Suspense

Is anything happening? Is anything going on in the universe? Take a slice out of the movie that is life and you have a frozen moment, the hand with the pen poised eternally over the piece of paper, and nothing ever, ever gets written. The lovers' lips never quite meeting; the consummation never comes. Seems like Keats was talking about something like this in "Ode on a Grecian Urn." And from that he arrives at the equation of truth and beauty. Obviously he's talking about eternal beauty, not the passing kind that is written on the wind. Yet if we are to believe Blake, the only way to live in "eternity's sunrise" is to "kiss the joy as it flies." The two views of Keats and Blake are not as opposed as they might seem on the surface. Both refer to the immanent truth and beauty of the timeless state in which action is suspended. And from which one can only conclude that nothing, indeed, is happening.