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 … 72

O for a friend–that we might see and listen together! 
O the beautiful dawn in the mountain village!– 
The repeated sound of cuckoos near and far away.
~The Sarashina Diary (1009-1059)*

*cited: Trans: A S Omori & K Dot, Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan

Leica V-Lux 5: f/4 …. 1/125 s … 146 mm … 640 ISO

a day of rest

“… because work implies a stage of change–of war–between man and the world around him, it follows that rest designates peace between him and Nature. One day a week–a day which, by virtue of the analogy between time and cosmic space, corresponds to the idea of the centre implicit in the position of the sun among the planets or the location of the earth according to the geocentric system–must be set aside for experiencing the spontaneous, perfect harmony of man in Nature. By not working, the human being can break away from the order of change which gives rise to history, and thereby free himself from time and space to return to the state of paradise, This symbolism provides the explanation … [of] ‘the fiery restlessness of the rebel’: the instinctive hatred of all forms of rest characteristic of the man of warlike spirit who challenges all Nature and the world as it appears to the senses.”*

*cited: Trans: Jack Sage. JE Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols