Light is supreme. Inner light, the light with which we learn to view the world. The art of seeing relies heavily on the light which comes from our minds, holy light which illuminates a dark world with our imaginings and our dreams. How can we see through the veil of order which imprisons us like caterpillars in a cocoon from which we will never emerge as shining butterflies? The search for beauty is the truest meaning of life. Until we gain the ability to see beauty in the simplest things, we cannot love in the highest meaning of the word. We learn to love ourselves which brings about love of others. Life itself is love and art.

It is only with the more recent discoveries about the visual brain that our concept of vision as a process has changed. We now view it as an active process in which the brain, in its quest for knowledge about the visual world, discards, select and, by comparing the selected information to its stored record, generates the visual image in the brain, a process remarkably similar to what the artist does...but these new facts have only come to light in the past twenty-five years.

— SEYMOUR ZEKI, Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain

I endeavor to see more each day. Gradually, as a flower unfolds in the springtime, glory in the light, glory in the earth glows and sheds its radiance over my life. It is a process that will never end. I do not speak of seeing only what is beautiful. Without the dark side, the beautiful might become too commonplace. The poet Lorca spoke of duendé , the dark side of art. Without duendé he wrote, the flamenco lacks spiritual depth. He tells of a gypsy woman hearing a cello sonata by Bach being played and exclaiming, "That really has duendé

There is great beauty in the human countenance. Can you see it? Can you see it in the faces of old people graven with the erosion of time and circumstance? We live with people, friends, relatives, acquaintances, and rarely see them clear. It is well, at times, to take a loved one by surprise with an outrageous, hilarious or scandalous comment and suddenly see him or her again.

TREE LIFE

I am a tree hugger. I can think of nothing more beautiful than the shapes of noble trees, great oaks, redwoods, pines, ancient olives, cypress and a hundred others. I take my nickname C. W. from the Caucasian Wingnut tree. When I walk (dance) among the trees I see them as anthropomorphic shapes, wise, benevolent, patient, and beautiful, grand sculpture that makes my heart sing. I photograph them (late fall, winter, or early spring are best for seeing the bare branches). I enhance, transform or otherwise “play” with the trees in Adobe Photoshop to reveal what I believe to be their inner lives. It may not be the trees whose lives I truly see, but my own imagination running riot in their lofty, regal domains. I think the trees would be pleased at the attention. Our too often overly greedy society demands that we cut down many old, irreplaceable growths for profit. It is sad that our vision is deprived of these great trees. I grieve for their loss. Many would agree, but taking action demands a true understanding of how we function in our materialistic society. I vote for the life of trees, and for a wise compromise with our needs.

"I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do. They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!

— JOHN MUIR

We live on the surface of the earth and on the surface of our own beings. Our conscious brains control but little of what we do. We are like captains on the bridges of ocean liners calling out commands, but often little concerned with the complex and vast array of machinery below that executes these commands. Over the sea itself, just as with our own unconscious minds, they have little or no control. We ride these tempestuous seas hurled high into the sky by monster waves in a storm. Suddenly, a rainbow appears, and we see how beautiful it is. We do not control this. It is our privileges because we are endowed with an appreciation of “useless” beauty.

NOBLE VISIONS

There are visions which never leave my mind because I have not seen them yet. I remember the vast main temple at Angkor Wat in Cambodia, although I saw it clearly rather than with depth. The clarity of the light in Antarctica, and the pristine archipelagos and icebergs which spoke of time before man, compelled me to try to see these things well. Maybe next time. On safari in the “Last Eden,” the Okovango Delta in Botswana, I recall flocks of birds, elephants and cheetahs, the tall grass the and winding streams. Still, I saw them without truly penetrating beneath the surface. The splendor of Moorea and Bora Bora in French Polynesia, the green and turquoise waters there and in the Seychelles dazzled me, better to have looked harder. I stood transfixed at Macchu Picchu, remembering Pablo Neruda's great poem, The Heights of MacchuI Picchu. My images while handsome, do not dig deep into the Inca ruin. Hong Kong still baffles me. My Great Wall and Forbidden City images are merely a breezy, if professional look at these great works of antiquity. There is a need to learn to see and to work in a vertical as well as a horizontal way, to penetrate deep down into the mystery and spiritual life of places and peoples. A world roaming traveler skims the surface too much. Around our familiar places, over time, we can penetrate to the heart of things. We can visit beloved places over and over. That is a beginning.

LIGHT'S GENESIS

Where in the infinity of space and time does light come from? If indeed it is the mind of God or the manifestation of His splendor, how can it permeate the universe without a beginning? We needn't answer questions of such metaphysical depth to see the light. The very term “see the light” bespeaks a seeing beyond what the eye itself sees. Consider the visual mystery of a black hole. Can a huge collapsed star of such density and gravity exist from which light itself cannot escape? Stephen Hawking and many other physicists believe this is so. Is a black hole the wormhole(1) to other universes?

Quantum physics speaks of fluctuations in the space-time continuum from which vibrations, waves or sub-atomic particles arise spontaneously, This implies a steady state universe, a universe which emerges at random.. To some, this seems better than the Big Bang theory of the universe exploding and expanding from a singularity, a point of infinite mass, density, energy and gravity within which the laws of physics disappear. A singularity produces a paradox of infinite forces if observed or experienced. Thus, a singularity is prevented from having a physical, or observable existence by the process of cosmic censorship. Stephen Hawking has said, in his writings, "the actual point of creation (of the universe) lies outside the scope of presently known laws of physics," A black hole constructs an event horizon around its singularity. You cannot penetrate it to observe the singularity without being destroyed. If there was a Big Bang, was there light in the singularity? If not, where did the light come from?

