Kandinskian Delights

"In nature nothing is perfect and everything is perfect."

- Alice Walker (1944 - )

"There is no scientific discoverer, no poet, no painter, no musician, who will not tell you that he found ready made his discovery or poem or picture—that it came to him from outside, and that he did not consciously create it from within."

- William Kingdon Clifford (1845 - 1879)

Postscript. There is a small swale (the depression is no more than 6 feet by 10) in the front yard of one of our neighbors that inevitably traps a pool of water after a rain. And whenever a rainfall is followed by a night with sufficiently-less-then-freezing temperatures this "depression with water" turns into a veritable paradise of Kandinskian-composition-like delights! Camera-in-hand (whenever I remember to take it!), I always eagerly rush over to this humble aesthetic oasis as my wife and I set out on our morning walk through our neighborhood. And it never disappoints. Always, there are compositions galore! Quiet unassuming harmonies of contrasting shapes and colors; which for me is what the best (certainly, the most enjoyable spur-of-the-moment) photography is all about 😊

Nature's Simplicity

"I should like to propose that we look at this element of freshness, of newness, of strangeness, as a thread along which to place the activities of the consciously creative artist, the conscious patron and critic of the creative artist, and the common man — common in the sense that he has no specified part in creation or criticism. If we make one criterion for defining the artist (as distinct from the craftsman and the trained but routine performer of dance, drama, or music) the impulse to make something new, or to do something in a new way — a kind of divine discontent with all that has gone before, however good — then we can find such artists at every level of human culture, even when performing acts of great simplicity."

 - Margaret Mead (1901 - 1978)

Janusian Creativity

"There are two schools of thought on defining creativity: divergent thinking, which is the formation of a creative idea resulting from generating lots of ideas, and a Janusian approach, which is the act of making links between two remote ideas. The latter takes its name from the two-faced Roman god of beginnings, Janus, who was associated with doorways and the idea of looking forward and backward at the same time. Janusian creativity hinges on the belief that the best ideas come from linking things that previously did not seem linkable. Henri Poincaré, a French mathematician, put it this way: ‘To create consists of making new combinations. … The most fertile will often be those formed of elements drawn from domains which are far apart.’"

- Ainissa Ramirez (1969 - )

Postscript. I have written before about my lifelong penchant for sometimes seeing things not so much visually (at least, at first), but as free-form assemblages of rapid-fire associations and memories that percolate up from my unconscious. A recent example was when an obscure (and certainly not consciously retrievable) passage from a novel by Vonnegut I last read about 30 years ago made my head swivel to look at an equally obscure stain on a piece of driftwood. A similar experience made me look at what in "reality" is nothing but leaves entangled in a bit of ice, but which I "saw" as a melodic string that went, "Janus, Kandinsky, and Yin|Yang." This is close to literal truth. My brain was reacting to this string of associations before I consciously "recognized" what my eye/brain/I was actually looking at! These experiences are far from unique for me, but sadly do not appear very often. But when they do... Ahh, pure magic and joy; a Janusian creative moment, one might say 😊 

Nonlinear, Experiential, and Receptive

"The creative process,
like a spiritual journey,
is intuitive, non-linear,
and experiential.
It points us toward
our essential nature,
which is a reflection of
the boundless creativity
of the universe.
...
To be still means to
empty yourself from the
incessant flow of thoughts
and create a state of
consciousness that is
open and receptive."

- John Daido Loori (1931 - 2009)

Postscript. My postscript to a blog entry I published a few days ago ("...Another Order") included an "apology" from me for the poor quality of the image I posted, which I made with an iPhone on a morning walk. I also said that I was looking forward to going out with my "real camera" on the weekend to hunt for "ice abstracts" (cold weather permitting). Well, today was the day. Our local forecast had overnight lows in the low 20s (F). So our younger son (Josh, the photographer), my wife and I all eagerly woke up early, warmed ourselves with a bit of coffee and breakfast, and drove to a nearby lake park. As Josh and I both bolted out the van with our cameras and ran to the water, our smiles immediately vanished. No ice! Or at least none of the symphony of abstract swirls and curlicues we both anticipated spending the morning reveling and composing in. Naturally, we were crestfallen, and had a depressed notion to traipse back home and crawl back into our beds. Luckily, my wife, who joined us more for the adventure and some exercise, is also our Zen master. "Just enjoy what's here," she said, "Have a bit of fun!" So we did; and, my oh my, what fun we all had 😊 I am embarrassed to admit that, though I've experienced this exact scenario countless times (here is one from almost 15 years ago), the basic lesson has apparently never stuck: there are always unexpected opportunities and joys waiting for us, if only (as John Daido Loori reminds us) we are open and receptive to the boundless creativity of the universe. There may have been no real ice, but after slowing down and emptying ourselves of our "incessant flow of thoughts," Josh and I discovered a veritable paradise of tiny "icelet universes," some free-standing, others entwined with small leaves, rocks, and twigs. Though these icelets were few in number, and some were so small that only Josh (who presciently attached a macro lens to his camera before leaving the house) was able to find workable compositions, we all felt like privileged visitors to a magnificent living museum of fleeting wonders. And so, bowing to my Zen master's sage wisdom, an early morning "disappointment" was quietly transformed into a stunningly joyous experience filled with the simplest pleasures of life: family, nature, and a total "loss of self" in the creative process. 

