarcophagus, (once dignified, as having contained the remains of JOAN, daughter of King JOHN and consort of LLEWELYN ap JORWERTH Prince of North Wales, who died in the year 1237) having been conveyed from the Friary of Llanfaes, and, alas! used for many years as a horse-watering-trough, was rescued from such indignity, and placed here for preservation, as well as to excite serious meditations on the transitory nature of all sublunary distinctions. By THOMAS JAMES WARREN BULKELEY, Viscount BULKELEY. Octr 1808. Inscription found at: Church of St Mary and St Nicholas, Beaumaris, North Wales. Grade: I; Date Listed: 23 September 1950; Cadw Building ID: 5620.

Small rituals, real days

A cup of tea, a short walk or a quiet room can become an anchor when practised with attention.

A cup of tea, a short walk or a quiet room can become an anchor when practised with attention. The useful question is not simply whether an idea sounds right, but when it applies, what it leaves out and whose experience changes the answer. This entry places the issue inside a wider social and practical context.

Look for observable details, trustworthy sources and language that leaves room for revision. A serious account can be clear without pretending that every person or situation follows the same path.

06

This plain Sarcophagus, (once dignified, as having contained the remains of JOAN, daughter of King JOHN and consort of LLEWELYN ap JORWERTH Prince of North Wales, who died in the year 1237) having been conveyed from the Friary of Llanfaes, and, alas! used for many years as a horse-watering-trough, was rescued from such indignity, and placed here for preservation, as well as to excite serious meditations on the transitory nature of all sublunary distinctions. By THOMAS JAMES WARREN BULKELEY, Viscount BULKELEY. Octr 1808. Inscription found at: Church of St Mary and St Nicholas, Beaumaris, North Wales. Grade: I; Date Listed: 23 September 1950; Cadw Building ID: 5620.

When the body says enough

Tension, fatigue and irritability are information. They are not moral failure.

Tension, fatigue and irritability are information. They are not moral failure. The useful question is not simply whether an idea sounds right, but when it applies, what it leaves out and whose experience changes the answer. This entry places the issue inside a wider social and practical context.

Look for observable details, trustworthy sources and language that leaves room for revision. A serious account can be clear without pretending that every person or situation follows the same path.

07

Ships in a Heavy Sea Running Before a Storm A depiction of at least six ships under reduced canvas and tossed on heavy waves in a rough sea. The foreground is dominated by the large trough of a wave, depicted in intense light against the dark waves and sky. The ships are silhouetted against the sky, adding tension to the composition. Such depictions of storm scenes have been interpreted to imply cosmic disorder, so that the storms constitute metaphors for that which is threatening or dangerous, either to the individual or to society. They could thus convey a political message. Here the ships may represent either individuals, or the state, at risk from external forces. Storm scenes could also invite symbolic meditation as well as emotional identification, since the ships have been caught in and diminished by the vast flux of elemental nature. The artist was a member of the Guild of Haarlem and worked under the influence of Jan Porcellis. He has placed his monogram on a spar in the centre of the painting. Ships in a Heavy Sea Running Before a Storm

The social life of calm

Peace is easier when people have safety, time and support. Wellbeing is never only individual.

Peace is easier when people have safety, time and support. Wellbeing is never only individual. The useful question is not simply whether an idea sounds right, but when it applies, what it leaves out and whose experience changes the answer. This entry places the issue inside a wider social and practical context.

Look for observable details, trustworthy sources and language that leaves room for revision. A serious account can be clear without pretending that every person or situation follows the same path.