One thing is clear in our framing of questions such as `How did the Universe get started?' is that the Universe was self-creating. This is not a statement on a `cause' behind the origin of the Universe, nor is it a statement on a lack of purpose or destiny. It is simply a statement that the Universe was emergent, that the actual of the Universe probably derived from a indeterminate sea of potentiality that we call the quantum vacuum, whose properties may always remain beyond our current understanding...

The fact that the Universe exists should not be a surprise in the context of what we know about quantum physics. The uncertainty and unpredictability of the quantum world is manifested in the fact that whatever can happen, does happen (this is often called the principle of totalitarianism, that if a quantum mechanical process is not strictly forbidden, then it must occur).

— (excerpt from (zebu.uoregon.edu/~js/ast123/lectures/lec17.html)

What has this to do with the art of seeing? Seeing is not a mechanical process taking place between the eye and the brain, in which light waves or photons enter the lens of the pupil, strike the retina, are transported to the visual cortex, and voila, vision emerges. It is a complex process in which photons are converted into electrical impulses which the brain censors, deciphers and then decides what you and I see. I have not discovered from the above light's origin. We will learn to see by shredding the veil of insubstantial conditioning and possible genetic inheritance which causes us to see what seemingly is there. Although this is a continuing mystery, light, the light of the visible spectrum, is our greatest joy.

Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes
. . . there we enter the realm of Art and Science.

— ALBERT EINSTEIN

YOUR EYE IS NO WINDOW

Light which enters our eyes through the pupils passes through a number of almost transparent layers to arrive at the retina. Since there is sharpness of vision only at the fovea, a tiny central zone of the eye, The eyeball must constantly move, in order to bring an entire scene into focus. We do this with a series of quick glances called saccades ( A rapid intermittent eye movement, as that which occurs when the eyes fix on one point after another in the visual field.) We are not conscious of this, and may imagine that we see everything sharp. The myriad photons of light strike the rods and cones which are wired to a complex “computer” in the retina. Preliminary processing of the visual information takes place here. The eye is no window! From the retina, the information goes on to a way station, the LGN (lateral geniculate nuclesu) where it is sent to the primary visual cortex, and on to other parts of the brain. Where, you may ask. Very little is known. The riddle of vision may be likened to that of early explorers arriving at the continent of Africa for the first time and circumnavigating part of this vast land mass. The interior is dark and mysterious.

Strangely, scientists find more information comes back to the LGN from various parts of the brain than go from it to the brain. The actual process of seeing is performed by your brain rather than your eye. Here we are being told what to see, or are we? More likely our upbringing and our environment have mapped that which is “important” on our brains. Since it takes energy to see, why waste this energy in a battle within ourselves to unmask the outside world, to circumvent or overcome our early conditioning.? Let us “waste” this energy because not to see is to be blind to the real meaning of life on a beautiful planet.

Look again. How do you see what isn't there? What “isn't there” is the real world of wonder, chaos and beauty that you do not yet see. Start by educating your eye. We are surrounded by images in our technological, digital world. Much of it is the ordinary, our daily fare. Why not visit online the virtual realms of museums or museums themselves, or the host of books about artists of every period and see how artists and photographers view and have viewed our world. Is Van Gogh's “Starry Night” his true vision? Did Willem De Kooning see women like the tortured paintings he became famous for? What about Picasso often sticking eyes in his paintings anywhere but where they belong? He said that way people would notice them. Are Dubuffet's grotesque paintings of people real.. Dubuffet studied the works of children and mad people. No matter you say, they were painters. You may be a photographer or artist and record what is there or you may be trying to see your world. First glance is only the beginning of the process of truly seeing. As with music, you must listen to a great rock band, a symphony or a piece of ethnic music a number of times to really hear it. It is easy to hear light music the first time. It's like seeing what's there. Truly seeing comes from allowing the shimmering mantle of light which envelops the world to envelop you like a two way mirror-like garment which reflects and transmits light at the same time. Is that an impossibility, like viewing a singularity? You are the mirror. Light comes from within and without. Try it, but be patient.

POINT LOBOS

My work is a kind of music. Images play music to my eyes. How do you or I decode this “music of the spheres?” Come with me to Point Lobos, a nature reserve which juts into the ocean south of Carmel, California. I describe this place more fully in my picture book, THE SAMURAI WAY: Spiritual Journeys with a Warrior Photographer (Ruder Finn Press, June 2004) . I often walked the rock formations at Pebbly Beach now called Weston Beach. The tilted slabs of many hued rocks on the ocean's edge, the ancient Carmelo and sandstone conglomerates, hide a world of abstract art, of shapes which mirror chimeras and gargoyles, or anything else you might fancy. Walk these rocks slowly, on the outgoing tide early in the morning, and you will see a rainbow of colors on the rocks. You will learn to interpret the ikebana-like arrangements of the rocks and uncover their distinctive personalities. Not in one day or two, but in many, your eyes will refresh themselves and begin to see what “isn't there.” The same may be done nearer home. A walk in a botanical garden, a forest or around a lake leads to new visions. Annie Dillard discovered a universe at Tinker's Creek.

