- Caspar David Friedrich (1774 - 1840)
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
Dialogue with Nature
Monday, August 12, 2024
The Source Of All Light
So that in a way, when you look
deeply into somebody's eyes,
you're looking deep into yourself,
and the other person is looking
deeply into the same self.
Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies.
We are the witnesses through which the
universe becomes conscious of
its glory, of its magnificence."
- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)
Sunday, July 21, 2024
Garment of Brightness
Your children are we, and with tired backs
We bring you the gifts that you love.
Then weave for us a garment of brightness;
May the warp be the white light of morning,
May the weft be the red light of evening,
May the fringes be the falling rain,
May the border be the standing rainbow.
Thus weave for us a garment of brightness
That we may walk fittingly where birds sing,
That we may walk fittingly where grass is green,
Oh our Mother the Earth, oh our Father the Sky!"
Friday, April 12, 2024
Divisible Space
- Isaac Newton (1643 - 1727)
Note. The triptych contains "quick grabs" (using my iPhone) of the skylights near Gate 4 of the Bangor, Maine airport while waiting for our plane to return back home (to Northern VA) after viewing the total eclipse on April 8. While I did not take any images of the eclipse (I just wanted to just "be in the moment"), the little black spheres in the skylight reminded me a little of that experience and caught my eye 😊
Sunday, October 01, 2023
A Shadow to Another Light
beauty is a light in the heart.
...
True light is that which
radiates from within a man.
It reveals the secrets of the soul
to the soul and lets it rejoice in life,
singing in the name of the Spirit.
...
And when the shadow
fades and is no more,
the light that lingers becomes
a shadow to another light."
- Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)
This shot was taken somewhere along the southern shore of the Snaefellsnes peninsula after only our first full day in Iceland. The scene magically - and quickly - unfolded as we were driving along Route 54. One moment, our car was surrounded by a drab, grey landscape too dark to make one want to even look; the next - and only for a brief instant - the heavens opened up to bathe the landscape with effulgent light! There was just enough time to park the car (although highway pull-over spots are regrettably few and far-between in Iceland - my single complaint about what is otherwise a photographer's true heaven - there was one that fortuitously appeared just as the light broke through the clouds), ask my wife to hand me my camera, and take a quick hand-held shot while still sitting behind the wheel with a running engine. In the time I took to reach for my tripod to head out for a "proper" composition, the light had vanished and the landscape reverted to its prior drab, grey landscape too dark to make one want to even look.
Apart from the majestic landscapes, moody seascapes, waterfalls, glaciers, lagoons, .... the list goes on and on ... perhaps Iceland's greatest gift to insatiably hungry photographers' eyes is the omnipresent drama and spectacle of its glorious light and shadow. Literally anywhere you choose to stand for more than a few brief moments (it does not matter where or even for what reason!) is certain to be the center of a veritable storehouse of every-shifting ethereal luminescent patterns of both radiance and mystery. While our planet is inarguably home to a number of places in which it is nearly impossible not to take a beautiful picture - my wife and I have visited our fair share (e.g., Hawaii, Santorini, and the Isle of Skye) - I have heretofore rarely experienced quite so many "places" ubiquitously scattered around a single country!
Sunday, September 10, 2023
Iceland's Immeasurable Boundlessness
- Dino Buzzati (1906 - 1972)
The Tartar Steppe
The passage above is taken from a novel of one of my favorite authors. Buzzati was trained as a journalist, but channeled his creative energies into creating a magical-realist-like (Kafkaesque, even Borgesian) surrealist world of fantasy just on the cusp of seeming "real." The Tartar Steppe is arguably his best known work. The "hero" of the story, Giovanni Drogo, is stationed at a fort in the desert that overlooks the vast Tartar steppe and told to await an invasion; one which, as we learn over the course of the novel, never actually comes. Among other things (e.g., a scathing rebuke of military life) it is a Camus-like Sisyphisian meditation on time, life, the specter of lost opportunities, and the perpetual - unquenchable - thirst for fulfilment. But, while all of these elements are fascinating on their own (and should prompt anyone with a penchant for Kafka and Borges who has not yet experienced Buzatti's writing to become acquainted with his work), I was reminded of another element of this allegorical tale while driving with my family around Iceland. Namely, its subtle depiction of the immeasurable boundlessness - the infinity - of space and and time.
Iceland is a curiously dynamic blend of physical, aesthetic, and spiritual contrasts that never do more than only hint at some unfathomable underlying "reality." Iceland's vast stretches of land and sea can be used as backdrops to Drogo's endless wait for something to happen. Seemingly infinite blocks of solidified magma and melting glaciers are omnipresent on the horizon; approachable, in principle (by inquisitive souls willing to risk flat tires or broken axles - or both - while traversing the unpaved roads trying to get to them) but perpetually just-out-of-reach. Measures of time and distance both loose conventional - indeed, any - meaning. Just as the Apollo astronauts had difficulty judging how far rocks and mountains were from them on the moon (in the moon's case, because of the lack of an atmosphere), my family and I often struggled to estimate how "near" or "far" anything was; or how "long" or "short" a time it would take to get somewhere. In our case, this was due not to a lack of an atmosphere (the ever-churning transitions from clear skies to moody clouds to thick unrelenting globs of wind and rain to clear skies again were constant reminders of Iceland's dramatic weather; unlike in Buzatti's novel - in Iceland things emphatically do happen!), but simply to how alien Iceland's landscape is compared to our calibrated norms. Everything In Iceland seems to be simultaneously so close as give the illusion of intimacy, and yet so remotely far, so incomprehensibly and immeasurably distant, as to be unapproachable, at least within a single lifetime (or, at least, during a single trip 😊
Wednesday, September 06, 2023
Icelandic Color of Night
The suns hold a dance with the curtain lifted.
