A Sea Boundless and Measureless

“The hidden well-spring of your soul

must needs rise and run murmuring to the sea;

And the treasure of your infinite depths

would be revealed to your eyes.

But let there be no scales to

weigh your unknown treasure;

And seek not the depths of your

knowledge with staff or sounding line.

For self is a sea boundless and measureless.

Say not, 'I have found the truth,'

but rather, 'I have found a truth.'

Say not, 'I have found the path of the soul.'

Say rather, 'I have met the soul

walking upon my path.'

For the soul walks upon all paths.

The soul walks not upon a line,

neither does it grow like a reed.

The soul unfolds itself,

like a lotus of countless petals.” 

- Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)

The Prophet

Stasis, Rhythm, and Aesthetics

"Beauty expressed by the artist cannot awaken in us an emotion which is kinetic or a sensation which is purely physical. It awakens, or ought to awaken, or induces, or ought to induce, an esthetic stasis, an ideal pity or an ideal terror, a stasis called forth, prolonged, and at last dissolved by what I call the rhythm of beauty." 

"What is that exactly?", asked Lynch.

"Rhythm," said Stephen, "is the first formal esthetic relation of part to part in any esthetic whole or of an aesthetic whole to its part or parts or of any part to the aesthetic whole of which it is a part."

- James Joyce, (1882 - 1941)

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Bildung , Gestalten, and Metamorphosis

“If we look at all these Gestalten, especially the organic ones, we will discover that nothing in them is permanent, nothing at rest or defined—everything is in a flux of continual motion. This is why German frequently and fittingly makes use of the word Bildung [formation] to describe the end product and what is in process of production as well…. When something has acquired a form it metamorphoses immediately into a new one.

...We will see the entire plant world, for example, as a vast sea which is as necessary to the existence of individual insects as the oceans and river are to the existence of individual fish, and we will observe that an enormous number of living creatures are born and nourished in this ocean of plants. Ultimately we will see the whole world of animals as a great element in which one species is created or at least sustained, by and through another. We will no longer think of connections and relationships in terms of purpose and intention; we will progress in knowledge alone through seeing how formative nature expresses itself from all sides and in all directions.

...Among the objects we will find many different forms of existence and modes of change, a variety of relationships livingly interwoven; in ourselves, on the other hand, a potential for infinite growth through constant adaptation of our sensibilities and judgment to new ways of acquiring knowledge and responding with action."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

(1749 - 1832)

Ordering and Things Ordered

"Reality is of the senses, brain and mind – that which is knowable.  Existence is cause, ultimate cause. It is unspeakable, unknowable.  Reality is effect, manifestation of existence…  Ordering and things ordered coexist yet have independent significance…  The deepest and most profound emotion we can experience is the belief that the unknown really exists."

- Wynn Bullock (1902 - 1975)

The Photography and Philosophy of Wynn Bullock

Quietly Seeking Images

"The not-so-silent conversations between things are always present. What is not so often present is my sensitivity to these voices. As it is said, for every push there is a pull, with every affirmation denial, but with only these there would be nothing but a frozen, rigid wasteland. There could be continuing movement with each new balance point experienced. There is great beauty in this ever-shifting dance. This is very alive and transcends all notions of a static experience. This is what brings life, for without it I would be locked in without possibilities; there would be no sense of creation. All would be frozen before the existence of time, without realization; there would not be a universe. Fortunately, all is conversation and movement - or transformation - that awaits my awareness. There are many entities all about us. I refer to those entities as images (photographs that aspire to say something); they are symbolic cameos, or icons. They have an unambiguous influence upon my life - they move and their movements are instruments of transformation."

- Nicholas C. Hlobeczy (1927 - 2007)

A Presence Behind the Lens

Interpenetrating Fragments and Divisions

"[There is an...] almost universal habit of taking the content of our thought for ‘a description of the world as it is’. Or we could say that, in this habit, our thought is regarded as in direct correspondence with objective reality. Since our thought is pervaded with differences and distinctions, it follows that such a habit leads us to look on these as real divisions, so that the world is then seen and experienced as actually broken up into fragments.

...the relationship of each moment in the whole to all the others is implied by its total content: the way in which it ‘holds’ all the others enfolded within it.

...both observer and observed are merging and interpenetrating aspects of one whole reality, which is indivisible and unanalysable."

- David Bohm (1917 - 1992)

Wholeness and the Implicate Order

Chain of Connection

"In considering the study of physical phenomena, not merely in its bearings on the material wants of life, but in its general influence on the intellectual advancement of mankind, we find its noblest and most important result to be a knowledge of the chain of connection, by which all natural forces are linked together, and made mutually dependent upon each other; and it is the perception of these relations that exalts our views and ennobles our enjoyments."

-  Alexander von Humboldt (1769 - 1859)

COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1