Aoraki

Aoraki/Mount Cook, New Zealand

"When Cook-lamented, and with tears as just
As ever mingled with heroic dust,
Steer’d Britain’s oak into a world unknown,
And in his country’s glory sought his own,
Wherever he found man, to nature true,
The rights of man were sacred in his view"

- William Cowper (1731 - 1800)

Formless Void

"...your tranquil yes to the changing
over into the formless void
of the unlimited."

- Hermann Hesse (1877 - 1962)

Element of The Inscrutable

"It has happened to me, while taking solitary walks through the woods of Baarn, that I would suddenly stop in my tracks and stand stiff as a board, overcome by a frightening, unreal and yet blissful sense of  standing eye to eye with the inexplicable. The tree there in front of me, as an object, as part of the woods, is perhaps not so amazing, but the distance, the space between it and me, suddenly seems unfathomable. He who wants to depict something nonexistent has to follow certain rules. Those rules are more or less the same one as for fairy tales. The element of the inscrutable, on which he now wants to focus attention, needs to be surrounded, to be veiled by a perfectly common everyday evidence, recognizable to all. The true-to-nature environment, acceptable to any superficial spectator, is indispensable for creating the desired shock."

- M. C. Escher (1898 - 1972)
The Magic of M. C. Escher

Cohered Confusion

"[It] is the peculiar gift of the truly great
detective that he can apply to the inexorable
rules of logic three catalyzers:
an abnormal observation of events, 
 knowledge of the human mind and
an insight into the human heart.
...
It is your task to cohere confusion,
to bring order out of chaos.
...
...the pattern must exist.
It’s the same story in detection:
recognize the pattern and you’re within
shooting distance of the ultimate truth."

- Ellery Queen
a.k.a., Frederic Dannay (1905–1982)
and Manfred B. Lee (1905–1971)

Note. I have written before about the meta-pattern that describes the pattern of how I search-for/discover photographic compositions while on travel (e.g., see my short essay, Fox-like Hedgehogian Photography, that describes my experience in Iceland). The first few days in any new place (or old place, newly revisited) are inevitably filled with excitement, awe, and an Ansel-Adams-esque drive to capture Wagnerian-epic landscapes in all their glory. My wife's and my recent trip to New Zealand certainly matched this pattern; and how could it not with truly otherworldly vistas such as Milford Sound! But, predictably, after a relatively few days of rapid-fire "Ooooh" and "Aaahhh!" shots, my eye/I reverted back to its typically quieter less dramatically Wagnerian reflective state to find the sorts of images I love best - i.e., those that are obviously grounded in places I visit, but which may have been taken anywhere - intimate patterns that catch my attention not because they scream "Capture me to show others before the light goes bad!", but because they mirror something looking through the lens, a thought, a memory, a feeling, whatever. My favorite images (however humble and possibly "uninteresting" they may be to others) are those that lift the veil between inner and outer realities. The very best are fragments of mystical experiences. To be sure, the image above is certainly not in that last category. But it is a typically Andy-esque post-first-travel-week intimate composition grounded on "seeing" an inner pattern depicted externally. In this case, a self-organized "Q" that remined me of Ellery Queen's signature letter that adorned the covers of his early mystery books. I wonder, would I have even "seen" this intimate landscape (captured in New Zealand, but not an image of New Zealand, per se) had I not spent the better part of my teen years devouring early Ellery Queen mystery novels?

Whispering Trees

"I thought all the trees were whispering to each other, passing news and plots along in an unintelligible language; and the branches swayed and groped without any wind. They do say the trees do actually move, and can surround strangers and hem them.

...

The forest is queer.
 Everything in it is very much more alive,
more aware of what is going on.

...

In the Wide World the Wood-elves lingered in the twilight of our Sun and Moon, but loved best the stars; and they wandered in the great forests that grew tall in lands that are now lost. They dwelt most often by the edges of the woods, from which they could escape at times to hunt, or to ride and run over the open lands by moonlight or starlight; and after the coming of Men they took ever more and more to the gloaming and the dusk. Still elves they were and remain, and that is Good People."

- J.R.R. Tolkien (1892 - 1973)

The One "Before Whom Words Recoil"

"The purpose of all words is to illustrate the meaning of an object. When they are heard, they should enable the hearer to understand this meaning, and this according to the four categories of substance, of activity, of quality and of relationship. For example cow and horse belong to the category of substance. He cooks or he prays belongs to the category of activity. White and black belong to the category of quality. Having money or possessing cows belongs to the category of relationship. Now there is no class of substance to which the Brahman belongs, no common genus. It cannot therefore be denoted by words which, like 'being' in the ordinary sense, signify a category of things. Nor can it be denoted by quality, for it is without qualities; nor yet by activity because it is without activity—'at rest, without parts or activity,' according to the Scriptures. Neither can it be denoted by relationship, for it is 'without a second' and is not the object of anything but its own self. Therefore it cannot be defined by word or idea; as the Scripture says, it is the One 'before whom words recoil.'"

- Aldous Huxley (1894 - 1963)
The Perennial Philosophy

A Light From the Shadows Shall Spring

"All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king."

- J.R.R. Tolkien (1892 - 1973)
The Lord of the Rings