Josh and me "merrily composing whatever morsels of icelets we could find" (captured by my wife).

Vuja de

"The hallmark of originality is rejecting the default and exploring whether a better option exists. I’ve spent more than a decade studying this, and it turns out to be far less difficult than I expected. The starting point is curiosity: pondering why the default exists in the first place. We’re driven to question defaults when we experience vuja de, the opposite of déjà vu. Déjà vu occurs when we encounter something new, but it feels as if we’ve seen it before. Vuja de is the reverse—we face something familiar, but we see it with a fresh perspective that enables us to gain new insights into old problems. "

- Adam M. Grant (1981 - )
Originals: How Nonconformists Move the World

This Place is a Dream

"This place is a dream.
Only a sleeper considers it real.
...
A man goes to sleep in the town
where he has always lived,
and he dreams he's living
in another town.

In the dream, he doesn't remember

the town he's sleeping in his bed in.
He believes the reality of the dream town.

The world is that kind of sleep.
...

We began as a mineral.

We emerged into plant life

and into animal state,
and then into being human,

and always we have
forgotten our former states,

except in early spring when we
slightly recall being green again.

That's how a young person turns

toward a teacher. That's how a baby leans

toward the breast, without knowing the secret

of its desire, yet turning instinctively.

Humankind is being led along an evolving course,

through this migration of intelligences,

and though we seem to be sleeping,

there is an inner wakefulness

that directs the dream,

and that will eventually startle us back

to the truth of who we are."

- Rumi (1207 - 1273)

Postscript. The triptych consists of three "quick grabs" with my iPhone during the trip my family and I took to the Pacific Northwest this past summer (e.g., see this blog entry). The left- and right-most images show the play of sunlight (reflected off the door of our car) with the pavement as we were going to breakfast one day in Sequim, WA. The middle panel shows a similar play of light (this time reflected off a kettle on our stove) with the stucco walls of the kitchen in the cabin we rented in the northern cascades. Most of my photography is quasi-deliberate, by which I mean that most of my images arise during planned "expeditions" (such as to a local park, or hikes on a family vacation 😊 using my "real" camera. But some of my favorite images - such the ones in this triptych - are captured purely by happenstance, and when my conscious "attention" lies elsewhere (such as on, say, getting breakfast at a restaurant or the first sip of coffee in the morning). Of course, any distinctions I may choose to draw among these various states of being and attention are, of course, at best illusory, and, at worst, utterly meaningless. Even as my "eye" looks toward the path to a restaurant or at the handle of a coffee kettle, my "I" never ceases to revel at the magic of light, color and form that surrounds us in each moment in time and space!

A Moment or Two to Just Be

"While I sit here, I don’t beg to be somewhere else; I’m not pulled away by the future or by the past. I sit here, and know where I am. This is very important. We tend to be alive in the future, not now. We say, ‘Wait until I finish school and get my PhD; then I’ll really be living.’ Once we have it – and it wasn’t easy to get – we say to ourselves, ‘I have to wait until I have a job for my life to really begin.’ Then after the job a car, and after a car a house. We aren’t capable of being alive in the present moment. We tend to postpone being alive to the future, the distant future, we don’t know when. It’s as if now is not the moment to be alive. We may never be alive at all in our entire life. The only moment to be alive is in the present moment."

- Thich Nhat Hanh (1926 - )

Postscript. The picture above was captured not with my "real" camera but with my iPhone, whose ability to capture scenes such as this continues to impress. I was on a short "day job" related trip to the beautiful town of Newport, RI, and had a few precious moments of magic hour light at the Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge (just a few miles from the center of town). I was initially despondent over having not taken my real camera (and rationalized the "complexities" of mixing business with pleasure; what, with a laptop and pounds of technical notes already stuffed into my carry-on). I then got even more melancholy over having neglected to take my other "real" camera that I bought specifically for this purpose (an absurdly tiny but equally as absurdly capable digital camera I wrote about earlier this spring). But then I remembered Thich Nhat Hanh's sage advice (quoted above). Stilling my mind as best I could, and clutching my iPhone, I managed to find a moment or two to just be. 

Two Worlds

"There are only two worlds - your world, which is the real world, and other worlds, the fantasy. Worlds like this are worlds of the human imagination: their reality, or lack of reality, is not important. What is important is that they are there. These worlds provide an alternative. Provide an escape. Provide a threat. Provide a dream, and power; provide refuge, and pain. They give your world meaning. They do not exist; and thus they are all that matters."

