Still Learning How To See

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“I keep drawing the trees, the rocks, the river,

I’m still learning how to see them;

I’m still discovering how to render their forms.

I will spend a lifetime doing that.

Maybe someday I’ll get it right.”

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Alan Lee

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“In a forest of a hundred thousand trees,

no two leaves are alike.

And no two journeys

along the same path are alike.”

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Paulo Coelho

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“There is life and death in all forest,

the life will bring you beauty

and the dead will bring you new life!”

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Roland Kemler

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“One moment the world is as it is.

The next, it is something entirely different.

Something it has never been before.”

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Anne Rice

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“So many hues in nature

and yet nothing remained the same,

every day, every season

a work of genius, a free gift

from the Artist of artists.”

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E.A. Bucchianeri

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“This is why children can see Angels, touch spirits,

hear the songs of the trees, and talk to the animals.

Quite simply, they acknowledge the magic.”

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Elizabeth Eiler

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At first glance, it was just another wet and chilly February day.  The sounds of wind and rain had awakened me in the night, another storm passing over swelling creeks and spongy ground.  Heavy clouds still roiled across the sky, blocking all of the golden from the cold, grey light that reached us.

It was still a day worth using, and so we set out to have a look at the river after brunch and before busy-ness.

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There is beauty and grace, even in February.  There is the halo of faint color around the latticework of limbs, clothed in swelling buds.  There is the wake left by a passing work boat, and moss glowing thick and green through the gloom. There is the delicate etching of branches stretching for the sky; the living nearly indistinguishable from the dead.

I paused to consider that after a life-time of looking, I’m really still learning how to see….

Woodland Gnome 2019

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“Everything has beauty,

but not everyone sees it.”

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Confucious

Sunday Dinner: Precisely

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“Philosophy [nature] is written

in that great book which ever is before our eyes –

– I mean the universe –

– but we cannot understand it

if we do not first learn the language

and grasp the symbols in which it is written.

The book is written in mathematical language,

and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures,

without whose help it is impossible

to comprehend a single word of it;

without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.”

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Galileo Galilei

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“Billions of years ago

there were just blobs of protoplasm;

now billions of years later

here we are.

So information has been created

and stored in our structure.

In the development of one person’s mind from childhood,

information is clearly not just accumulated

but also generated—created from connections

that were not there before”

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James Gleick

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“His way had therefore come full circle,

or rather had taken the form of an ellipse or a spiral,

following as ever no straight unbroken line,

for the rectilinear belongs only to Geometry

and not to Nature and Life.”

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Hermann Hesse

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“sacred knowledge of the cosmos

seems to be hidden within our souls

and is shown within our artwork and creative expressions.”

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Nikki Shiva

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“What if Loves are analogous to math?

First, arithmetic, then geometry and algebra,

then trig and quadratics…”

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J. Earp

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2018

All but the first photo are from the woodland walk at the Williamsburg Botanical Garden.   The first photo is from our Forest Garden.

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“the pattern appears so ethereally,

that it is hard to remember that the shape is an attractor.

It is not just any trajectory of a dynamical system.

It is the trajectory toward which

all other trajectories converge.”

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James Gleick

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“The geometry of the things around us

creates coincidences, intersections.”

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Erri De Luca

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“If the human mind can understand the universe,

it means the human mind is fundamentally

of the same order as the divine mind.

If the human mind is of the same order as the divine mind,

then everything that appeared rational to God

as he constructed the universe,

it’s “geometry,” can also be made to appear rational

to the human understanding,

and so if we search and think hard enough,

we can find a rational explanation and underpinning for everything.

This is the fundamental proposition of science.”

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Robert Zubrin

Living With Reality

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The Real World we each live in daily, sometimes feels like a living tutorial in ‘Chaos Theory.’  As much as we might admire integrity, neatness, organization and beauty; it proves elusive.

It takes enormous vigilance to maintain, especially without staff.  It requires action and attention to pick up every discarded newspaper, wash every empty cup, dead head every spent blossom, discard every outdated idea, and eliminate every errant weed.

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Have you ever watched a cooking show, and wondered how the host’s kitchen remains so spotless?  Have you ever watched a gardening show, and wondered how every path and plant remains so pristine?