One day I was walking along Tinker Creek thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreaming. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance...I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck

—ANNIE DILLARD , A Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek  

WHAT DO YOU SEE?

Vision is a process that produces from images of the external world a description that is useful to the viewer and not cluttered with irrelevant information.

—DAVID MARR, British neurologist      

Irrelevant to who? Your doting brain busily keeps you from seeing all of the “irrelevant” information that makes the world a place of beauty and wonder. Why, while walking past a field of wild flowers early in the morning, stop to notice a bee supping on a dew drenched golden cup? Why observe the unusual harmony of colors on sea drenched rocks on a storm swept coast? Why study cloud castles? Do we construct worlds of visual processing all of us alike, or do we humans have the ability to see beyond the constructs of early childhood and later conditioning. Do we want to? It may be forbidden fruit, but where's the harm. Each of us has the power to see in ways that few human beings have learned to see. Artists, of course, whether with brush or camera, see a great deal that is invisible to many others. All that is needed is the will to use the most powerful tool in our bodies, the magical tool which worships the light, the human eye, to penetrate the fog and miasma of lazy looking and wasted vision.

The knowledge we have now is really only the beginning of an effort to understand the physiological basis of perception, a story whose next stages are just coming into view...the striate cortex is just the first of over a dozen separate visual areas, each of which maps the whole visual field...beginning with the striate cortex, each area feeds into two or more areas higher in the hierarchy...The ascending connections presumably take the visual information from one region to the next for visual processing. For each of these areas, our problem is to find out how the information is processed...We are far from understanding the perception of objects...

— DAVID HUBEL , Eye, Brain, and Vision

The mystery of how vision works compels us to discover what we may truly learn to see. We all live near or in the midst of trees. They are indeed lovely, arching into the sky, casting cool shadows for us to linger under, altogether delightful. Shall we not look deeper and study their marvelous construction? The art of nature is the source of all art. To see the beauty and marvelous symmetry and asymmetry disguised or hidden in the twisting, turning, precariously hung branches of huge trees that stretch over us takes sudden awakening of our ancient no-mind, our intuitive mind. Joseph Conrad wrote, “The mind of man is capable of anything—because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future.”

ORIGINS

Two of NASA's Great Observatories, bolstered by the largest ground-based telescopes around the world, are beginning to harvest new clues to the origin and evolution of the universe's largest building blocks, the galaxies. It's a bit like finding a family scrapbook containing snapshots that capture the lives of family members from infancy through adolescence to adulthood. The Hubble Space Telescope has joined forces with the Chandra X-ray Observatory to survey a relatively broad swath of sky encompassing tens of thousands of galaxies stretching far back in time. Called the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS), astronomers are studying galaxy formation and evolution over a wide range of distances and ages. "This is the first time that the cosmic tale of how galaxies build themselves has been traced reliably to such early times in the universe's life," says Mauro Giavalisco, head of the Hubble Space Telescope portion of the survey, and research astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md.

The astonishing Hubble telescope opens a new window on our universe. We can as well open new windows in our brains to view the countless wonders of our own planet. The universe within each of our brains contains more possible connections than the number of stars in all of the galaxies combined. Roger Penrose, the eminent British mathematician, wrote in his book Shadows of the Mind, that the human brain functions at the quantum level. That means the processes in the brain are virtually infinite and cannot ever be completely understood because of the workings of quantum indeterminacy. That's a miracle, a gift from the gods. We have the unlimited potential to see what no one else has seen. Just as the Hubble telescope reveals the more of the cosmic tale of billions of galaxies in interstellar space, so our probing minds can discover and see the infinite variety of our whirling planet. From a drop of dew on a blade of grass to vast ranges of glacier clad mountains, from the heart of a flower to tempestuous seas that circle our planet, we can discover and see. We can illuminate our world as seers, prophets, shamans and magicians see in their myths and necromancy, as artists see into the future. We become visionaries.

I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more—the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort—to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires—and expires, too soon, to soon—before life itself.

— JOSEPH CONRAD

It is too soon to quit, to acknowledge that there is an end to life and growth. We will abide so long as we increase our vision in ever expanding circles, like ripples in a cosmic sea. We will increase our vision as we enlarge our cosmic curiosity which views all creation with a wondering, wandering eye. We are more than crawlers on this earth, we are the stuff the stars are made of, blobs of protoplasm which thinks, and while thinking see, becomes as though we were gods on a high peak, Olympus. We invented the gods. We can see.

Painting is a blind man's profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen.

— PABLO PICASSO

LOOK WITHOUT FEAR

We are here to learn, here on this earth willy nilly, as in Shakespeare's words from King Lear: “We must endure our coming hither as our going hence. Ripeness is all.” At no age is the human mind limited. It is only when, shackled by the bonds of daily routine, mind-set and fear, the mind lies fallow, filled with detritus of boring work. Once, while hovering in a helicopter over a deeply crevassed glacier in the Darwin Mountains hard by the Beagle Channel in Patagonia, I felt a chill of fear...of what am I doing here ? , Another time, ashore in the Galapagos Islands, I walked among waved albatross courting, clicking their yellow bills and dancing an ancient mating dance. I saw them. They did not see me. We are too often like those albatross, used only to seeing what is there in our circumscribed world, able, but perhaps unwilling, to take the risk of leaping into true vision, at whatever the cost.

She perceives what is yet unseen while looking into the world...She sees that which is possible embedded in what is real bridging between seen and unseen realms, with memory and imagination...