- Neil Gaiman (1960 - )
The Books of Magic

Postscript. This is a different view (or diptych-ed views) of the same Rocky Brooks Falls (near Dosewallips State Park, on the part of the Olympic Peninsula that faces the Hood Canal in Washington state) I uploaded a different picture of a few months ago. While, as I described in that earlier blog post, the falls themselves are almost embarrassingly easy to get to (since they are less than a 1/4 mile away from a small parking area), maneuvering in and around the falls in hopes of finding a better composition than the obligatory "Here is what my wide angle lens can capture!" is difficult; well, at least it's difficult for a 60yo with 59 years or so of wear and tear on the knees :) With the help of one of my sons (who was kind enough to act as a carry mule for my camera bag and tripod), I managed to catch either one or two non-obligatory shots (depending on how you slice the diptych) from a point well in front of the main falls (from which the bottom-most part of the falls is invisible). I think that while each "part" works well on its own, as an image, they are self-contained enough that the diptych adds a bit of contextual "interest." The relatively small area into which these falls descend has the remarkable property that just about any spot one stands on seemingly offers a veritable infinity of "different" compositions. Though it is, in truth, far more typical than not for photographers to feel this way about any spot (!), I have found this particular waterfall to be blessedly infused with this magical property more so than most. Despite having already taken close to a hundred different shots during our two trips (thus far), I am already looking forward to my next visit :)

Thoughts in a Universal Mind

"I found myself thinking about what, if anything, a tree might think. Not thinking the way we think, but the way a single neuron thinks, integrating information over time. It might take years to register the premonition of an idea, centuries for an entire forest, networked through synapses established by chemical signaling pathways among its roots, to form a thought. After three years I was no closer to an understanding, except to have gained a lingering suspicion that trees were, in some real and tangible way, as John Ambrose Fleming put it, 'manifested Thoughts in a Universal Mind.'"

- George Dyson (1953 - )
Analogia

Postscript. An experience I had during my family's recent trip to view New Hampshire's fall colors (see last three posts) reminded me of a funny story I wrote about years ago. It concerns Brett Weston, the second of Edward Weston's sons, and who was an accomplished photographer in his own right. Brett, who like his dad, spent most of his time taking photographs in California (e.g., Point Lobos and Big Sur), was one day invited by a friend to join him on a trip to Europe. Agreeing to go, after some cajoling, Brett and his friend visited Ireland, then Scotland, and later London. But Brett's eye, perhaps even more so than his father's, was tuned strongly toward abstraction. Thus, despite traveling though some of the most beautiful landscapes on the planet before arriving in London, Brett had not once pulled out his camera to take pictures! What he did come home with was a few images of rust on a small dilapidated metal plate that beguiled him as he was making his way across the London bridge. A more complete version of this story can be heard in a wonderful documentary about Brett Weston's life as a photographer. While my trip's "compositional oeuvre" was not nearly as single-mindedly-focused on a single abstract theme (I've already posted rather conventional fine-art "takes" on autumnal colors), I must admit that easily half of the shots I took were of the knots in the pinewood of our cabin's walls! Since the left part of my physics-trained brain kept seeing electromagnetic fields, space-time continua, and gravitational vortices just about everywhere my eyes looked inside the cabin, the right side of my brain insisted I search for abstract compositions. Interestingly, while these images contain no color (they are digitally reversed black-and-white shots, which I think work a bit better as "abstractions"), and were all captured inside a cabin, for me, they just as palpably capture the essence of experiencing New Hampshire's autumnal multispectral pleasures!

Intemporal Surreality

"It must be confessed, however, that Perception, and that which depends upon it, are inexplicable by mechanical causes, that is to say, by figures and motions. Supposing that there were a machine whose structure produced thought, sensation, and perception, we could conceive of it as increased in size with the same proportions until one was able to enter into its interior, as he would into a mill. Now, on going into it he would find only pieces working upon one another, but never would he find anything to explain Perception."

