saturday morning with alan lightman

Fujifilm X-T4 f/5.6 1/60 s 60.8 mm 800 ISO

“In a world where time is a sense, like sight or like taste, sequence of episodes may be quick or may be slow, dim or intense, salty or sweet, causal or without cause, orderly or random, depending on the prior history of the viewer. Philosophers sit in cafés on Amthausgasse and argue whether time really exists outside human perception. Who can say if an event happens fast or slow, causally or without cause, in the past or future? Who can say if events happen at all? The philosophers sit with half-opened eyes and compare their aesthetics of time.

Fujifilm X-T4 f/5.6 1/60 s 46.6 mm 800 ISO

Some few people are born without any sene of time. As consequence, their sense of place becomes heightened to excruciating degree. They lie in tall grass and are questioned by poets and painters from all over the world. These time-deaf are beseeched to describe the precise placement of trees in the spring, the shape of snow on the Alps, the angle of sun on a couch, the position of rivers, the location of moss, the pattern of birds in flock. Yet the time-deaf are unable to speak what they know. For speech needs a sequence of words, spoken in time.”*

*cited: Alan Lightman, Einstein’s Dreams

life’s passages … 82

Every life is a point of view directed upon the universe. Strictly speaking, what one life sees no other can. Every individual, . . . is an organ, for which there can be no substitute, constructed for the apprehension of truth . . . Without the development, the perpetual change and the inexhaustible series of adventures which constitute life, the universe, or absolutely valid truth, would remain unknown . . . Reality happens to be like a landscape, possessed of an infinite number of perspectives, all equally veracious and authentic. The sole false perspective is that which claims to be the only one there is. ~José Ortega y Gasset

life’s passages … 52

life is a never-ending river…sudden moments of a stilled pond, languishing through time; riding whitewater rapids; falling waterfalls, bubbling creeks; uniting raindrops on a windowpane. Passing through life, seeking to rejoin with a vast unknown, and then again, evaporating into clouds that release into another stream of searching…searching…searching.

Are you in the waves of vast oceans?

Are you in the scent of flowers?

Are you in the spring’s early morning?

Are you in the touch of the afternoon’s sun rays?

Are you in the ever-changing clouds that tells stories of old?

Are you in the sound of melting snow?

Are you in the rustling movement of tumble weeds?

Are you in the colors of a brand new box of 72 Crayons? Or an old one?

Are you in the season of Autumn? Spring? Summer? Winter?

Are you in the wings of butterflies?

Are you in the vibrations of honey bees?

Are you in these questions?

Are you in the morning chanting sangha?

Are you in the scent of sun-warmed pine needles?

Are you in the uniting of water drops?

Are you in my searching, searching, searching?