08

Belem, Berardo Collection, Centro Cultural de Belem, Lisbon, Portugal Material: Indian ink on cardboard Collection: Berardo Collection BIOGRAPHY Joan Miró, (born April 20, 1893, Barcelona, Spain—died December 25, 1983, Palma, Majorca), Catalan painter who combined abstract art with Surrealist fantasy. His mature style evolved from the tension between his fanciful, poetic impulse and his vision of the harshness of modern life. He worked extensively in lithography and produced numerous murals, tapestries, and sculptures for public spaces. EARLY LIFE AND ARTISTIC TRAINING Miró’s father was a watchmaker and goldsmith. Both his father’s background as an artisan and the austere Catalan landscape would be of great importance to his art. According to his parents’ wishes, he attended a commercial college. He then worked for two years as a clerk in an office until he had a mental and physical breakdown. His parents took him for convalescence to an estate they bought especially for this purpose—Montroig, near Tarragona, Spain—and in 1912 they allowed him to attend an art school in Barcelona. His teacher at this school, Francisco Galí, showed a great understanding of his 18-year-old pupil, advising him to touch the objects he was about to draw, a procedure that strengthened Miró’s feeling for the spatial quality of objects. Galí also introduced his pupil to examples of the latest schools of modern art from Paris as well as to the buildings of Antoni Gaudí, Barcelona’s famous Art Nouveau architect. From 1915 to 1919 Miró worked in Spain—in Barcelona, at Montroig, and on the island of Majorca—painting landscapes, portraits, and nudes in which he focused on the rhythmic interplay of volumes and areas of colour. He experimented with the boldly colourful Fauvist style, but his treatment of form was geometric, influenced by the work of Paul Cézanne and the Cubist artists. From early in his career Miró sought to establish means of metaphorical expression—that is, to discover signs that stand for concepts of nature in a transcendent, poetic sense. He wanted to portray nature as it would be depicted by a primitive person or a child equipped with the intelligence of a 20th-century adult; in this respect, he had much in common with the Surrealists and Dadaists, two schools of modern artists who were striving to achieve similar aims by more intellectual means than those used by Miró. PARIS AND EARLY WORK From 1919 onward Miró lived alternately in Spain and Paris. He was one of the many artists who made their way from abroad to Paris during the first two decades of the 20th century. Most of these foreign artists elected to become French citizens after coming into contact with the exciting French artistic metropolis, but Miró remained attached to his Catalan homeland. In the early 1920s Miró combined meticulously detailed realism with abstraction in landscapes such as the renowned Farm (1921) and The Tilled Field (1923–24). He gradually removed the objects he portrayed from their natural context and reassembled them as if in accordance with a new, mysterious grammar, creating a ghostly, eerie impression. From 1925 to 1928, under the influence of the Dadaists, Surrealists, and Paul Klee, Miró painted “dream pictures” and “imaginary landscapes” in which the linear configurations and patches of colour look almost as though they were set down randomly, as in The Policeman (1925). In paintings such as Dog Barking at the Moon (1926), he rendered figures of animals and humans as indeterminate forms. Miró signed the manifesto of the Surrealist movement in 1924, and the members of the group respected him for the way he portrayed the realm of unconscious experience. The poet André Breton, the chief spokesman of Surrealism, stated that Miró was “the most Surrealist of us all.” After a trip in 1928 to the Netherlands, where he studied the 17th-century Dutch realist painters in the museums, Miró executed a series of works based on Old Master paintings titled Dutch Interiors (1928). In the 1930s Miró became more experimental, working with techniques of collage and sculptural assemblage and creating sets and costumes for ballets. He designed tapestries in 1934, which led to his interest in the monumental and in murals. His paintings began to be exhibited regularly in French and American galleries. At the time of the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, Miró was living in Paris. Although he typically was not political in his work, the turmoil in his native country inspired him to embrace social criticism. For example, he depicted a peasant revolt in The Reaper, a mural he painted for the pavilion of the Spanish Republic at the Paris World Exhibition of 1937. He also imbued his pictures of this period, such as the nightmarish Head of a Woman (1938), with a demonic expressiveness that mirrored the fears and horrors of those years. MATURE WORK AND INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION During World War II Miró returned to Spain, where he painted Constellations (1941), a series of small works scattered with symbols of the elements and the cosmos, expressing the happy collaboration of everything creative. During the last year of the war (1944), Miró, together with his potter friend José Lloréns Artigas, produced ceramics with a new impetuosity of expression: their vessels were often intentionally misshapen and fragmented. Beginning in 1948, Miró once again divided his time between Spain and Paris. That year he began a series of very poetic works based on the combined themes of woman, bird, and star. In 1949 and 1950 he created some paintings that were wildly spontaneous in character, while executing others with punctilious craftsmanship. He used both approaches in his increasingly large sculptures, amalgamating all of his earlier figurations to form erotic fetishes or signals towering into space. In the years following World War II Miró became internationally famous; his sculptures, drawings, and paintings were exhibited in many countries. He was commissioned to paint a number of murals, notably for the Terrace Hilton Hotel in Cincinnati, Ohio (1947), and for Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1950). His ceramic experiments culminated in the two great ceramic walls in the UNESCO building in Paris (1958), for which he received the Great International Prize of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. In 1962 Paris honoured Miró with a major exhibition of his collected works in the National Museum of Modern Art. The Catalan architect José Luis Sert built for him the large studio of which he had dreamed all of his life on Majorca. Among his later works were several monumental sculptures, such as those he executed for the city of Chicago (unveiled 1981) and for the city of Houston (1982). In spite of his fame, however, Miró, a taciturn, introverted man, continued to devote himself exclusively to looking and creating. His art had developed slowly from his first clumsy attempts at expression to the apparently playful masterpieces of his later period. In his late works Miró employed an even greater simplification of figure and background; he sometimes created a composition merely by setting down a dot and a sensitive line on a sea-blue surface, as in Blue II (1961). The whimsical or aggressive irony of his earlier work gave way to a quasi-religious meditation. In 1980, in conjunction with his being awarded Spain’s Gold Medal of Fine Arts, a plaza in Madrid was named in Miró’s honour. Walter Erben The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica SOURCE <a href=" https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joan-Miro " rel="nofollow">www.britannica.com/biography/Joan-Miro</a>

Begin again without drama

A missed practice is not a broken identity. Return in the next available moment.

A missed practice is not a broken identity. Return in the next available moment. The useful question is not simply whether an idea sounds right, but when it applies, what it leaves out and whose experience changes the answer. This entry places the issue inside a wider social and practical context.

Look for observable details, trustworthy sources and language that leaves room for revision. A serious account can be clear without pretending that every person or situation follows the same path.