- G.W. Leibniz (1646 - 1716)
Monadology

Postscript. Or, to paraphrase a well-known aphorism by physicist Werner Heisenberg (and italicizing my photo-centric alteration), "...what we observe and communicate is not nature in itself, but nature exposed to, and transformed by, our method of capturing it with our camera." Keeping with the same themes and questions that underlie my last two posts (i.e., how to best "capture" New Hampshire's gorgeous autumnal colors during a recent "long weekend" trip), one can start off by saying - tautologically - that any image I chose to capture must, by fiat, represent a particular slice of nature that I saw (through my lens). But how much of my experience of the totality of a given scene (the ambient conditions, light, sound, my state of mind, etc.) remains attached to whatever image(s) I chose to use to represent it? How much (or how little) of any of this is communicated and interpreted as such by the viewer? And, what can I do to instantiate and intensify this experience (for the viewer)? Of course, these kinds of questions have been asked since the dawn of photography, with no easy answers; from Alfred Stieglitz's equivalents to Minor White's admonition to take pictures of "what else" things are. The triptych communicates my early-afternoon experience at a quiet little roadside pond (that, objectively speaking, hardly even merits a "label" on a map; it is "just" a spot on the road from point A to point B on a nondescript stretch of a local highway) far better than any single image does. It does so in two ways: first, because it displays not one but several simultaneous and distinct but related views of the same scene, it gently insists that the viewer "fill in the gaps" in her own mind; which cannot be done except by imaging what it must of have been like to stand there taking these pictures (not to duplicate my experience, but to imagine what it was like, transformed by the viewer's own predilections); and second, because none of the individual images show off the colorful trees directly, but via reflection only (and using a slightly longer-than-normal time exposure, as well), there is an implied intemporal surreality (at least I hope that that is the impression it conveys), which is close to what I was "really feeling" when I took these shots. In the end, and as presaged by Leibniz wise words, it all boils down to the primacy and ineffability of perception. And to the even deeper question of who's "doing" the perceiving? 

The Intelligible Triad

"Man is a little world--a microcosm inside the great universe. Like a fetus, he is suspended, by all his three spirits, in the matrix of the macrocosmos; and while his terrestrial body is in constant sympathy with its parent earth, his astral soul lives in unison with the sidereal anima mundi. He is in it, as it is in him, for the world-pervading element fills all space, and is space itself, only shoreless and infinite. As to his third spirit, the divine, what is it but an infinitesimal ray, one of the countless radiations proceeding directly from the Highest Cause--the Spiritual Light of the World? This is the trinity of organic and inorganic nature--the spiritual and the physical, which are three in one, and of which Proclus says that 'The first monad is the Eternal God; the second, eternity; the third, the paradigm, or pattern of the universe;' the three constituting the Intelligible Triad."

- Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831 - 1891)
Isis Unveiled

Postscript. While still on the subject of yesterday's post (i.e., my family's "long weekend" trip to New Hampshire to experience its gorgeous fall colors), but on a decidedly less mystical level than Blavatsky's elegant passage describes, my problem as a photographer was to find a way to capture the "magic" of experiencing autumnal color. Of course, there are myriad ways of doing so, starting with the obvious: just take pictures of the gorgeous color! However, in practice (as with most artful things that matter), the devil is in the details, and "taking pictures of the gorgeous color" is far from trivial. The core difficulty, as all photographers know, is that a beautiful landscape seldom makes for a beautiful photograph. To be sure, I was surrounded - overwhelmed even - by the sublime beauty of endless assortments of multispectral colored ferns and bushes and trees and leaves ... and all of it is beautiful; but why this fern, or that clump of trees? In a nutshell, this is the core joy and frustration of photography, as a whole; a microcosm of an endless aesthetic struggle, one might say. Even though I captured a fair share of the obligatory "wide vistas" (I may share a picture or two in forthcoming posts), this trip turned out to be mostly about discovering smaller, quieter worlds within ostensibly grander "larger than life" explosions of autumnal color: a ragged leaf on an even raggedier lawn chair; a withered overturned leaf bathing in the cold waters of a small pond; and a newly fallen leaf gently resting on a moss-strewn rock (along the trail that led to the waterfall that appears in yesterday's post). None are Ansel Adams-ish "Wagnerian" landscapes, but the triptych, as a whole, nicely conveys a bit of what I felt as I was gazing at New Hampshire's Ansel Adams-ish "Wagnerian" landscapes of magnificent color - a microcosm inside the great universe!

Just Follow the Stream

 

"Be soft in your practice.
Think of the method
as a fine silvery stream,
not a raging waterfall.

Follow the stream,
have faith in its course.

It will go its own way,
meandering here,
trickling there.
It will find the grooves,
the cracks, the crevices.

Just follow it.
Never let it out of your sight.
It will take you."

- Sheng-yen (1931 - 2009)