— LAURA SEWALL , Sight and Sensibility, the Psychology of Perception

TURNER’S LIGHT

J.M.W. Turner (1755-1851 saw and painted light. Perhaps the most famous English Romantic landscape artist, he became known as 'the painter of light.' A Londoner born and bred, he went to the Royal Academy School of art when he was only 15 years old. Turner studied the science of light and color...He was a unique artist, both in freeing himself from all past artist traditions and art movements. He was to open the way for a visionary anticipation of modern painting.

Venice was the inspiration of some of Turner's finest work. Wherever he visited he studied the effects of sea and sky in every kind of weather. His early training had been as a topographic draftsman. With the years, however, he developed a painting technique all his own. Instead of merely recording factually what he saw, Turner translated scenes into a light-filled expression of his own romantic feelings.

These quotations from web pages on Turner (1775-1851) describe an artist painting during a period when painting generally dealt with landscapes in a traditional manner. Turner saw what “wasn't there,”to the painters of his day, the flamboyant and miraculous play of light on water and sky. Such vision emerges from deep immersion into intuitive or Zen no-mind. The artist using his or her skill, depicts the ravening energy of light which, like an alchemist's stone, transmutes all into glory and beauty. We can learn to see this way by discarding our preconceptions and seeing as we fantasize, a world of rainbows and light.

But the artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition -- and therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives: To our sense of pity and beauty, and pain.

— JOSEPH CONRAD , The Nigger of the Narcissus

VISION EMANATES

During the 13 th century, Robert Grosseteste (England). Magister scholarum of the University of Oxford was a proponent of the view that theory should be compared with observation. Grosseteste considered that the properties of light have particular significance in natural philosophy. The rainbow was conjectured to be a consequence of reflection and refraction of sunlight by layers in a 'watery cloud.' Most importantly to our dissertation, he held the view, shared by the earlier Greeks, that vision involves emanations from the eye to the object perceived. Current optical theory would disagree with this assertion, however there is a great truth hidden here. (Experiments in quantum physics hint or show that the observer affects the observed. The act of observing a wave/particle at the quantum level raises the probability of that wave being there, i.e. the collapse of the wave function..)

We see what our brain instructs us to see. Our brains send messages to the LGN, the way station between the retina and the visual cortex. Whether light or energy, these signals emanate from our eyes and condition what we see. You might say that light from your eyes creates your vision and that you can change that light by learning to truly see. I work with sophisticated visual tools, high end cameras that digitally record images of scenes before me. Does the light from my eyes influence what my cameras record? A scientist or physiologist might laugh at this idea. We will see.

Nature and nature's laws lay hid in the night,
God said, “Let Newton be" and all was light.

— ALEXANDER POPE

Laws of science should not trap us into complacency about how we see. The study of light has revealed mystery atop mystery. Newton's theories of light as corpuscles eventually gave way to Einstein and the enigma of light as both waves and particles (photons). Imagine that your brain behaves as a black hole is believed to do in interstellar space. A black hole is surrounded by the “event horizon” which is the limit beyond which even light cannot escape the ravening gravity of the hole. Our own event horizons are the limits which our brains enforce to make us see what is already there. Early in life, our brains map the visual world according to our environments and from instructions received from our parents, teachers and peers. While light cannot escape from a black hole, we ourselves are not constrained from violating our self-imposed limits. Only fear, rigidity or laziness can prevent us from viewing and enjoying the works and wonders of all creation.

In his book, Catching the Light , author Arthur Zajonc writes, “Goethe phrased it this way,'The eye owes its existence to the light. Out of indifferent animal organs the light produces an organ to correspond to itself; and so the eye is formed by the light for the light so that the inner light may meet the outer.'...had light not “seen” man, we should never have seen the light.” If light sees us, can we then learn to see the light? The eye/brain alliance is a kind of camera obscura, a dark chamber which receives and emits light What form these light rays take inside our brains is equally dark and obscure. We have the keys to unlock the box and dwell in radiance.

— ALBERT EINSTEIN

WORLD ICONS

Often I am asked what is my favorite place in the world. During twenty-five years of circling the globe I've encountered many enchanting scenes. Among them, for sheer beauty of the landscape, the high plateau regions of the southwest in America are unsurpassed. While photographing for my book of aerial photography Sacred Lands of the Southwest , I wrote the following:

I awake from reverie, hypnosis, rapture of the deep or sky, oxygen deprivation at ten thousand feet, slightly dizzy reverie, fire the camera and wave Michael the pilot on to Canyonlands. The confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers slides below, interwoven like an measureless Mobius strip, a bow-tie ribbon twined in the petrified red hair of the Colorado plateau. To the right I see my companion Shirlee's favorite southwestern garden, the green meadows of the Needles and Chesler Park, spires and obelisks arrayed like marble hat pins. Row on row of silent sentinels striated with browns and yellows, these ‘tapers' burn in the orange light as in a cathedral where the devout light candles. Our aircraft speeds ahead twixt Navajo Point and Navajo Mountain, one thousand feet above the fissured rocks, one million light years from today.

Lake Powell glistens among black rock monoliths and crags. A red sky bands the horizon. I lean out the open window to photograph the last light of evening on the waters beneath the sky glow that reaches across the heavens. Somnambulist of early evening, harbinger of tonight's full moon, chalice of the universe, the desert blushing with harmony and music, the reddening sky and the dark lake transfix me..

