A Memorial

 

In the Texas panhandle near the town of Hereford is an even smaller town called Earth. It was between these towns,  that a cemetery lies, like a tiny island of shrubs, trees and stones in an otherwise empty sea of open farmland and prairie. I was there only once; as a teenager when I was at the funeral of a relative. After the funeral I wandered away from everyone else to look around.. The only sound was the prairie wind singing a lullaby through the leaves of the trees, like the shadows in my heart, and as I listened and felt it’s comforting touch, I looked around and noticed a beautiful marble headstone almost as tall as me, and on it there was an old black and white photograph inside a little hinged door. In the picture was a pretty dark haired girl with big dark eyes: she was born in May, 1914; died September, 1918. The personal inscription read something like "Here lies our  little girl, who died in 1918 of the Spanish Flu, we will love her for always, and hope that God remembers her too."

We refer to the science of remembering as mnemonics. One place in the bible where this word is also used is at John 5:28, 29 "Do not marvel at this, because the hour is coming in which all those in the memorial tombs will hear his voice and come out." The original Greek word is mnēmei´on,  is derived from the verb meaning "to remember" or "to memorialize." Some Bible translations may render this Greek word by the one word "tomb" in English, but the word "tomb" does not fully express the meaning of the original Greek word because "tomb" in the Greek is derived from the verb that means "to cut, to hew, or to dig." But the Greek word mnēmei´on includes the thought of being remembered or of remembrance. Jesus did not use the plural of the Greek word ta´phos, which means "grave" or "burial ground." The thought here is that everyone who is in the memory of God will live again.

The reason why this memorial of a little girl has a special meaning to me now is because not only of the empathy I have for others, but also because of the link with my Father. The Spanish flu was a terrible plague that swept around the world , and within a few months in the fall of 1918 it killed at least 20 million people. At the time that little girl was dying, my grandmother was dying too. She was pregnant with my Father and he was born two months premature. As she lay on her deathbed she made her sister promise to help take care of Peter, her oldest son, Paul, the next son, and John, who was my Father and who had just been born. She didn’t know that Peter had already died. My grandmother and uncle were buried in unmarked graves, Paul was raised by his father, and my father was adopted by his aunt. They were poor people who got by doing odd jobs and farm work and lived in a covered wagon for four years. They did have a hard time keeping a premature baby alive, and more so since he was allergic to milk. At some point in his childhood he had scarlet fever so bad that it turned one of his brown eyes blue. He only had a third grade education before he left school to work and he grew up in the depression.

I was the sixth of seven children and when I was 8 he was in an accident when a train hit his pickup, and he was thrown twenty feet and broke his head open. My mother, because of her religious beliefs, refused to give permission for a blood transfusion, so he was left in the hallway to die. The nurses could not even change his bandages without permission from a doctor. My mother had only completed a seventh grade education and had never worked outside of the home, and there were still six kids living at home. All the older kids were there along with my mother and there was nothing that they could do . However our friends found a doctor in Houston who was willing to drop everything in his own practice, fly to Amarillo, pro bono, and work without blood to save my father’s life.My oldest sister is not religious at all but she said that the doors suddenly burst open and the man in a white coat looked like an angel, and without a pause he started to take charge and give orders and the nurses rushed around to follow his instructions

. The other doctors said that he wouldn’t live, when he did live they said that he would never wake from his coma, when he did wake up they said that he would never walk again. One day , according to the story my sister tells, a big black nurse came into the room where he had been lying in for some weeks, and she had a broom in her hand. She said "Are you just going to lie there? I need some HELP!!" My father struggled to sit up, then he managed to get off the bed and took the broom from her. He wasn’t showing off. It never occurred to him in his entire life to try and impress other people. The reason he got out of that bed was because he really believed that this lady needed help, and he never turned down the opportunity to get to know other people or to help them if he could, and he always believed that other people were telling him the truth.

