The Essential Doesn't Change

"We should turn resolutely towards Nature.
...
By all means, nothing simpler.
It’s the natural order.
...
Let us do something, while we have the chance!
It is not every day that we are needed...
To all mankind they were addressed,
those cries for help still ringing in our ears!
But at this place, at this moment of time,
all mankind is us, whether we like it or not.
Let us make the most of it,
before it is too late!
...
We always find something, eh,
to give us the impression we exist.
...
There’s no lack of void.
...
The essential doesn't change."

- Samuel Beckett (1906 - 1989)
Waiting for Godot

A Personal Universe

"Poetry remakes and prolongs language;
every poetic language begins
by being a secret language, that is,
the creation of a personal universe,
 of a completely closed world.
The purest poetic act seems to
re-create language from an
inner experience that …
reveals the essence of things."

- Mircea Eliade (1907 - 1986)
Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy

Sparks of Ephemeral Unrealities

"Gaze upon the triptych, a

cryptic labyrinth from Point Lobos,

Where the past is the future

in a dance never-ceasing.
Waves shatter against stoic stone,

immortalizing the ephemeral.
It's not a mirror of the world as is,
But a mirror of the world
as it can be imagined to be.

Three panels like the infinite

rooms of Babel's library,

Each a moment, a universe,

within and outside of time.

The eternal tide, a metaphysical echo,

a Zahir in the mind. A testament

to reality's nonlinear discourse,

Each snapshot, a universe, an
aleph of unending possibilities.

A dance of ideas, where

the sea isn't merely sea. 

A reality refracted, multiplied,

eternally forking paths.

In the serene mirror of the

triptych, we are the dreamt.

Drawing the depths of existence,
asking, "Who dreams the dreamer?"
Behold, we are all, the other, in this
world as it can be imagined to be."

- ChatGPT (30 Nov 2022 - )
Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence

Prompt = "You are a photographer, poet and philosopher, with a penchant for metaphysics and stories by Jorge Luis Borges. You have stitched together a triptych of long exposure images taken at sunset at Point Lobos, California. Write a prose poem in the style of Borges that describes the mystery this triptych is meant to evoke in a viewers mind's eye. Limit the number of stanzas to three, with 5 lines each. Be creative."

Cosmic Observer

"In quantum mechanics...

an observation here and now changes in

 general the ‘state’ of the observed system...

I consider the unpredictable change
 of the state by a single observation...
to be an abandonment of the idea of
 the isolation of the observer from the
 course of physical events outside himself."

- Niels Bohr (1885 - 1962)

"The cosmos is within us.
We are made of star-stuff.
We are a way for the
universe to know itself."

- Carl Sagan (1934 - 1996)

Coastal Forms

"Then in my thoughts these shores, so different in their nature and in the inhabitants they support, are made one by the unifying touch of the sea. For the differences I sense in this particular instant of time that is mine are but the differences of a moment, determined by our place in the stream of time and in the long rhythms of the sea. Once this rocky coast beneath me was a plain of sand; then the sea rose and found a new shore line. And again in some shadowy future the surf will have ground these rocks to sand and will have returned the coast to its earlier state. And so in my mind’s eye these coastal forms merge and blend in a shifting, kaleidoscopic pattern in which there is no finality, no ultimate and fixed reality — earth becoming fluid as the sea itself."

- Rachel Carson (1907 - 1964)

The Edge of the Sea

Neither Time nor Space

"The scene of action of reality is not a three-dimensional Euclidean space but rather a four-dimensional world, in which space and time are linked together indissolubly. However deep the chasm may be that separates the intuitive nature of space from that of time in our experience, nothing of this qualitative difference enters into the objective world which physics endeavors to crystallize out of direct experience. It is a four-dimensional continuum, which is neither "time" nor "space". Only the consciousness that passes on in one portion of this world experiences the detached piece which comes to meet it and passes behind it as history, that is, as a process that is going forward in time and takes place in space."

- Hermann Weyl (1885 - 1955)

Looking at Things

"If we are always arriving and departing, it
is also true that we are eternally anchored.
One's destination is never a place but
rather a new way of looking at things.

...

You will then be ready to undergo initiation: an ordeal imposed by the Brotherhood of Fools and Simpletons. Three questions will be put to you. Just three. The first: 'How would you order the world if you were given the powers of the creator?' the second: 'What is it you desire that you do not already possess?' The third: 'Say something that will truly astonish us!' If you answer these satisfactorily you are then to return to your birthplace, sit quietly with hands folded, and meditate on the needs of all God's creatures... When you know what it is they need... you are to report back to the Brotherhood and dissolve the order.

...

Whoever uses the spirit that
is in him creatively is an artist.

To make living itself an art,
that is the goal."

