Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Energy


"In Aboriginal philosophy,
existence consists of energy.
All things are animate,
imbued with spirit
and in constant motion...
[this] leads to a holistic
and cyclical view of the world."
- Marie Battiste

"The pulse of life
demands an unendng
stream of vital energy
to keep it going."
The Language of the Goddess

2 comments:

Cedric said...

I would have to question "constant motion". It would make more sense that motion exists only in the same fashion as time, namely a fabrication of the mind to make sense of the world. A pulse on the other hand… on, off, on, off, … infinitely small particles, grouped into various shapes — planets, stars, leaves, water, people, cameras — pulsing and with each pulse disappearing from one spot and appearing in an other as determined by the laws of probability. The bigger the gap the faster the motion seems but in reality perfect stillness, no motion, timeless, eternity.

Anyway, enough of my crazy talk. All I really wanted to say was mesmerising abstract, powerful, ghostly and mysterious.

Andy Ilachinski said...

Cedric, in my "other world" (as physicist), I study discrete dynamical systems known as cellular automata; i.e., mini grid-universes where the clocks goes tick-tock-tick-tock and emergent patterns come and go...so part of me resonate deeply with your sentiment. The deepest part of me remains mesmerized (and endlessly confused) about a documentary I saw as a child on public TV. John Archibald Wheeler (Richard Feynman's mentor who, among many other things, coined the term "black hole") was walking across a room on the floor of which was an enormous equation (which we could only partly see) and said: "HERE it is, the equation of the universe!" The first reaction (by the younger Andy at the time) was "Wow!" only to be tempered by Wheeler's next (profound - though I didn;t know it at the time) statement, after a wonderful pregnant pause of a few seconds...pausing over the equation he was walking over, he looked at the camera, smiled, and gently said, "But the equation just SITS there, and does nothing...Yet the universe is still going on doing its thing!" His words may have been different, but I remember my reaction quite well: mystery and awe. "What is missing..." I thought, that cannot be written down? I have puzzled over that essential puzzle to this day; perhaps its telling that my photography (at least so I think;-) has brought me a tiny step closer to understanding than my physics.