Postscript. The image reveals the upper part of the 6th waterfall (out of a total of 7) that rewards hikers taking the "Brooks Walk" trail at the Castle In The Clouds conservation area in New Hampshire (located in the Ossipee Mountains of Moultonborough and Tuftonboro, to the northeast of lake Winnipesauke). Since my wife and I had only a few precious days over a long weekend to admire the gorgeous northeast fall colors, our time on trails was necessarily limited. Well known photographer-friendly hikes were all but off limits, partly due to the expected requisite time and effort and partly due to the vast - and unforeseen (at least by me) - crowds of fellow-hikers! Admittedly, the last time I was in New Hampshire was as a teenager on a family trip with my parents (c.1975); i.e., just a wee bit in the past. But while I didn't expect the half-dozen or so cars parked unobtrusively by the side of the road I remember seeing back then, I was still shocked to find massive 200+car parking lots with timed entry! It was the same kind of "dissonance between memory and reality" shock I experienced on a 2012 trip to Yellowstone. Luckily, other less populated areas (than, say, the Franconia Notch area where the parking/hiking logjam appeared most rampant) still exist; like the Castle in the Clouds, for which I have to thank my wife for finding! So, rather than giving up all hope and skedaddling back to our cabin (in very not-Zen fashion), within the span of a few hours I went from commiserating over being unable to park, hike, and take pictures, to parking (with ease), eating (at a nice cafe close to a parking lot with few cars), hiking (on a beautifully maintained trail barely 100 feet from both car and cafe), and having an almost embarrassingly easy time communing with and composing my pick of waterfalls! Lessons: (1) stop basing expectations on 50-yo memories, (2) be flexible and mindful of unforeseen opportunities, and (3) listen to what your wife suggests doing instead :)

Conceptualizing Elephants

 "The skies and land are so enormous,
and the detail so precise and exquisite
that wherever you are you are isolated
in a glowing world between
the macro and the micro."

- Ansel Adams (1902 - 1984)

Postscript. These two very distinct images were both taken while on a hike up the Cascade Pass Trail (in Northern Cascades National Park, WA) with my wife and youngest son about a month ago. They obviously represent - and evoke - vastly different emotional and aesthetic sensibilities, yet each captures but an infinitesimally small part of the experience of hiking up this amazing trail. From an epic - and audibly loud -"Wow!" as we turned a corner and were thrust into the first image, to an oh-so-gently-whispered, "How lovely!" as my eye fell on a patch of small ferns quietly sitting along our path, this trail is that, and infinitely more in between. My vain efforts to capture its fathomless heights and depths and all sorts of visual delights with a camera reminded me of the proverbial blind men awkwardly - and absurdly - stumbling around trying to conceptualize an elephant :) 

Sliding Down Earth's Spacetime Curve

"The air around you is filled with floating atoms, sliding down the Earth's spacetime curve. Atoms first assembled in the cores of long-dead stars. Atoms within you, everywhere, disintegrating in radioactive decays. Beneath your feet, the floor - whose electrons refuse to let yours pass, thus making you able to stand and walk and run. Earth, your planet, a lump of matter made out of the three quantum fields known to mankind, held together by gravity, the so-called fourth force (even though it isn't a force), floating within and through spacetime."

- Christophe Galfard (1976 - )
The Universe in Your Hand

Postscript. This height of this lovely waterfall - Rocky Brooks Falls near Dosewallips State Park, WA - is hard to judge from the picture alone, but it is among the Olympic Peninsula's tallest at about 230 ft! Rocky Brooks falls is also embarrassingly easy to get to: a short 4 mile journey by car on a paved road from the main highway that runs up the Hood Canal, and then (the truly embarrassingly easy part) a 200 yard (!) hike - though "hike" is not the best word: you'll hardly have time to take more than a few breaths before coming to the falls, and can keep the munchies and extra water back at the car. Well, maybe that last part is a bit premature... the falls are so extraordinary to experience in person - the sound, the smell, the subtle mist, the surrounding bird song, and the gentle burbling stream that both greets each expectant visitor and says farewell - that one is well advised to anticipate a longer-than-casual-length stay. Over the course of my family's two weeks on the Peninsula, I took four trips to this falls - the shortest of which lasted no less than 3 hours - and each time spent far more time just sitting and communing with its tender rhythms than prowling around with tripod and camera looking for compositions. A reminder that there are special places that - with "good motivation and appropriate merit" (ref: a blog entry I posted about a week ago) - palpably compel you to stop whatever you're doing and just ... be.

Chrono-Synclastic Infundibula

"Just imagine that your Daddy is the smartest man who ever lived on Earth, and he knows everything there is to find out, and he is exactly right about everything, and he can prove he is right about everything. Now imagine another little child on some nice world a million light years away, and that little child’s Daddy is the smartest man who ever lived on that nice world so far away. And he is just as smart and just as right as your Daddy is. Both Daddies are smart, and both Daddies are right. Only if they ever met each other they would get into a terrible argument, because they wouldn’t agree on anything. Now, you can say that your Daddy is right and the other little child’s Daddy is wrong, but the Universe is an awfully big place. There is room enough for an awful lot of people to be right about things and still not agree. The reason both Daddies can be right and still get into terrible fights is because there are so many different ways of being right. There are places in the Universe, though, where each Daddy could finally catch on to what the other Daddy was talking about. These places are where all the different kinds of truths fit together as nicely as the parts in your Daddy’s solar watch. We call these places chrono-synclastic infundibula. The Solar System seems to be full of chrono-synclastic infundibula. There is one great big one we are sure of that likes to stay between Earth and Mars. We know about that one because an Earth man and his Earth dog ran right into it. You might think it would be nice to go to a chrono-synclastic infundibulum and see all the different ways to be absolutely right, but it is a very dangerous thing to do. The poor man and his poor dog are scattered far and wide, not just through space, but through time, too.  Chrono (kroh-no) means time.  Synclastic (sin-class-tick) means curved toward the same side in all directions, like the skin of an orange. Infundibulum (in-fun-dib-u-lum) is what the ancient Romans like Julius Caesar and Nero called a funnel. If you don’t know what a funnel is, get Mommy to show you one."

- Kurt Vonnegut (1922 - 2007)
The Sirens of Titan

Postscript. Do you see a "dog" in the image above? The photo is a rather straightforward shot of a stain on a piece of driftwood captured at the appropriately named "Driftwood Park," just down the road from the Coupeville Ferry Terminal on Whidbey Island, WA. My brain's strange lifelong affliction of conjuring associated memories of stories and books whenever an abstract image presents itself to my camera's viewfinder (the phantasmagoric mystical visions of Borges are a particular favorite of mine, as kind followers of my blog well know!) was in full force when this "dog-like stain" (or, more precisely, this "dog-like stain caught in an energy field") caught my attention. Why, that's "Kazak-the-dog running into the Chrono-Synclastic Infundibula!" I thought to myself, as I clicked the shutter with a smile (well, I almost remembered it correctly; I had to look up the reference later - but my brain got the gist). I'm not sure that this association - now that I've confessed it - makes the image any better (it's a very simple abstract), but I'll bet you can't now see anything else except "Kazak-the-dog running into the Chrono-Synclastic Infundibula!" :)

Oysters, Beyuls, and Palimpsests

"We are surrounded and embraced by her;

powerless to separate ourselves from her,
and powerless to penetrate beyond her.

We live in her midst and know her not.

She is incessantly speaking to us,

but betrays not her secret.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)

As I - finally! - jump back into the practice of posting an image or two with accompanying quotes (I've been busy with "day job" activities and travel for what seems like forever! - for those kind readers who are still with me, a humble bow and "Thank you!" for your patience), there is no better place to start than by explaining what the title of this blog entry ("Oysters, Beyuls, and Palimpsests") is referring to.

I have written before of viewing old subjects with new eyes (that summarizes how a Kauai I thought I knew well after multiple visits that began in the early 1980s, gradually revealed new truths about herself, but only after I changed my own way of "looking"), but never before have I experienced this as deeply as I did on the most recent trip my family and I took to the Pacific Northwest; specifically, the eastern part of the Olympic Peninsula that opens into the Hood Canal. As on myriad past trips, my reading material played an unexpected but vital part in steering my eye/I toward specific elements of the physical environment. In Scotland, I was "accompanied" by a biographies of William James (in 2009) and of Jon Schueler (2016), and both shaped the photography I did on those trips; likewise, in Kauai (in 2014), my compositions arose in part from a book about the island's history that I was immersed in on that trip; and the same in Alaska (in 2018), when a book on Alaska's history gently fueled my imagery. On our first trip to the Northwest (in 2019), I was reading histories and biographies of 19th century Western/U.S. photographers (William Henry Jackson and Carleton Watkins), and my photographs from that trip tended toward the Ansel-Adams-ish "epic" macro landscapes. But, on this most recent trip, my lens was almost always trained on far quieter and subtler kinds of micro-landscapes.

To be sure, part of the reason was the weather. While July's "heat dome" (that descended over much of the Pacific northwest) had dissipated by the time we arrived, it had not gone entirely, and the area was blanketed in unseasonably high temperatures and perfectly clear skies (i.e., far from ideal conditions for landscape photography). Luckily, the book I chose to accompany me on this trip provided both solace (from the physical conditions) and nourishment (of a spiritual kind), that together compelled me to view an old subject with astonishingly new eyes. 

The book is called The Heart of the World, one of seven that Ian Baker has written on Himalayan and Tibetan cultural history, environment, art, and medicine. This particular book - written in 2004, and one of the very best adventure/spiritual-quests I have ever read (!) - is ostensibly about finding a fabled colossal waterfall deep within an unexplored part of Tibet’s Tsangpo gorges in the Himalayas (Baker has subsequently been honored by the National Geographic Society as one of six ‘Explorers for the Millennium’ for the ethnographic and geographical research he was a part during his quest to find this waterfall), but is really an extraordinary (and extraordinarily spiritual) account of how one's state-of-mind/reality determines access to Beyul, or "hidden lands where the essence of the Buddhist Tantras is said to be preserved." 