- Henry Miller (1891 - 1980)
Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

Singing Elephants

"Treading delicately during one of the loudest bursts of music he at last saw through the flowery branches a black something. Standing still whenever it stopped singing, and advancing with great caution whenever it began again, he stalked it for ten minutes. At last it was in full view, and singing, and ignorant that it was watched... the mouth wide open as it sang of joy in thick-coming trills, and the music almost visibly rippled in its glossy throat. He stared in wonder at the wide liquid eyes and the quivering, sensitive nostrils. Then the creature stopped, saw him, and darted away, and stood, now a few paces distant, on all four legs, not much smaller than a young elephant, swaying a long bushy tail... [there was no] fear. When he called to it it came nearer. It put its velvet nose into his hand and endured his touch; but almost at once it darted back and, bending its long neck, buried its head in its paws. He could make no headway with it, and when at length it retreated out of sight he did not follow it. To do so would have seemed an injury to its fawn-like shyness, to the yielding softness of its expression, its evident wish to be for ever a sound and only a sound in the thickest centre of untravelled woods. He resumed his journey: a few seconds later the song broke out behind him, louder and lovelier than before, as if in a paean of rejoicing at its recovered privacy."

- Jorge Luis Borges (1899 - 1986)
The Book of Imaginary Beings

Subtle Interconnections

"Living things (…) present situations in which a half-dozen, or even several dozen quantities are all varying simultaneously, and in subtly interconnected ways. Often they present situations in which the essentially important quantities are either non-quantitative, or have at any rate eluded identification or measurement up to the moment. Thus biological (…) problems often involve the consideration of a most complexly organized whole.

...

The essence of science is not to be found in its outward appearance, in its physical manifestations; it is to be found in its inner spirit. That austere but exciting technique of inquiry known as the scientific method is what is important about science. This scientific method requires of its practitioners high standards of personal honest, open-mindedness, focused vision, and love of the truth. These are solid virtues, but science has no exclusive lien on them. The poet has these virtues also, and often turns them to higher uses.

...

If science deals with quantitative problems of a purely logical character, if science has no recognition of or concern for value or purpose, how can modern scientific man achieve a balanced and good life, in which logic is the companion of beauty, and efficiency is the partner of virtue?"

- Warren Weaver (1894 - 1978)
Science and complexity

Limits of the Possible

"A wise man once said that all human activity is a form of play. And the highest form of play is the search for Truth, Beauty and Love. What more is needed? Should there be a ‘meaning’ as well, that will be a bonus? If we waste time looking for life’s meaning, we may have no time to live — or to play.

...

"It is a good principle in science not to believe any 'fact' - however well attested - until it fits into some accepted frame of reference. Occasionally, of course, an observation can shatter the frame and force the construction of a new one, but that is extremely rare. Galileos and Einsteins seldom appear more than once per century, which is just as well for the equanimity of mankind.

...
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)

Note. This is another one of a series of images I took with my iPhone during a trip my wife and I recently took to Monterey, CA. I had to resort to my iPhone because of an unfortunate "error" in judgement I made in packing my "minimal travel" photo gear for the trip. Thinking (correctly) that since my trip was ostensibly work-related and I had "only" a few days for our mini vacation, I (incorrectly) reasoned that I should only take an old camera and an even older (much older) lens. Well, the camera and lens both worked, separately, but - because of the age-mismatch - not together. So, for the first day, my photography consisted mostly of spraying iPhone shots at whatever my eye/I could find; things got a bit better the next day after B&H came through with an overnight delivery of a newer lens (I have no affiliation with B&H beyond simply being a long-time happy customer). While I soon put down my iPhone, I must confess that many of my favorite shots from this short trip - such as the one above of our younger son, Josh, musing on the marine life as it swam by in a large tank at the Monterey Bay aquarium - were taken with the iPhone.

Doors and Landscapes

"With an emphasis on a conceptual rather than visual manifestation of nature, ancient shanshui aims to convey an experience of ‘being in nature’ rather than ‘seeing nature’. This being in nature is not about any singular experience of when and where man encounters nature, but a perpetual truth experienced by man in/with nature, namely, the wholeness and universality of the cosmic, laws and cycles in nature, and the integrative harmony between man and things. This can be best explained by comparing the sense of vastness in nature found in both Western landscape and ancient shanshui . In Western art, the cosmic sense in nature often evokes a sense of might, and even the destructive power, of nature. A moment prior to a thunderstorm, as described earlier in Ruisdael’s work, Turner’s images of snowstorm and shipwrecks, as well as Friedrich’s depiction of graveyards and the Sea of Ice, are all about the omnipotent power of nature, so much so that it can be lethal. In contrast to landscape painters of the West, ancient shanshui painters were not attracted to the unrelenting power of nature. This explains why images of natural disasters cannot be found in ancient shanshui . To ancient shanshui painters, their images visualize not the unusual but the common and perpetual sense of nature. They convey a message of a transcendental experience of being in/with nature."

- Being in Traditional Chinese Landscape Painting, Sophia Suk-mun Law

Note. Like the image in yesterday's post (and perhaps like a few more to come) this one is a "quick grab" with my iPhone during a trip my wife and I recently took to Monterey, CA. "Objectively speaking," the image shows the central panel of an old dilapidated door that guards the entrance to a property on Ocean Avenue, Carmel, about a half mile or so from the beach. But, in my mind's eye, it is "really" an even more withered palimpsest of an ancient Chinese landscape. I have always been drawn to how Chinese landscapes lead you to gently experience the painting as a whole, rather than (as is more typical of Western art) to make you "see a subject." Apart from the academic paper I quoted from above, a wonderful book that explores the artistic and philosophical implications of this point of view is called The Great Image has no Form (by Francois Jullien, University of Chicago Press).