I grew up watching movies and sit-coms , wondering why our home wasn’t as neat and elegant as the ones inhabited by TV families.  Was something wrong with us?

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We still consume the day’s media messages, peering through electronic windows into some else’s seemingly perfect world, wondering why we can’t live that way, too.

Or, maybe we watch the day’s news, and know that things aren’t unfolding in the world as they should.  We feel a visceral disconnect between how we know things should be, and how they currently are. 

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The hard truth remains that we all live in the midst of some measure of chaos and disorder.  We live surrounded by that which we can’t control, which constantly surprises us and throws new challenges our way.   And there is an art in knowing how to stage things for the photograph.

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“Chaos is the science of surprises, of the nonlinear and the unpredictable.

It teaches us to expect the unexpected.”  

The Fractal Foundation

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We somehow figure out how to take control of those things that we reasonably can.  We plan ahead. We do our due diligence. We have high expectations for ourselves.  But despite our best efforts, perfection remains elusive.

And that is where we somehow learn to shift our focus.  None of us lives in a photograph or a bit of video.  We don’t have producers, set designers and make-up artists on hand to stage some imagined image of how things should be.  We can’t freeze time to capture that fleeting perfect moment.

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… unless we also happen to be photographers….

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Rather, we live in a dynamic and chaotic system.  Our lives play out and our gardens grow in the midst of many competing forces that we simply can’t control.

We eventually learn to expect the unexpected and flow with the living dynamic of our moment.

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But we each still hold great power.  When we add our energy to any system, we change it, for better or for worse.  Our personal influence and expectation might prove the tipping point of change.

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The choices we make in every moment, shape our future.  A small decision can forever change our lives, in ways we don’t even anticipate.

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“Chaos is not simply disorder.

Chaos explores the transitions between order and disorder,

which often occur in surprising ways.”

The Fractal Foundation

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Reality will always challenge our own ideas of how things should be.

The question remains, have we the courage to explore and understand the reality of what is? And once we begin to understand, to work within the flow?

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Can we find a way to ride the waves of our lives so that we live with joy, find the beauty in everything, and abide in love?

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Recognizing the chaotic, fractal nature of our world

can give us new insight, power, and wisdom.

The Fractal Foundation

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Woodland Gnome 2017

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Wednesday Vignette: Living Geometry

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“The geometry of the things around

us creates coincidences, intersections.”

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Erri De Luca

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“Philosophy [nature] is written in that great book

which ever is before our eyes –

– I mean the universe –

– but we cannot understand it

if we do not first learn the language

and grasp the symbols in which it is written.

The book is written in mathematical language,

and the symbols are triangles, circles

and other geometrical figures,

without whose help it is impossible

to comprehend a single word of it;

without which one wanders in vain

through a dark labyrinth.”

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Galileo Galilei

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“You don’t see something

until you have the right metaphor

to let you perceive it”

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James Gleick

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“The harmony of the world is made manifest

in Form and Number,

and the heart and soul

and all the poetry of Natural Philosophy

are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty.”

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D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson

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“Number rules the universe.”

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Pythagoras

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“Maths is at only one remove from magic.”

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Neel Burton

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“A circle has no end.”

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Isaac Asimov

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“Seed of Life” Mandala designed and stitched in cotton thread by the Woodland Gnome 2016.  Photos by Woodland Gnome 2017

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More on Geometry:

Sacred Geometry, Flower of Life…. (additional links at the end of the post)

 

Linear Beauty

 

Lines, arcs, and angles.

The geometry of our world.

As energy coagulates into matter,

 

 

As electrons choose “particle” over “wave” and

Join their sparks into atoms,

Molecules,

Solids,

To inhabit the world of form;

The lines are drawn.

Geometry comes from light,

Manifesting life-

 

A continuum…. a

>>>   line  >>>

Of unbroken beauty.

 

 

Words and Photos by Woodland Gnome 2014

 

 

Pentagonal Flowers

This gallery contains 13 photos.

Have you ever noticed the beautiful geometry of plants? Some wise men and women in the past looked closely at the world around us, and intuited that The Creator of All must be a mathematician, and that The Creator specifically expresses itself through the geometry of nature.  A great wisdom tradition, which traces its roots … Continue reading →