Impressions of Niagara Falls

"Dream delivers us to dream,
and there is no end to illusion.
Life is like a train of moods
like a string of beads, and, as
we pass through them, they prove 
to be many-colored lenses which
paint the world their own hue..."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

I mentioned in my last post that my wife and I took a short trip to Niagara Falls, Canada last weekend. I also mentioned that I was a bit underwhelmed by the falls themselves; as a photographer "seeing" the falls for the first time (the "tourist" in me was enthralled, and my iPhone has about a half dozen snaps to prove it). Rather than taking photographs of the "falls as they appear in their full splendor," I instead took a series of more intimate "impressions" of the falls. 

Apart from their sheer size - the height varies between 70 and 100 ft, the Canadian portion is close to 2,600 ft wide, while the U.S. side is a bit over 1,000 ft) - Niagara falls are cacophonous and effervescent; indeed, they are best described as a thunderously loud living liquid chaos! While the images that accompany this post may fall (small pun intended) far short of conveying just how thunderously loud and chaotic the falls are, they do provide a sense of what the falls offer photographers apart from their (otherwise grand) splendor. 

Diffusing Into the Air

"See yonder leafless tree against the sky,
How they diffuse themselves into the air,
And ever subdividing separate,
Limbs into branches, branches into twigs,
As if they loved the element, & hasted
To dissipate their being into it."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
Collected Poems and Translations

A Sea of Forms

"A work of art is an abstract or epitome of the world. It is the result or expression of nature, in miniature. For, although the works of nature are innumerable and all different, the result or the expression of them all is similar and single. Nature is a sea of forms radically alike and even unique. A leaf, a sun-beam, a landscape, the ocean, make an analogous impression on the mind. What is common to them all, — that perfectness and harmony, is beauty. The standard of beauty is the entire circuit of natural forms, — the totality of nature; which the Italians expressed by defining beauty "il piu nell' uno." Nothing is quite beautiful alone: nothing but is beautiful in the whole. A single object is only so far beautiful as it suggests this universal grace. The poet, the painter, the sculptor, the musician, the architect, seek each to concentrate this radiance of the world on one point, and each in his several work to satisfy the love of beauty which stimulates him to produce. Thus is Art, a nature passed through the alembic of man. Thus in art, does nature work through the will of a man filled with the beauty of her first works.

The world thus exists to the soul to satisfy the desire of beauty. This element I call an ultimate end. No reason can be asked or given why the soul seeks beauty. Beauty, in its largest and profoundest sense, is one expression for the universe."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
Nature

Evanescent Beauty

"To the attentive eye,

each moment of the year
has its own beauty,
and in the same field,
it beholds, every hour,
a picture which was
never seen before, and
which shall never
be seen again."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
Nature

 

Pure Spirit

"So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect—What is truth? and of the affections—What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated Will. Then shall come to pass what my poet said; 'Nature is not fixed but fluid. Spirit alters, moulds, makes it. The immobility or bruteness of nature, is the absence of spirit; to pure spirit, it is fluid, it is volatile, it is obedient. Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house a world; and beyond its world, a heaven. Know then, that the world exists for you.' For you is the phenomenon perfect. What we are, that only can we see."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

Nature

A Train of Moods

"Dream delivers us to dream, 

and there is no end to illusion. 

Life is like a train of moods

like a string of beads, 

and, as we pass through them, 

they prove to be many-colored lenses 

which paint the world their own hue..."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

Wise Silence

"We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

Spirit, Light, and Harmony

"It is not always needful

for truth to take a definite shape;

it is enough if it hovers about us

like a spirit and produces harmony;

if it is wafted through the air

like the sound of a bell,

grave and kindly."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"A man should learn

to detect and watch that gleam

of light which flashes across

his mind from within."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson