Homework for Week Six

Find and document something that is beautiful that may not be defined by current popular culture as beautiful.

This is a tuff one and subjective, so be prepared to defend your find.

You may document through the following means:

1. Photograph (more than one, please. Think of it as documenting a brand new discovery - would the Mars Rover crew really be happy with just one photo of the landing site on Mars?)
2. Sound record. Export as a QT. Between 1 minute and 3 minutes.
3. Video record. Export as a QT. Between 1 minute and 3 minutes.
4. Document as an observation- I will give an example of mine from college:

I was in my last year of my undergrad studies. It was an intense year in that most everything I had been studying was just coming together and making sense in a much larger way. Everything that I felt or experienced seemed heightened, everyone I met seemed to be the exact person I was supposed to meet. I was renting this very small one bedroom house not far from the university; it was bright yellow with white trim. And the woman who lived there before me had planted a lot of flowers, which were starting to pop up in unexpected places.

I was sitting in the grass in the back yard reading, what I don’t remember now, and I was occasionally looking up and admiring the flowers, thinking what a great gift to leave the next tenant. There were a few dandelions also blooming in the yard, some of which had already turned white. (I have always liked the dandelion. It is a small flower which despite the general hate of the populous continue to raise its yellow head in defiance. And as a kid I thought they held magic, because I believed they were able to grant wishes if you were able to blow all of the seeds off in one blow, sort of like birthday candles.)

I then started to think about cultivated flowers put in a place despite what they may wish, verses the wild ones, which grow where they will. And since I was close to a dandelion which had turned white, I picked it and brought it close to my face.

Now all of this was done with no real significance, no real motive other than curiosity. But when I was looking at the construction of the dandelion I started to see the pattern that the seeds formed on the bud of the plant, how all of the seeds were attached in this perfect cyclonic symmetry.

I then looked at the top of the seeds, the white canopy, and how it radiated out of the top of the seed in such a way that flight was maximized. I saw the whole and thought how absolutely perfect the design was, how absolutely mind blowing perfect. Instead of making me wonder how the hell I could ever create anything as perfect (my studies were in fine art and ancient history) I was inspired. I was seeing something new that had always been there but passed my notice before.

So, here I am sitting in the grass, holding this weed in my hand and looking at its perfect construction and I am in awe. Pure, beautiful, feeling it down to my very soul, awe. And then a strange thing happened. Time stopped, just for the briefest of moments, but an extended brief moment that went on and on while I was in it, if that makes sense. And while I was in this moment, everything made sense, everything fit. Then the moment was over and I was sitting there, trembling, thinking that I had just seen the face of God. Weird story, I know, but being aware is weird, don‘t you think?

Looking back at the experience, I am reminded about a figure in early Christian art, back when the religion was first starting out and attempting to translate their theories through visual reference, called the Orante. It is an interesting figure, or actually, pose or stance that was applied to any number of characters - that is usually interpreted as a stance of prayer. I had many heated debates with professors and fellow students about this. Why do we assume that it is a posture of prayer?

Well, the academic argument tended to be that the pose is a typical prayer stance of that time period. But the Orante is most often found in depictions where there is either conflict or bliss. I have to wonder if the stance is more of one of acceptance. Here is my thought: you know how it is said that if you are having a nightmare, the best way to deal with it is not to run but to turn around and face the object of your fear? You embrace the fear. You open up your arms, like the Orante, and embrace life, beauty, fear, death, all of it. That acceptance makes you free.

I wonder if nirvana is possible just by accepting. Accepting everything even if you don’t know everything. That it is as it is meant to be and has to be. Everything is part of everything else and all the parts make a whole. But how does one accept that and keep it going in a continuous stream? How does one stay in that moment of acceptance and in awe?

Sometimes I feel as if the consciousness is like a film. We see the images fluttering on the screen, but what of those blank spaces between the frames? What exists there? Is that the void? Is that the doubt?

The idea of the matrix of human souls makes sense to me. I often thought of going to sleep and dreaming as the uploading and downloading of information and experience with the singular consciousness. A pattern we copied when creating computers and mainframes. Is anything really new?

Patterns. The beating of a heart, the expansion and potential ultimate collapse of the universe. The rise and fall of civilizations. Life and death. A dandelion at the end of it's life with beautiful white seeds ready to fly - new life, new cycle. I think of everything in patterns, it seems like.