  I never knew him to tell a lie or to say anything bad about others. He really wasn’t capable of making a judgment about other people but accepted them as does a child. I did not know him much before his accident and wondered what kind of person he was before. He could never work again but eventually he could do little odd jobs now and then. Once when I was sixteen we were cutting some weeds and putting in some posts for a corral. When one of the holes was dug for the posts I saw a dung beetle had fallen in, and I waited to see if he noticed. I was leery about touching it myself because it had those huge pinchers, and it was just a beetle. My father didn’t say a word, but without a pause he lay down on his stomach, reached down into the hole and brought the beetle up in his hand and let it go before he put the post in. He wasn’t showing off, and never said a word about it afterward. I never had a meaningful conversation with him and assumed that he was different before, but my older brother said that it was the way he had always been. I think that he never grew up in some ways, because of what he had been through and because he never had a childhood. He loved to visit with people, had no interest in sports, and told the same jokes over and over again. I think of him as a very ordinary person, but in an extraordinary way.

I was there the day he died, along with my daughter and a few of my brothers and sisters. My daughter played her violin for him, and we each took a turn saying something to him. When it was my turn I held his hand and told him that I would be there when he woke up again. I think that someday I’ll plant a garden for him and an orchard, because he always love to garden and I’m sure he would again when it’s God’s time to remember him. I also told him that he would have the chance to get to know Peter, the brother he never knew, and the mother who never had the opportunity to see her baby grow up. I hope to meet that little girl also; and meet her parents, and watch her run and play on the prairie again.

Bambootiger

Math, Beauty, and the Renaissance Artist

 

Filippo Brunelleschi

(1377-1446), Florentine architect, one of the initiators of the Italian Renaissance. His revival of classical forms and his championing of an architecture based on mathematics, proportion, and perspective make him a key artistic figure in the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern era
Around 1400, Italian Renaissance artists developed an intuitive understanding of perspective, but it remained for the Florentine architect Filippo Brunelleschi to codify the laws of perspective through a series of experiments between 1417 and 1420. The Florentine painters Masaccio and Paolo Uccello were among the first to use Brunelleschi’s rules to achieve perspective illusion in paint.
Leon Battista Alberti
Philosopher, architect, musician, painter and sculptor
Genova 1406-Rome 1472
He was one of the major figures of the Renaissance, an elaborator of mathematical perspective and theoretician of art.
The son of an exiled Florentine, he studied in Padua and Bologna, arriving in Rome as an "apostolic abbreviator" in 1432 and this was where his interest in Classicism was first born: two years later he wrote "Descriptio Urbis Romae", the first systematic study on the reconstruction of the Roman city. Inspired by the art of antiquity, he elaborated the theory of beauty being harmony, that it can be expressed mathematically in every way and that the "proportions" of the Roman buildings contain the basis of architectural design. This harmonic vision is to be found in all his work.
He arrived in Florence in 1434 and discovered the confirmation of his principles in the art of Brunelleschi, Masaccio and Donatello protègè of the Rucellai family, he created two of his most important works in Florence for them:

On Painting

Inspired by the order and beauty inherent in nature, his groundbreaking work sets out the principles of distance, dimension and proportion; instructs the painter on how to use the rules of composition, representation, light and color to create work that is graceful and pleasing to the eye; and stipulates the moral and artistic pre-requisites of the successful painter.

Alberti regarded mathematics as the common ground of art and the sciences. "To make clear my exposition in writing this brief commentary on painting," Alberti began his treatise Della pittura, "I will take first from the mathematicians those things which my subject is concerned." In both Della pittura and De statua, a short treatise on sculpture, Alberti stressed that "all steps of learning should be sought from nature". The ultimate aim of an artist is to imitate nature. Painters and sculptors strive "through by different skills, at the same goal, namely that as nearly as possible the work they have undertaken shall appear to the observer to be similar to the real objects of nature". However, Alberti did not mean that artists should imitate nature objectively, as it is, but the artist should be especially attentive to beauty, "for in painting beauty is as pleasing as it is necessary". The work of art is according to Alberti so constructed that it is impossible to take anything away from it or add anything to it, without impairing the beauty of the whole. Beauty was for Alberti "the harmony of all pats in relation to one another," and subsequently "this concord is realized in a particular number, proportion, and arrangement demanded by harmony". Alberti’s thoughts on harmony were not new – they could be traced back to Pythagoras – but he set them in a fresh context, which well fit in with the contemporary aesthetic discourse.