At five hundred feet over Lake Powell, Michael lowers the landing gear, sets full flaps down and throttles back. The Cessna airplane bucks and slows. Michael whirls the aircraft around in a steep turn. Window open, I lean out to photograph Tower Butte framed by Wild Horse Mesa and the pinnacles round the "Crossing of the Fathers." Fifteen minutes before sunset, the magic light paints huge rock monoliths a deep shade of red. Lake Powell's waters grow dark. I am chief of the dusk, riding my thunder stallion down the fading light, chasing the buffalo rocks down to cliff's edge. The sun's bloody tomahawk cleaves the distant ridge. Darkness.

Time's fleet arrow speeds across a distant sea of stars out beyond the known universe, a blackness full of tears, the endless, sentient and universal realm of mother earth, her chariot, her carriage and her dreams. I am filled with dreams still aborning, a speck of protoplasm attached to earth's green bosom, a vibrant breathing chalice of all that she has dreamed during an eternity of fecund and felicitous birthing. We are one, the wistful mote and the wise macrocosm. We feel the same. We know the same. All is beautiful. Hozho!

— PAUL G. ZOLBROD

..Thirty minutes before sunset, Michael, our acrobatic pilot of the Cessna 182RG (retractable gear), spins the light plane into a dizzying descent around the Totem Pole and Yei Bi Chei rocks in Monument Valley. I lean out of the open window. Long shadows march across the red desert floor, spirits of ghost dancers awakening from the afterlife. Shirlee and I ride a winged metal spirit that dances in the shimmering yellow sunlight like a mayfly, ephemeral, a few minutes of epiphany, a glorious flight before the sun descends into the underworld.

Michael banks and turns, whirling the Cessna towards the great stone "Hands of the Great Spirit," the red rock mittens of Monument valley. The earth tumbles beneath me. I gesture towards the flaming rock mittens, St. Elmo's fire, or the immolation of heathens by the friars of the Inquisition. Mitten crosses mitten, holy shadows on the desert. We veer and turn, a spinning, whirring dervish suspended in thin air, shadowed by the sun's grim final burning, ourselves ghost dancers. Loud is the propeller and louder still the hush of millenniums.

Spires, castles, battlements, towers and rock cliffs rear out of the red desert sand, and in the distance, tiny red mounds, hogans face east to greet each newborn sun ball trailing a red placenta of clouds. I see no life, no sign of Navajo or sheep, only the silent ghost dance of shadows, evidence of crepuscular deities slumbering among the stone sepulchers. Time, deep desert time, time that painstakingly sculpts wisdom and stone monuments weds necromancy's dark invocations to shadowy spirits. Fiery embers glow on the horizon. The setting sun hangs like a burnt brass cymbal. One instant more, we fleet across the picket line of monuments— The King on his Throne, The Stagecoach, Bear and the Rabbit, Big Indian . Dying shadows sink into the parched land. Distant cliffs devour the sun shrouding the desert with scorched tears. The ancient ones doze.

I was in a trance during those aerial encounters. Whirling and tumbling about, flying low and close to the stone castles, ruins and monuments, I relied on no-mind to see for me, my instinctive, intuitive training born of long years of practice. Images flashed across my vision, triggering reflex actions on the camera's shutter button. What I saw was revealed later in the developed film and it was good.

ZOOM EYES

A camera is a splendid tool to awaken and train the vision. To truly see through the camera viewfinder, you must look hard, all around the perimeter of the image. This is the first step, seeing what the camera sees through whichever lens you use. Our “zoom” eyes coax us to see only that part of the image which is our subject, rather than studying the entire frame. That is why too often, photographs taken on travels at home or abroad, are disappointing. We thought our friends or companion were tall in the image, yet the print shows them as tiny figures in an unresolved landscape, among majestic ruins, or a grand cityscape.

Use your camera as you would a magnifying glass to examine the exterior that you try to capture. Study it until you really see it. No hurry! Otherwise your ‘snapshot' will only reveal that you were careless and unseeing. The camera is a magical optical device which can, if used with passion and vision, reveal the unseen world, from the macroscopic image of dew on the petals of a rose to the sculptural nobility of a giant tree. The eye is no camera. Our eyes, controlled by our brains, record what we “should” see, not what is there. Our eyes lie to us. That is why eyewitnesses often disagree to what they see. Mood, emotion, stress, fear, anger or love all influence what we think we have seen. Vision is as infinite in its many guises as the universe within our brains.

RICHER THAN EMPERORS OR KINGS

—HOKUSAI , Wood block Artist, Japan, 1760-1849),
( The Manga , JAMES MICHNER)

I acclaim these lines of Hokusai. He lived to eighty-nine in a time when that was very rare. It must have been sheer energy. He changed his name many times as well. His modesty about his work bespeaks an intense curiosity and desire to better know (see) his own world of Japan and to never be satisfied. That's a great way to live, to learn and to see. An artist, if he or she would accomplish much, must be curious and unending in the quest for new visions. Every one of us can attempt the same. A writer was once asked if he could imagine writing like Shakespeare. He answered that he used words as well. How they were used, just as how each of us uses our eyes is another matter. Nothing can stop us from seeing except the tired habits of mundane or aborted curiosity and striving.

