Ah! Sweet Mysteries of Life

At Last I’ve Found You

Found? Don’t I Wish.

In my 80th year, which astonishes me to be in, with at least some of my faculities, I have been searching and I have found much. Sometimes I think I have found everything that matters, but I have not found the key.

I have, unfortunately, found far to many who think, nay, insist they have found the key. And so I ask them to explain what is happening to them at that instant, how it is that the world in all its glory that is around them provokes their minds by way of two small images on their retinas. It is called ”sentience.”

It is, in my view, the most profound and incredible phenomina of all, except for the Grand Singularity itself (the Big Bang to those not in the know). It is so subtle. It is the ultimate manifestation of nearby but hidden worlds, with the exception of hearing which is its kissing cousin.

I have read about theories of “everything.” Nuts! I have studied quantum physics. No. I have taken courses and done a bit of research in psychoacoustics, the science of hearing. No also. And so on.

And of course Jim Holt’s ”Why is there something rather than nothing.” Toss in all religions. This remains the mystery that leaves only one alternative, at least for me and that is to jump, to jump to a conclusion. More seriously I call it an assertion, or why is it true? Because I said so.

After running out of allys, roads, and bridges, geniuses, religions I asked a simple question. What are the best things that happen to me in life. And of course what are the worst.

No course in physics, psychology, physisology, philosophy delivers. One thing does come to mind is that through the long history of science (my beginning is Copernicus (a Pole, naturally) and his discovery that the earth is not the center of the universe)) every mystery is eventually followed by a new discovery, so there may be one coming. Or not.

The giant fields of physics, string theory, multiverses, and so forth don’t get me anywhere for the simple reason they don’t explain Krystian Zimerman playing Chopin on his own Steinway, a leap from hunter-gatherers to Heaven. Or rather the product of many people that creates JOY for many more people. This is a place I get to that I cannot argue (with myself) with. This, and many thousands or millions like it make life worth living. I have put samples into the CODA of this website. Susan, Gregory, Amelia and on to infinity. For all this to happen the universe has to be the way it is down to the last quark, neutrino and, well, everything.

As I said, others will say god, but behind god is a void, not an exlanation and I don’t buy it. But. There is something along that general line. A touch god-like that makes joy, and death, necessary. I am almost tempted to write Q.E.D. but that’s a stretch.

This picture I found on the viewing glass of my view camera on October 19, 1991 at a small pond a few feet from Walden Pond called Wyman Meadow. It was my luck to be there at that time on that day with the right requipment. I checked for 10 years and believe it never happened again.

So how to end the beginning.

Following is a slide show of my images, artist’s choices from 28 years of photographing with my view camera with a handful of digital images included. Alongside is a recording of the Schumann piano concerto. As I talked with Susan the other day it stuck me that the image had “phrases” just like the music and harmonies, sequences of leaves that are water-shields over texted underline of color. They go together remarkably well. We had the brains when we were hunter-gathers and ye nothing happened for hundreds of (millions?) of years and then what seems to be emergent phenomena appeared, and so earlier homo sapiens, after a few hundred more years gave us this. Ectacesy. If you don’t here it, classical music has a language which comes from listening. So listen. Often.

The image above (left) picture I found on the viewing glass of my view camera on October 19, 1991 at a small pond a few feet from Walden Pond called Wyman Meadow. It was my luck to be there at that time on that day with the right requipment. I checked for 10 years and believe it never happened again.

Of the many times I returned, on one rainy Saturday I waded into the water to capture the image above right. Here the afternoon sun coming from above/left is so subtle you hardly notice it. Just below is an enlargement of the lower part of the picture on the right.

Wyman Meadow is a few feet from Walden Pond and from the path that takes hikers around the pond. On a summer week end it is like rush hour and no one stopped to look. It seems I like to lift the corner of anything covered.

So how to end the beginning.

On the home page is a slide show of my images, artist’s choices from 28 years of photographing with my view camera with a handful of digital images included.

One more.

Next stop is the Mass Pike, I-90 that begins in Boston and ends in Seattle. I found two overlooks on the Pike, one on an entrance ramp at Exit 12 that I also visited often. One morning in 1982 mist was rising from a vernal pool below. In the upper left-hand corner of the transparency is a sliver of the Mass Pike east bound.

Despite my science background I feel technology is both a blessing and burden. For making exceptional photographic prints, it has been an immense struggle and a blessing.

Until 1996 we printed with a technology from the 1930s, for it was the only way to get brilliant color (see dye transfer printing and then the process was discontinued and for 10 years I waited. In 2005 as we moved into our new home the 9800 printer was waiting, and my life changed. It meant that it was now practical to make extraordinary prints at a reasonable cost. My images are found throughout the country and I am pleased that they are often in health care facilities. I have found them when I was having surgery and family and friends have found them also. When one looks up from an operating table at Hartford hospital, one sees a photograph I made. Kaiser Permanente in California has given tours of their collection of my images.

Below an exhibit at Cambridge 7 Associates. You can bring nature in, but not easily.