And white-capped billows of light are shifted,
Then break on a strand of shadows dim.
An unseen hand directs at its whim
This glittering round of streamers flowing.
To regions of light from the darkness grim,
All earth-life now turns with fervor growing.
-- And a crystal gaze on the glowing haze|
The hoary cliffs bestowing."
- Einar Benediktsson (1864 - 1940)
Benediktsson, one of Iceland's most revered Poets, is here musing on Iceland's northern lights. Alas, my family and I were not lucky enough to witness this most wondrous of nature's displays during this trip (but is something we certainly aim to do the next time we visit). However, this did not preclude us from experiencing Iceland's other remarkable "colors of night," in this case, the post-sunset afterglow of warm "AppelsÃnugulur" (Orange) and deep blacks ("Svartur") infused with subtly warm hues of blue ("blár"). Kandinsky would have had a field day "listening to" and painting Iceland's intensely beautiful iridescent polychromatic (and both under- and over-) saturated tones. (The reference is to Kandinsky's well-known aphorism, "Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposely, to cause vibrations in the soul.")
Monday, September 04, 2023
The Edge of Heaven
flung by God from the forge of Chaos.
I soar on wings swifter than wind
above the paths of the pulsing stars.
...
through empty night — an image that speaks:
"Stay, oh traveler tired with flight!
Tell me, wanderer — what are you seeking?
futile wandering through wastes of ether!
...
- Jónas HallgrÃmsson (1807 - 1845)
The Vastness of the Universe
This remarkable panorama - well, the actual Icelandic vista, if not my image, which hardly does justice to the preternatural play of shapes, light, and color! - was captured toward the end of our first full day of sightseeing as we were making out way back to our rental house along the southern shore of the Snaefellsnes peninsula. While Iceland certainly has its fair share of grey misty (and often heavily rain sodden) days, it is mostly - quintessentially - a mysterious amalgam of drab coolness and sensual warmth; a fractal superposition of black ("svartur") volcanic shades mixed with effervescent blues ("blár"), yellows ("gulur"), and orange ('AppelsÃnugulur") tones. And, as is true of all the world's best landscapes, the character and moods change far faster than one can possibly react (or hope to do justice) to with even the quickest "clicks" of the shutter. As I kept telling my wife throughout our trip and afterwards, it was a sincere privilege to call Iceland home during our two weeks there. Truly, we felt on the edge of heaven 😊
Thursday, June 22, 2023
Twilight of the Soul
With gentle mastery o'er her mind—
In that rich twilight of the soul,
When reason's beam, half hid behind
The clouds of sleep, obscurely gilds
Each shadowy shape that Fancy builds—
'Twas then by that soft light I brought
Vague, glimmering visions to her view,—
Catches of radiance lost when caught,
Bright labyrinths that led to naught,
And vistas with no pathway thro';—
Dwellings of bliss that opening shone,
Then closed, dissolved, and left no trace—
All that, in short, could tempt Hope on,
But give her wing no resting-place;
Myself the while with brow as yet
Pure as the young moon's coronet,
Thro' every dream still in her sight.
The enchanter of each mocking scene,
Who gave the hope, then brought the blight,
Who said, "Behold yon world of light,"
Then sudden dropt a veil between!"
- Thomas Moore (1478 - 1535)
The Loves of The Angels
Saturday, June 17, 2023
Time is a Sea
- O. K. Bouwsma (1898 - 1978)
The Mystery of Time
Friday, June 16, 2023
Fading Afterglow of Creation
would be intelligence.
one of millions they have
scattered throughout the Universe,
watching over all worlds with
the promise of life. It was
a beacon that down the ages
has been patiently signaling the
fact that no one had discovered it."
Saturday, June 03, 2023
Coastal Forms
Monday, May 29, 2023
Limits of the Possible
1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist
states that something is possible,
he is almost certainly right.
When he states that something
is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the
limits of the possible is to venture a
little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology
is indistinguishable from magic."
- Arthur C. Clarke (1917 - 2008)
Wednesday, May 24, 2023
Quiet Light II
- John O'Donohue (1956 - 2008)
To Bless the Space Between Us
Tuesday, February 28, 2023
Eternal Energy
eternal energy which
appears as this Universe.
You didn't come into this world;
you came out of it.
Like a wave from the ocean.
So that in a way, when you look
deeply into somebody's eyes,
you're looking deep into yourself,
and the other person is looking
deeply into the same self."
- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)
Friday, December 23, 2022
The Sound of the Sea
"There is, one knows not what
sweet mystery about this sea,
whose gently awful stirrings seem to
speak of some hidden soul beneath..."
"The immeasurable depth of
the sea beneath your feet;
the immeasurable depth of
heavens above your head.
A gust of wind hardly moved the sail.
The dark masses of water shifted
like a great slithering beast under
the boat, rocking it softly, gently."
"I felt once more how simple
and frugal a thing is happiness:
a glass of wine,
a roast chestnut,
a wretched little brazier,
the sound of the sea.
Nothing else."
Saturday, December 10, 2022
Transcendent Logic
As for its origin—in the beginning was fable.
It will be there always."
- Paul Valery (1871 - 1945)
"On Poe's Eureka" in Selected Writings of Paul Valéry
Thursday, December 08, 2022
Plenum Model of the Ground
- Christopher Alexander (1936 - 2022)
The Nature of Order: Luminous Ground
Friday, December 02, 2022
Helping Preserve the "Bullock Family Photography Archive"
My thinking has been deeply affected by the belief that
everything is some form of radiant energy."
- Wynn Bullock (1905 - 1975)