The banquet of the world is always on the table. To see is to dine like a king or emperor. In this age of onrushing technology and unlimited travel opportunities, we are richer in opportunities than any rulers of the past. There is no need to fast in the midst of viands beyond imagining. The earth and the heavens flower for us daily. The night sky filled with constellations is a feast for the eyes. I've stood on a ship's deck at night far out as sea, far forward away from all man made light, and gazed up at the Milky Way. I would shudder and experience vertigo at the endless distances above me. I felt how fortunate to be able to comprehend a little of the wheel of our galaxy and the immensity of the universe. Better to drown in the search for knowledge than to languish on barren shores of discontent and blindness.

HOW DO YOU SEE PEOPLE?

In Ways of Seeing, author John Berger writes, “The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe...When in love, the sight of the beloved has a completeness which no words and no embrace can match...” We see people according to our own inner needs and conditioning. Lovers appear wreathed in splendor, caring, giving or passion. Parents and relatives stir conflicting emotions. Celebrities of screen, music or politics are usually seen with a halo of power, riches and talent. ‘Ordinary' people are merely glanced at or ignored unless we know them or plan to try to meet them. To truly see people, we need to love and respect them. All human beings, whether celebrities or otherwise, wear masks. Look in the mirror, then grin. If you would photograph someone you do not know, you must drop your own mask to enable true seeing of the human being beneath. A smile goes a long way.

In A Natural History of the Senses, author Diane Ackerman writes:

 

We may pretend that beauty is only skin deep, but Aristotle was right when he observed the ‘beauty is a far greater recommendation than any letter of introduction.'...After all, in fairy tales, the first stories most of us hear, the heroes are handsome, the heroines are beautiful, and the wicked sots are ugly. Children learn implicitly that good people are beautiful and bad people are ugly, and society restates that message in many subtle ways as they grow older.

What is beautiful and what is ugly is in the eye of the beholder. A young man from West Africa saw a five foot high power figure from Zaire in my dwelling studio which I call Spirit House. He is covered with ‘medicine' objects, shells, skulls, feathers and straw, wears a horn on its head, and he displays a gaping smile with only three front teeth. The young man stared for a while, then said, “That is very beautiful.” I think so too, but not as most westerners might observe beauty. The appearance of beauty truly comes from within, from the eye of the beholder. Those we love for their inner beauty appear more beautiful as time passes. Often, the staring, contemptuous looks sported by fashion models in ads these days, are less than beautiful.

We cannot define beauty. It arises from our own perception of the world just as everyone has their own measure of what art they like or hate. As in developing a taste for eating oysters or grasshoppers, or appreciating minimalists or abstract painters, time is needed. The appearance of people and things changes as we come to know them. No one is truly ugly unless the ugliness emanates from inside. In Japanese Noh plays, the actors, always men, wear exquisitely carved male and female masks. To succeed, the actor must bring the mask to life. How a mask can change expression is demonstrated in a website (now gone) which sold exquisitely carved masks. Seen from above, straight on, or from the side or below, and depending on the lighting, strangely, the expressions change.

In Ezra Pound and Ernest Fenollosa's book The Classic Noh Theatre of Japan, we read that tradition has it that a young man seeks to learn to act as the woman Komachi, a very difficult part to play. He follows a fine old woman eighty years of age, in the street, and watches her every move. Alarmed, she asks why he is following her. On hearing his reason, she tells him it is bad for Noh. She tells him “For Noh, he must feel the thing as a whole, from the inside.” And further on we read, “It is a Noh saying that, ‘The heart is the form.'”

FROM THE HEART

I wrote the following to a lovely lady. I've forgotten who she is, the memories linger on..

You are beautiful and that attracts the rich and powerful...it can be a curse in a way for we need to be loved for who and what we truly are which, for the rich and powerful, is often the surface of things. How can anyone spend their brief time on earth in the corporate world only grabbing for more money and things? Only the insubstantial, the spiritual, the beautiful, the music of the earth can bring great meaning and joy and open one's eyes to the splendor in the world. That is a real tragedy; only those who inquire and learn can change. Material success is too often an impenetrable fortress and prison for the mind and soul.

But you know that. You write with the spirit and soul of an artist who has learned that to follow one's own bliss is the only way. We cannot really teach those who will not hear or see. A woman with integrity, sensitivity, talent and a great spirit shall be as a bird that has left its cage. She flies with those to whom the spiritual life is all important and love is the banner which flaunts desire and freedom.
I apply the word riskit to my name because I will risk and dare anything to find the truth in art and the truth in love. I have known it; therefore it is no illusion. We are free when our bonds with another are so light they are fairy spirits darting back and forth—tenins, or feather spirits as in the Japanese Noh play Hagoromo .
All that you say about life being fulfilled with a good companion is exactly the way that I think, feel and love. To love, to care, to feel and be honest with each other, to converse is bliss. To travel, and seek to learn ever more about the mysteries of our confounding and delightful world, those are the wines of life, the deepest meaning and the challenge.
To attract even one person to love is a great step forward. Our art is the present we freely bestow it on all the others who will share these things. To keep alight the torches of wisdom, inspiration, imagination,” we change the future by living it and by creating.
Friendly, loving and not quite tame is a good motto. Free as an eagle, crane, or albatross we soar into the light and see what only a few can see. We celebrate the entire world bathed in holy light and filled with becoming, our source and our inspiration.
P.S. I went to the Einstein exhibit at the Natural History Museum this morning—relativity, kindness, wisdom and genius together—Einstein once wrote, "I want to know God's thoughts, all the rest are details." So it is with art and the life of creating. We immerse ourselves in evolution's great journey to discover in that wisdom all we are and ever hope to be.

