In the Folds of Things...

He seeks life where it is to be found: in all that is most delicate, in the folds of things.

...

~ Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Andreas, 1932

~ Images from Sergei Parajanov's Hakob Hovnatanyan

Around Her A Trembling...

In her clashed the dreams
Of low stone walls,
Sea shimmers,
Herds on the moors.

Around her a trembling
Like the lichen
On the dolmens and menhirs.

...

~ Text fragments from Eugene Guillevic's poem "Carnac," 1961.

~ Image: Woman and menhirs in Carnac, Britanny, n.d.

The Incantation of This Whiteness...

Cornice Channel, Wilhelm Archipelago, Antarctica

"uncharted dangers", Prime Head, The Mouth of the Antarctic Sound, Antarctica

The Eastern Entry, King Frederik IX Land, Greenland

The Drake Passage, Island of Horn, Antartica Chilena

The Greenland Sea, Kap Patrick Brooke, Shannon Island, Greenland

The Arctic Ocean, Sea Ice, Looking North

Smith Sound, Kap Alexander, Greenland

But not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness, and learned why it appeals with such power to the soul...

Suddenly the waters around them slowly swelled in broad circles; then quickly upheaved, as if sideways sliding from a submerged berg of ice, swiftly rising to the surface. A low rumbling sound was heard; a subterraneous hum; and then all held their breaths...

...

~ Text fragments from Herman Melville's Moby Dick

~ Images from Thomas Joshua Cooper, True, Haunch of Venison, London, 2009

After Which They Vanished...

...

~ Images: Cloud chamber photographs originally invented by Charles Thomas Wilson for studying cloud formation and optical phenomena in the moist air. Inspired by sightings of the Broken Spectre while working on the summit of Ben Nevis, Scottish Highlands, in 1894, The New Landscape in Art and Science, 1956, Gyorgy Kepes

A Forest for Ships and Masts...

We look at a forest and say:

Here is a forest for ships and masts,

Red pines,

Free to the tops of their shaggy burden,

To creak in the storm

In the furious forestless air

...

~ Texts: Osip Mandelshtam, Whoever Finds a Horseshoe, 1923

~ Images from Street Angel, directed by Frank Borzage

Into an Orchard Brown....

Lully, lully, lully, lully!

The fawcon hath born my make away!

He bare hym up, he bare hym down,

He bare hym into an orchard brown.

In that orchard there was an halle

That was hangid with purpill and pall.

And yn that hall there was a bede,

Hit was hangid with gold so rede.

And yn that bed there lythe a knyght,

His woundis bledyng day and nyght.

By that bedeside kneleth a may,

And she wepeth both nyght and day.

And by that bedeside there stondith a ston,

'Corpus Christi' wretyn thereon.

Lully, lully, lully, lully!

The fawcon hath born my make away!

...

~ The Falcon, Anonymous, England, thirteenth century song

A Few Flowers Upon the Ground...

Photomicrograph of a flower's stem by I.W. Bailey, Harvard University. Structure in Art and Science, Gyorgy Kepes, Braziller, 1969

Cathedral New Norcia (looking up through the vaulted and transparent roof), Pier Luigi Nervi, Australia, 1959-1961. Structure in Art and Science, Gyorgy Kepes, 1969

The [Bishop's] day was not complete if cold weather or rain stopped him from passing an hour or two every night, after the two women had retired, in his garden before he went to bed. It seemed as though this was a kind of rite with him, a way of preparing for sleep by meditating in full view of the great spectacle of the night sky [...] He would muse about the greatness and the living presence of God; about the strange mystery of the eternal future; about the even stranger mystery of the eternal past; about all the infinities streaming in every direction before his very eyes; and, without trying to comprehend the incomprehensible, he saw it [...] He considered the magnificent collisions of the atoms that produce what we see of matter, showing the forces at work by observing them, creating individuality within unity, proportion within extension, the numberless within the infinite, and producing beauty through light. Such collisions are constantly taking shape, bringing things together and pulling them apart; it is a matter of life and death [...] Isn't that all there is? Indeed, what more could you want? A little garden to amble about in, and infinite space to dream in. At his feet, whatever could be grown and gathered; over his head, whatever could be studied and meditated upon; a few flowers on the ground and all the stars in the sky.

...

~ Text: Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

Such Signals Sometimes Sound...

Listen to this voice...
Like two people whose paths seem to cross and then they don't...
There is some neutrality here. No, I wouldn't call it neutrality ... but a need to concentrate on each sound, so that every blade of grass would be as important as a flower...
It could be like a break on the radio. Such signals sometimes sound as if they lasted an entire life.
Of future, or past, and outside time...
Listen.

...

~ Text: Arvo Pärt playing and speaking of "Für Alina" in Arvo Pärt: 24 Preludes for a Fugue

~ Image: Kirilian photograph of field grasses by T. Lightowler