Mysterious Object

"No object is mysterious.
The mystery is your eye."

- Elizabeth Bowen (1899 - 1973)

Patterns of Arrangement

"...thoughts of the brain are experienced by us as arrangements and rearrangements – change – in a physical universe; but in fact it is really information and information-processing which we substantialize. We do not merely see its thoughts as objects, but rather as the movement, or, more precisely, the placement of objects: how they become linked to one another. But we cannot read the patterns of arrangement; we cannot extract the information in it – i.e. it as information, which is what it is. The linking and relinking of objects by the Brain is actually a language, but not a language like ours (since it is addressing itself and not someone or something outside itself)."

- Philip K. Dick (1928 - 1982)
Valis

World in Itself

"The moment one gives close attention
to anything, even a blade of grass,
it becomes a mysterious, awesome,
indescribably magnificent
world in itself."

- Henry Miller (1891 - 1980)

Randomness, Creativity, Mystery, Understanding

"Randomness does not mean everything is meaningless. Randomness is, sort of… You’re looking at creativity in its primordial state. You see one of the characteristics of randomness is unpredictability. Now, something is unpredictable if you couldn’t predict it in advance: that’s creativity. So, in other words, randomness and creativity are practically different names for the same thing. Something that isn’t random is something you can predict, which means that it’s not creative. You’re sticking within your current system of concepts.

...

The problem of creativity is, can you have a mathematical theory of creativity? Well it can’t be a theory that will give you a mechanical procedure for being creative because then it’s not creative. So a mathematical theory of creativity has to be indirect. Creativity is by definition uncomputable. If we knew how to do it, it wouldn’t be creative. When you have maximum creativity, it looks random because it’s totally unpredictable from what you knew before.

...

If you can calculate something, then it’s not creative because you’re working within your existing system. So there’s this paradoxical aspect. A mathematical theory of creativity is a more abstract kind of mathematics where you can prove theorems about creativity – you can describe it – maybe you can show it’s highly probable, but it won’t give you a way to mechanically produce creativity, which is the kind of thing that instrumental mathematics normally does.

...

I’m trying to get to the concentrated essence of the mystery: the mystery is creativity, and I think that’s deeply meaningful. I mean, ... the universe wants to create us. The universe wants to create mind. The universe maybe wants to get closer to God, or maybe the universe is God and it’s trying to increase its level of perception, its level of understanding."

- Gregory Chaitin (1947 - )
The Joy of Mathematical Discovery

Matter With Curiosity

 "Out of the cradle onto dry land
here it is standing:
atoms with consciousness;
matter with curiosity.
...
Deep in the sea
all molecules repeat
the patterns of one another
till complex new ones are formed.
They make others like themselves
and a new dance starts.
...
Stands at the sea,
wonders at wondering: I
a universe of atoms
an atom in the universe."

- Richard Feynman (1918 - 1988)
What Do You Care What Other People Think?

Nature's Eye

"There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness.  This mysterious unity and integrity is wisdom, the mother of us all, "natura naturans."  There is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that is a fountain of action and joy.  It rises up in wordless gentleness, and flows out to me from the unseen roots of all created being. "

- Thomas Merton (1915 - 1968)

"The clear realities of Nature seen

with the inner eye of the spirit reveal

the ultimate echo of God."

- Ansel Adams (1902 - 1984)

Deep Interlock

"In a surprisingly large number of cases, living structures contain some form of interlock: situations where centers are 'hooked' into their surroundings. This has the effect of making it difficult to disentangle the center from its surroundings. It becomes more deeply unified with the world and with other centers near it.

...

The center and its surroundings interpenetrate each other, using intermediate centers which belong to both of two adjacent larger centers.

...

The principle creates fusion and connection at an enormous number of scales in the physical world, from the largest regional scale to the tiniest physical detail.

...

We may say that each major entity in a living structure must contain references (shapes, structures, colors, motifs, reflections) of the other major elements, so that each element is somehow also within the other elements."

- Christopher Alexander (1936 - 2022)
Nature of Order

Trees are Poems

"Trees are poems that the earth
writes upon the sky."

- Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)

Unknown Infinity

"When I stand alone with the earth and sky
a feeling of something in me going off in every direction
into the unknown of infinity means more more to me than
any organized religion gives me."

-  Georgia O'Keeffe (1887 - 1986)

Lofty Luminosity

"How is a cloud outlined? Granted whatever you choose to ask, concerning its material, or its aspect, its loftiness and luminousness—how of its limitation? What hews it into a heap, or spins it into a web? Cold is usually shapeless, I suppose, extending over large spaces equally, or with gradual diminution. You cannot have, in the open air, angles, and wedges, and coils, and cliffs of cold. Yet the vapor stops suddenly, sharp and steep as a rock, or thrusts itself across the gates of heaven in likeness of a brazen bar; or braids itself in and out, and across and across, like a tissue of tapestry; or falls into ripples, like sand; or into waving shreds and tongues, as fire. On what anvils and wheels is the vapor pointed, twisted, hammered, whirled, as the potter’s clay? By what hands is the incense of the sea built up into domes of marble?"

- John Ruskin (1819 - 1900)

Note. The photos in this post are all "quick grabs" using my iPhone while I was in Colorado on a recent day-job-related trip. While I did not have any other cameras with me (knowing I would have next to zero time for "real" photography), my iPhone sagely reminds me that images - and the gentle solace of photography - are truly everywhere, even amidst otherwise decidedly non-photography-related day-job activities. One does not stop being a photographer just because one is without a camera! The three images below were all captured within a few moments of each other while I was lounging at an Admirals club waiting for a connecting flight back home.