- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
Saturday, February 15, 2025
Celestial Beauty
Thursday, February 06, 2025
Spiritual Nature
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
Nature
Friday, October 20, 2023
Impressions of Niagara Falls
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.
Friday, July 22, 2022
Diffusing Into the Air
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
Sunday, December 05, 2021
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."
Wednesday, September 15, 2021
Evanescent Beauty
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."
Friday, May 29, 2020
Pure Spirit
Sunday, September 08, 2019
A Train of Moods
Saturday, December 22, 2018
Wise Silence
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Spirit, Light, and Harmony
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