Finite Worlds

"It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination."

- Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001)
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Note. The image is a "quick grab" with my iPhone of some lights on the ceiling of the hotel my wife and I recently stayed at in Monterey, CA. A basic photography lesson I learned and embraced long ago (though occasionally still forget to apply; happily, not this time) is this: if you are in a "dull, dull, insufferably dull" place for image taking (or, at least, think you are - like standing around in a hotel lobby with nothing to do or to "look at"), just look up or down ... something is sure to catch your eye 🙂

Mysterious Worlds

"Much on earth is concealed from us, but in place of it we have been granted a secret, mysterious sense of our living bond with the other world, with the higher heavenly world, and the roots of our thoughts and feelings are not here but in other worlds. That is why philosophers say it is impossible on earth to conceive the essence of things. God took seeds from other worlds and sowed them on this earth, and raised up his garden; and everything that could sprout sprouted, but it lives and grows only through its sense of being in touch with other mysterious worlds; if this sense is weakened or destroyed in you, that which has grown up in you dies. Then you become indifferent to life, and even come to hate it."

- Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821 - 1881)
Brothers Karamazov

Talking to a Rock

"Hogen, a Chinese Zen teacher,
lived alone in a small temple in the country.
One day four traveling monks appeared
 and asked if they might make a fire
in his yard to warm themselves.

While they were building the fire,
Hogen heard them arguing about
subjectivity and objectivity.
He joined them and said:
'There is a big stone. Do you consider it
to be inside or outside your mind?'

One of the monks replied:
'From the Buddhist viewpoint everything
is an objectification of mind, so I would
say that the stone is inside my mind.'

'Your head must feel very heavy,' observed Hogen,
'if you are carrying around a stone like that in your mind.'"

- "The Stone Mind," Shaseki-shu (Collection of Stone and Sand)

"Yunyan asked a monk what he was doing.
The monk replied, 'I’ve been talking to a rock.'
Yunyan said, 'Did it nod to you (indicating that it understood you)?'
When the monk didn’t reply, Yunyan answered for him:
'It nodded to you before you even said anything.'"

- Yunyan Tansheng (780-841)

Quiet Light II

"There is a quiet light that shines in every heart. It draws no attention to itself though it is always secretly there. It is what illuminates our minds to see beauty, our desire to seek possibility and our hearts to love life. Without this subtle quickening our days would be empty and wearisome, and no horizon would ever awaken our longing. Our passion for life is quietly sustained from somewhere in us that is wedded to the energy and excitement of life. This shy inner light is what enables us to recognize and receive our very presence here as blessing. We enter the world as strangers who all at once become heirs to a harvest of memory, spirit, and dream that has long preceded us and will now enfold, nourish, and sustain us. "

- John O'Donohue (1956 - 2008)
 To Bless the Space Between Us

Quiet Light

"It is light that reveals, light that obscures, light that communicates. It is light I 'listen' to. The light late in the day has a distinct quality, as it fades toward the darkness of evening. After sunset there is a gentle leaving of the light, the air begins to still, and a quiet descends. I see magic in the quiet light of dusk. I feel quiet, yet intense energy in the natural elements of our habitat. A sense of magic prevails. A sense of mystery. It is a time for contemplation, for listening - a time for making photographs."

- John Sexton (1953 - )

Daliesque Dreams

 "One day it will have to
be officially admitted that
what we have christened reality
is an even greater illusion
than the world of dreams."

- Salvador Dali (1904 -1989)

To See Takes Time

"I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower you hung all your associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see--and I don't.

...

You paint from your subject, not what you see…I rarely paint anything I don’t know very well. It was surprising to me to see how many people separate the objective from the abstract. Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or a tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they say something. For me that is the very basis of painting. The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint.

...

To see takes time, like to have a friend takes time."

-  Georgia O'Keeffe (1887 - 1986)

Enfolded Energy Fields

 "In all ages even among scientific men,
there can be discerned the urge to
apprehend the living form as such,
to grasp the connections of
their external visible parts; to
take them as intimations of inner
activity, and so to master, to some
degree, the whole in an intuition."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)

Postscript. This image is of the garden peony that adorns the ground beneath our mail-box; more precisely, and paraphrasing Minor White, I should say that the image is what else the garden peony is. What you are "really" looking at is a digital-negative (i.e., wherein the white-to-black tonalities are reversed) of a zoomed-in portion of what started out being 1:1 macro shot of the folds-within-folds of petals inside a single peony flower. The distance from left to right is no more than about two inches. In my physicist's mind's eye, I see an undulating play of interpenetrating enfolded forms of some mysterious energy field; the same impression I get when gazing at Bruce Barnbaum's mesmerizing slit canyon abstracts. Images such as this also remind us that magical otherworldly realms are always near us, just waiting for our eye to discover.