My forgetting of the lady reminds me of an elegant wine steward on a ship who told us about a wine he recommends. It went like this. “A man says, ‘I've forgotten the lady. I've forgotten the place, but I remember the wine, Chambertin.'” Isn't that the way it is? Some things are too dear to keep alive except as smoldering embers.

THE SPEED OF LIGHT

— ALBERT EINSTEIN

I find it very mysterious that, according to Einstein's theories, no matter how fast an object or human travels relative to the speed of light, the speed of light remains constant. If I could travel at half the speed of light, light around me would still be speeding at its normal 186,000 miles per second. But of course, after much cogitating, this makes sense! The cosmos is afire with light, not “arrows” of light going in special directions, but an all pervasive glow, a radiance which fills the universe. I cannot race a “ray” of light anymore than I can choose to swim with a wavelet among myriads fluttering in the sea.. The real enigma is light itself. It appears to be the product of any kind of combustion, blazing stars, glowing galaxies, fire, anything that burns although fusion, the kind that makes hydrogen bombs, may be a more accurate description.

You cannot imagine light emanating from a frozen body in the blackness of space. You or I can never travel at the speed of light or anything approaching it. According to Relativity theory, as you approach the speed of light, mass increases. At the speed of light, your mass would be infinite and that is impossible. Rays of light fill the universe in a kind of chaos of the visible and invisible, for we only see a small part of the spectrum of electromagnetic waves of which light is a part. To add to the mystery, as anything travels closer to the speed of light, time slows down!

What is the light? Physicists seem happy to define it with formulas and the wave and photon idea. Convenient, however it is a though we imagined countless waves from the sea arrive along with a accompanying flurries of buckshot.. The waves and buckshot are like are photons of light which experiments have shown actually behave as though they were both waves and particles. It excites me that the medium of light, like the art of seeing, is so wrapped in conundrums and mystery. “Can you see the light” contains more deep meaning than it may seem. You can see, reflected from every living or inanimate thing colors which are not the color of the object or thing. The actual color is not seen. If you see a red box, it is really absorbing all the other colors and reflecting red. That's easy. What do you see when you see familiar places? The heart of the matter is that we see the world indistinctly, fuzzily, obscured. We see what we ourselves absorb and process. The true nature of things remains a mystery.

A NEW BRAIN FOR EVERYONE

The September 2003 special issue of Scientific American magazine was entitled “Better Brains.” I'm for that. Among the most interesting themes is the new research which indicates that the brain constantly changes, sets up new circuitry, adds neurons, at any age. It had been thought that these processes only happened at certain specific times, as when a child learns several languages easily. In the chapter “The Mutable Brain, researcher Michael M. Merzernich says, “The brain was constructed to change.” He and other researchers now believe the human brain can be extensively remodeled throughout the course of one's life, without drugs, without surgery. “Until recently,” Merzenich noted, “scientists thought that the brain was like a computer...a hardwired black box...which established its critical functionality in critical periods.” It now appears that exercise, proper diet and active use of the brain, such as reading daily or cruising the Internet enhances its powers, and changes the way in which it operates. This applies especially to older men and women who often do little to protect their brains in these ways.

These findings are critical to helping overcome various disorders of brain function including Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia. Here, however, we are discussing the art of seeing. If your brain and mine can change all through our lives, we can learn to see what “isn't there.” We can reroute visual paths through our brain which will enable us to see through the veils of conditioning and mind-set which hide, disguise and distort much of the beauty and wonder of living on earth. The Scientific American article ends with “The sky's the limit, and we are trying to figure out the rules.”

SEEING IS NOT A SPECTATOR SPORT

Annie Dillard, in A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek writes of vision in a chapter called “Seeing.” She says that she cannot see what a specialist such as a stone collector or a scientist who puts drops of seawater under a microscope sees. Agreed. What she or we can see is all there as well, waiting to be seen. She mentions walking toward an Osage orange tree which did not appear unusual, when suddenly a hundred red-winged blackbirds flew out of the tree. As she walked closer, another hundred took flight. “Not a branch or a twig budged. The birds were weightless as well as invisible.” She says that it's a matter of keeping one's eyes open. I add that you must practice seeing, not sit on the sidelines.

“A nightmare network of ganglia, charged and firing without my knowledge, cuts and splices what I do see, editing it for my brain,” says Donald Carr, pointing out that the sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for their brain: ‘This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is.'”

That begs the question, for the simplest animals have no way to interpret what they see in a conscious way. We, on the other side of the spectrum, can interpret if, and only if, we learn to see. I remember dawn breaking over dark seas as I flew out over the Caribbean in a helicopter. At such times, the sky lights up slowly, like the blush of opening roses. Dark thunder clouds roil and tumble high into the dawn light. Silver sheen burnishes their lofty edges as the sun begins to emerge far below. Out over the sea, I see a red ball dimly appear through the dawn mist. Within minutes flares of light, God's rays, giant luminous ladders, straddle the seas and rise into the heavens. The sky is afire. I live for these moments, whether at sea, above mountaintops or on the land. .