Writing of Beyul, the Dalai Lama asserts in the book's introduction, that "...such sacred environments ... are not places to escape the world, but to enter in more deeply. The qualities inherent in such places reveal the interconnectedness of all life and deepen awareness of hidden regions of the mind and spirit. Visiting such places with a good motivation and appropriate merit, the pilgrim can learn to see the world differently from the way it commonly appears..."

While in the Pacific northwest, I read small bits of The Heart of the World each day, cherishing and relishing it's quiet insights and deep wisdom before drifting off to sleep, and anticipating the next day's activities. The result was that my attention was drawn far less to "Wagnerian epic"-like vistas, and more (so much more!) to the timeless essence of place - such as the Oyster-shells seen in the triptych above. Why Oysters? For one thing, our Airnb rental was close to the Hamma Hamma oyster saloon near Lillywaup, WA; so - given the "non photographer's weather" - my wife and I wound up having a lot of time to kill during the day enjoying local quisine. For another - in dreams at least - oysters are associated with quiet meditation and “going within." And, since like palimpsests, oysters record both time and events, their ubiquity in Lillywaup (heck throughout the Hood canal) entwined with my nightly excursions into Tibetan Beyuls. Oysters became my own palimpsests of spiritual and aesthetic journeys, both real and imagined. I was utterly mesmerized by their siren call; the elegance of their form, and the numinous quality of their decaying shells. And on those rare occasions when I was lucky enough to have particularly "good motivation and appropriate merit" - such as when I chanced upon a small deserted beach strewn with oyster shells - the results were pure magic! I caught brief glimpses of the preternatural luminescence that permeates an ineffable Beyul-of-the-mind. 

For those of you interested in viewing a few more examples of what I'm tentatively calling "Numinous Palimpsests," I have posted a small portfolio on my main website.

A Mere Hint of Outer Meaning

"This essential connection between color and form brings us to the question of the influences of form on color. Form alone, even though totally abstract and geometrical, has a power of inner suggestion. A triangle (without the accessory consideration of its being acute — or obtuse — angled or equilateral) has a spiritual value of its own. In connection with other forms, this value may be somewhat modified, but remains in quality the same. The case is similar with a circle, a square, or any conceivable geometrical figure [which has] a subjective substance in an objective shell…

The mutual influence of form and color now becomes clear. A yellow triangle, a blue circle, a green square, or a green triangle, a yellow circle, a blue square—all these are different and have different spiritual values.

...

Form often is most expressive when least coherent. It is often most expressive when outwardly most imperfect, perhaps only a stroke, a mere hint of outer meaning.

...

Every object has its own life and therefore its own appeal; man is continually subject to these appeals. But the results are often dubbed either sub- or super-conscious. Nature, that is to say the ever-changing surroundings of man, sets in vibration the strings of the piano (the soul) by manipulation of the keys (the various objects with their several appeals)."

- Wassily Kandinsky (1866 - 1944)

Postscript. My apologies to subscribers who expect - rightfully - to receive an image, quote, and/or other musings on a regular basis! Due to the inevitable vagaries of "day job" responsibilities, it has been difficult to find time to re-acquaint myself with my camera ... so, please be patient, as I'll likely be "offline" for the next few weeks as well 😞 In the meantime, the lone image(s) I've managed to expose in well over a month, and arranged in triptych form above, provide a bit of solace. They are each (almost) undisturbed patterns I found under my feet as I was reading a research paper in my mother-in-law's garden in Florida. Followers of my blog may recall that I had - up until the age of 10 (i.e., 50 years ago!) - the most common form of synesthesia (a "crossing of the senses"), wherein I "saw" even numbers as "warm tones," and odd numbers as "cold" tones. But I also have a vestigial remnant of perceiving certain patterns as sound. It has never been as pronounced as my memory of the "visual/number - color" crossing, but it has been with me throughout my life. However, never have I had as intense a synesthetic experience as I did in mother-in-law's garden when eyes/brain glanced at the arrangement you see up above. I literally hear jazz-like music as I look at them. The Kandinsky quote appears of necessity in this context, since he was an acknowledged synesthete (and whose abstracts the natural “random” assemblies shown above remind me so much of!). For those of you who want a quick and fun read about what is currently known about synesthesia, a good place to start is a non-technical discussion by one of synesthesia's pioneer researchers, Richard Cytowic.

Entropic Melodies

"The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations - then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation - well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the Second Law of Thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it to collapse in deepest humiliation."

- Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882 - 1944)

Postscript. One of the first major publications that some of my work was featured in was Black & White magazine, way back in issue #41 (Feb 2006). The images were from what I called my "entropic melody" series. But the "melody" part applies equally to the images (as in "living melodies of otherwise visibly decaying parts") as it does to the - still ongoing - process of creating them (on a vastly different space and time scale). Though I like to think of my "synesthetic landscape" series as my longest "in progress" portfolio, the truth is that - having started "only" in 2009 - it takes a back seat to something I believe I'll never tire of: finding "life" in lifelessness. And so, on a recent "long weekend" vacation with my wife and youngest son (also a photographer), and armed with this spur-of-the-moment self-reflection, I found my eye and lens trained not (entirely) on the natural beauty in the West Jefferson area of North Carolina (of which there is plenty to be had, to be sure!), but rather on the regions' splendors of human-created and now neglected decaying beauty. Looking over the 30 or so "keeper shots" I returned home with, no less than 25 of them are of nothing but "withered but beautifully decrepit" sentinels - and occasional palimpsests - of  times past. And, for the photographer, a glimpse of a longer-term "melody" playing out in an always evolving aesthetic landscape. I will be featuring a few of my favorites from this short-much-too-short trip in the coming days.

Patterns

"To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation; we need to see over-all patterns in our lives. We need hope, the sense of a future. And we need freedom (or, at least, the illusion of freedom) to get beyond ourselves, whether with telescopes and microscopes and our ever-burgeoning technology, or in states of mind that allow us to travel to other worlds, to rise above our immediate surroundings.

We may seek, too, a relaxing of inhibitions that makes it easier to bond with each other, or transports that make our consciousness of time and mortality easier to bear. We seek a holiday from our inner and outer restrictions, a more intense sense of the here and now, the beauty and value of the world we live in."

- Oliver Sacks (1933 - 2015)

Postscript #1. The triptych consists of images I captured one day last summer after my wife parked her car in a garage near a local farmer's market. I was mesmerized by the "organized cacophony" of shimmering reflections off other car's hoods and hubcaps that arranged - and revealed - themselves to anyone interested in looking. Though I lamented not having my "real" camera, I was happy to have my iPhone to capture this lovely visual feast! Yet another gentle reminder that we must always be on alert to the universe's ceaseless wonders. And, though I rarely talk about the "nuts-and-bolts of photography on my blog (and much prefer posting images and musings than highlighting what f-stop I used), here's a small - hopefully useful - foray into the "nuts-and-bolts" department: to better prepare for unpredictable contingencies (i.e., for when I'm out and about without my usual shoulder and/or back-breaking warehouse-in-a-bag assortment of cameras, lenses, and filters), I recently purchased a tiny - almost babyish-looking - camera; albeit one that is fully functioning! Since it is designed to fit in even a child's pocket (!), I've resolved to always have it on my person when leaving the house for any reason. For those of you curious, it's Canon's G1X Mark III, which is best described as an ultra-miniaturized mirrorless version of their (older) 80D DSLR. While its fixed-lens is neither particularly bright nor sharp, the sensor is effectively the same one used on the 80D; yep, an APS-C sensor in a body that fits inside a shirt pocket! You can check out a review here. So far, I'm loving it, though have yet to post any pictures captured by it. But I suspect that'll soon change :)

Postscript #2. For those of you saddened by not having Oliver Sacks' sage wisdom around anymore (though his books forever enshrine his genius), there is a wonderful new biography available, called Oliver Sacks: His Own Life. Highly recommended!

Focal Points

"...there seems to be at least two distinct forms of identity that consciousness can take on, both of which we recognize as the 'I.' The first, and the one usually experienced during ordinary states of consciousness, is the 'I' of the ego; the 'I' of the cognitive models constructed by the brain. The second is an 'I' that seems to be independent of the ego and of life in linear time; a transcendent 'I' that seems to exist entirely beyond time, space, and life itself, and whose identity is more profoundly recognized as the true 'I' than the relatively provincial and flattened notions of the ego. The implication of this is that a hypothetical, universal field of consciousness must somehow 'clot' into multiple, separate 'focal points' in a realm of reality beyond that of the physical brain. Each of these focal points must then correspond to a transcendent 'I' that is coupled, in awareness, to the electrochemical signals of an individual brain and its ego constructs."

- Bernardo Kastrup
Dreamed Up Reality

Postscript. As I alluded to a few blog posts ago, owing to this will-it-ever-end-pandemic, my photo-safari opportunities are - as for most of you - few-and-far-between. Thus, quality "photography time" nowadays amounts to either immersing myself in an unfathomably deep gorge of unprocessed raw files or looking to make this gorge even more unfathomably deep by saving an endless stream of impromptu "experiments" with light and form in my home studio (i.e.,  my day-job work desk after I clear it of my day-job notes and scribbles). The diptych above (as well as the one from yesterday) combines these two practices; i.e., they are "experiments in abstraction" captured a few years ago with my iPhone. Yesterday's images are of two ceilings, one in a local grocery store, the other at a local department of motor vehicles (where I sat, bored, one day in 2017, while waiting for one of my sons to test for his driver's permit). Today's images come courtesy of a local mall. There is appreciable comfort (from my otherwise omnipresent angst over few-and-far-between photo opportunities) in knowing that there are always wonders to be discovered, even if such "discoveries" are of discoveries made long ago!