Yesterday’s visit from John Richardson was a good experience. Sometimes, even here, I feel like I left something behind, and it is difficult not to feel that way with time slipping by so quickly. I wouldn’t call it regret, because there was little left for me in southeast Michigan and moving on has thus far been one of the best experiences of my life. However, in a strange way I miss the place, and seeing John again reminded me why. Time, even in short amounts, can make distance seem larger and more insurmountable than it really is and while I don’t much miss the place, the people and the relationships I had there seem so distant sometimes as to be non-existent; a strange feature in the topology of space and time. Once that short distance is traveled by one party or another, the time re-compresses into a digestible chuck as to make it seem like time and distance hardly exist at all. Knowing this makes an old home feel closer and a new home feel less intimidating even as the mind warps the space and time between the two places however long or short it may be. And rather than feeling solipsistic about leaving others behind, seeing people from a past time and place in a new time and place can make me feel like even over those distances the people we care about and who care back can do so across the void; perhaps in ways that are more meaningful than when time and distance were not an issue. That is a comforting thought.

While biking home from campus today I was struck by one of the most cliched bits of beauty in the human experience. The sunset over the water of lake Wingra was so amazing I stopped, pulled out my phone and snapped an image. One megapixel can hardly describe the detail and yet the wonderful part must not be in the detail because the image still carries some of that experience. It is the kind of experience that makes me feel small and humble as a maker. What chance do I have making awe-inspiring objects when an event that occurs everyday, countless times before and will occur countless times again can be so without any help at all; even in the face of the hindrance of a mediocre reproduction?

Went fishing today with a new friend from the art department, took a quick image with my phone when a great blue heron decided to join us on the opposite bank. There is something about fishing whether alone or not that is peaceful and the experiences I have collected while fishing are all beautiful in a way. It is a peaceful thing, to be near the water, hear it lapping against the shore, and it makes me feel connected with something bigger than myself in a way that is unlike anything else. The heron and I are connected through the fish, land, sea and air, one world, broken into mutually inaccessible parts and yet in small ways we cross the boundaries anyway.

From MyWisc Campus News:
“This beautiful pattern of wrinkles unexpectedly arose after University of Wisconsin-Madison biochemistry graduate student Jenna Eun grafted a small sheet of water-loving “hydrogel” onto the top of another material and added water. While the hydrogel absorbed the liquid and expanded, the underlying material did not, putting strain on the hydrogel and causing it to buckle. Eun’s photograph, taken under a microscope, won second place in the 2008 Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge and appeared in the Sept. 26, 2008 issue of Science magazine.”

Photo: Jenna Eun

I found this when I briefed through the Campus News section on MyWisc just a few moments ago. The caption says it all: accidental discovery of beauty in nature through scientific inquiry. Striking beauty I must say, and an award winning photograph taken through a microscope. This is a new take on a well studied phenomenon which also causes your skin to wrinkle when you spend too much time in the tub.

So I haven’t written about this yet but I will now because I’m still out of things to write about. Saturday in Chicago, Crystle and I went to the Jeff Koons Exhibit. I have never been a big fan of pop art but there was something admirable in this exhibition. Even knowing that most of the work was made by a small army in Koons’ employ the craftsmanship of the sculptural pieces was absolutely amazing and beautiful. There was a quality of Trompe l’Oeil in the work that was carried out by inventive use of materials to create objects that looked like they were actually something entirely different from what they were in reality. I enjoyed having my perception tricked when viewing a blow-up pool toy dolphin become pot and pan rack. My perception and visual intuition said “this is a rubber blowup creature.” The ripples in the seams were visible, the blowup nozzle, everything visually about the thing said “this is a rubber blowup.” However the chains that seamlessly pierced the body and suspended a rack full of stainless All-Clad pots and pans triggered the part of my perception that knows things because of known properties of known objects. In fact the “blowup dolphin” was made from ploy-chrome aluminum, making it as structural as it needed to be. The kind of confusion and dissonance this creates is wonderful and eye opening. When properly employed I don’t even mind being lied to. Maybe politicians should study Koons to find more artistic ways to disconnect truth from reality and make lying more palatable to the fringes of the masses…

Nothing, bleak blackness, or blinding incomprehensible whiteness, I have nothing. I have seen nothing today that really invoked a sense of or realization of beauty. But maybe I do have something. Can nothing be beautiful? Can the void, the abyss, the bleak featureless lack of anything be something of wonder and beauty? I can’t say I know, but it is probably an inevitability that we will all find out one way or another as the empty blackness of death seems inextricably linked to the lives we live. This whole thought raises to the surface one of my favorite quotes from a book called “Sacred Geometry” and I will end on that quote. “Unity creates by dividing itself.”

If beauty were a cliff, this would be perched on its rain-slick precipice. In other words, this is sheer beauty. It is a wonderful, elegant analogy about the relationship between time and space. It is playful, featuring a Chronophage which consumes one minute every sixty seconds. The elegance continues in the use of vernier slits to show the course of seconds and minutes emanating from the center of the universe. Aside from those things, this is a purely mechanical device, a reference to the mechanical and mysterious nature of the universe.

Today at the Alder Planetarium in Chicago I saw the Atwood Sphere. This is something like the very first planetarium. It is a sphere constructed from galvanized metal, painted black on the inside with tiny little holes drilled in its outer surface to allow minute points of light to shine into the interior. A little car on a screw drive takes six passengers inside the sphere where they can see the constellations shine against the black backdrop. This device is a conveyor of wonder and beauty, it is the attempt of one astronomer to give the gift of his knowledge and yearning to others. It is also a clunky, four-ton behemoth. Beauty is a strange thing.

On the way to Chicago today Crystle and I were astonished by the wondrous spectacle of Sun Dogs as we trucked along 12-18. Just as the sun was setting, conditions were right for two opposite almost full color spectrum. I happen to know what causes this effect, hexagonal crystals refracting the light of the setting sun in the upper atmosphere, but knowing never seems to rob the situation of its beauty. Regardless of that knowledge, it is still amazing to know that we are privileged to exist at moments where nature can reveal beauty beyond reckoning. It is equally amazing to think of something like the Sun which holds more destructive power than anything measly humans could ever comprehend can generate life, and beautiful moments for life to behold.

“For every grain of sand on our entire planet there are a millions stars out there in space.” Sam Neill, BBC Space. I have nothing else to say but to stand slack-jawed gawking at unimaginable numbers. Unimaginable? Try this, what is the largest number of things you can imagine in your head without grouping them? I can do five. A million for every grain of sand…