Annie says there is another kind of seeing that involves a letting go. “When I see this way I sway transfixed and emptied. The two difference between the two ways of seeing is the difference between walking with and without a camera. When I walk with a camera, I walk from shot to shot reading the light on a calibrated meter. When I walk without a camera, my own shutter opens, and the moment's light prints on my own silver gut. When I see this way I am above all an unscrupulous observer.” I could as easily reverse that statement and say that when I walk with a camera, my own shutter is always open. Instant flashes of light imprint themselves on my camera's sensor because my no-mind sees them like lightning bolts flaring across a western desert on a moonless night. We see what we see. What a camera sees depends on the mind, heart, soul and passion behind the lens. With or without a camera, it's rapture, epiphanies and endless wonder. An endlessly inquiring and insightful mind is as restless as the shimmering mirror of the sea reflecting scudding cloud castles. Your eager and inquisitive primal eye, the eye which lurks inside your eye, views islands hidden in grey mists, props up rainbows, churns green and white in a tempest, glows pink and red in the dawn. Burning like desire, it sees everything. I hope this phenomenal gift will be or is already with you. The mead of the Gods tastes sweet, and vision is sweeter than wine.

Annie says it is possible in deep space to sail on a solar wind....”The secret of seeing is to sail on a solar wind. Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff.” Isn't seeing more than a matter of metaphor, of writing and thinking of what you see? Isn't it an almost orgasmic like delight of suddenly being jolted into vision, rapt, disheveled, exhausted, content? Annie is impartial, a brilliant observer who transforms daily visions into fragrant, sumptuous paragraphs which taste like vision, smell like vision, sound and feel like vision. And she has a sense of humor. What is vision, life, love or art without a sense of humor? Read A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek . You've read it? Read it again! I will.

BETTER TO LIGHT A CANDLE...

The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle.

—ALBERT EINSTEIN

A see-er or seer cannot be too comfortable. To see is to understand the powerful currents that rage across the seas and continents of the earth—dreadful visions of war and genocide, ravages of floods and eruptions, the slaughter of millions of innocents, the scourge of disease—endless travails which human beings have endured since the dawn of history. Such spectacles mercilessly invade our vision through the roar and outpourings from newspapers, tv, radio and the Internet. You and I are deeply troubled and moved by these things. Can an artist or new vision make the world a better place? Art comes from truly seeing; it pours out a balm upon a troubled world. “Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness,” said Eleanor Roosevelt. The candles lit by art burn brighter than the explosions of stars. Deep in the playground of myths which inhabit our minds, passion, love, understanding and desire inflame our souls. You and I are those fiery furnaces, lighthouses or blazing candelabra which illuminate some small part of the darkness. There is a dark side to art, just as there is a dark side to all of human nature. What we know of evil we cannot ever lightly accept. However, without shadows we could not comprehend the light.

SIGHT UNSEEN—MYSTERIOUS IKEBANA

On July 6, 2003, I went with a friend to visit Wave Hill, an estate and garden in the Bronx open to the public. I went equipped with my Canon digital cameras to see and record the life of the flowers there. Dodging the sprinklers in the garden in front of the conservatory, I used my macro lens and diffused strobe flash. I tried to peer deep into the flowers. Soon, I exhausted the subject for the moment. We walked to an exhibition in the Glyndor Gallery located inside a red brick house. It was called Perfection/Impermanence: Contemporary Ikebana. I expected to see the ikebana I loved, flowers arranged asymmetrically in vases. What I saw when I walked inside took me by surprise and puzzled me. There were room size installations of various natural and inorganic materials which bore no resemblance to the ceramic vases holding the ikebana I have known. I walked up to the man at the desk and asked him where the ikebana was to be found. He pointed to the rooms and said that was the contemporary ikebana. I took photographs of the installations in a somewhat shaken manner. I could not yet see these things as ikebana. They were too large, to different from my mind set, from my love of delicate ikebana arrangements. I never even noticed a giant explosion of shrubbery attached behind the rear porch. That was fine. Now an then you need a good blow along the side of the head to wake you up from smugness or complacency.. I write about seeing and I just realized that I didn't see anything at first at the exhibit and, certainly, not enough. The Wave Hill site on the internet: wavehill.org, said this in part about the exhibit:

Ikebana comes from a long tradition that celebrates life and respects plants as living, breathing things. The practice requires a disciplined training in which the artist strives to create perfection and impermanence in each installation or display. The origins of the word stem from three verbs: ikeru to place or arrange; ikiru –– to live, to be alive, to arrive at one's essence; ikasu –– to put in the best light. Progressive Japanese flower artists have developed Contemporary Ikebana, a form of arrangement that is released from the confines of the vase. It employs natural and inorganic materials, and encourages free expression and often takes the form of large-scale installations. Arrangement, relationship to a space, use of living plants, the artists'' own creative process and energy, and the concept of time or the transience of living matter are all components of Ikebana.

To arrange, to live, to arrive at one's essence, to see in the best light, that heralds true seeing. I went to Wave Hill to see flower gardens. I saw a new variation of a loved theme, ikebana, yet I didn't see it. That provokes me to see it again until I see it. Annie said that without her camera she was an unscrupulous observer, she saw everything. I see with my camera, but first I have to constantly see anew. At Wave Hill, in those incredulous first moments, I saw little. When I view “quiet” asymmetrical arrangements of traditional ikebana, I see the raging drama of great storms at sea, the unheard clash of galaxies devouring each other in the blackness of space, the roar and splash of icebergs calving, the silence of dewdrops on wild flowers in the mist. What will I see when I learn to see the new contemporary ikebana?

There is more to ikebana. My own art of image maki