Eventually the new self-consciousness of artists led to the cult of genius, fully realized in the character of Leonardo da Vinci. Giorgio Vasari (1511-74), who argued that historical progress in art reached its peak in Michelangelo, emphasized Alberti’s scholarly achievements, not his artistic talents: "He spent his time finding out about the world and studying the proportions of antiquities; but above all, following his natural genius, he concentrated on writing rather than on applied work." (from Lives of the Artists). Leonardo, who ironically called himself "an uneducated person" (omo senza lettere), followed Alberti in the view that painting is science. However, as a scientist Leonardo was more empirical than Alberti, who was a theorist and did not have similar interest in practice. Alberti believed in ideal beauty, but Leonardo filled his notebooks with observations on human proportions, page after page, ending with the famous drawing on the Vitruvian man, a human figure related to a square and a circle.

Leonardo da Vinci

As the fifteenth century expired, Scholastic doctrines were in decline, and humanistic scholarship was on the rise. Leonardo, however was part of an intellectual circle that developed a third, specifically modern form of cognition. In his view the artist– as transmitter of the true and accurate data of experience acquired by visual observation–played a significant part. With this sense of the artist’s high calling, Leonardo approached the vast realm of nature to probe it’s secrets. His utopian idea of transmitting in encyclopedic form the knowledge thus won was still bound up with medieval scholastic conceptions, but the results of his research were among the first great achievements of the thinking of the new age because they were based on the principle of experience in an absolutely new way and to an unprecedented degree.

Finally, Leonardo, although he made strenuous efforts to teach himself and become erudite in languages, natural science, mathematics, philosophy, and history, as a mere listing of the wide ranging contents of his library demonstrates, remained an empiricist of visual observation. But precisely here– thanks to his genius–he developed his own "theory of knowledge" unique in its kind, in which art and science form a synthesis. In the face of the overall achievements of Leonardo’s creative genius the question of how much he finished or did not finish becomes pointless. The crux of the matter is his intellectual force– self contained and inherent in every one of his creations. This force has remained constantly operative to the present day.

The Unknown Land

"In our study of natural objects we are approaching the thoughts of the creator, reading his conceptions, interpreting a system that is his and not ours."– Louis Agassiz, American biologist

In May of 1804 Lewis and Clark set out on a round trip journey of 8,000 miles from just outside of St. Louis to the Pacific ocean and back. Their commission from Thomas Jefferson was to find the northwest passage, though as it turns out, there was none to find. What they did discover was a treasure trove of knowledge about the geography, flora, fauna , and people in what is today the western United States. Lewis and Clark; however, did not go alone; they accomplished  this with the help of Sacagawea; a native American woman who served as a guide so that they could navigate through an unknown land, understand what they found, and communicate with other people.

There is a great unknown land: the mysterious universe that lies before, and everywhere around us, as well as a pattern even in chaos, and through all, is an encompassing design permeating the four dimensions of our greater environ: the Cosmos. The Greek word, "ko’ smos", means "system of things", and one definition of "cosmos" is "an ordered harmonious whole". Now a beautiful piece of music is an ordered contrast between assonance and dissonance, and contains many other elements such as harmony and melody, and yet the whole is mathematical in it’s arrangement, in the components,  and in the theory which describes it. At once mathematical , a composition of music is also a work of individual creativity, from a singular intelligence. In a similar way this is true of the visual arts also, and as well: the universe itself. Yet, in spite of the desire to  comprehend the essence, design, and form of beauty, many artists seem haunted by the spirit of math phobia.

In the great quest of life, which is not just for knowledge, but for understanding; math is our Sacagawea. She is the native of the endless unknown land, she not only understands the language of exploration, but is that language itself : providing the interpretation with which we might gain understanding of what lies there. What defines a beautiful sunset, a flower, a butterfly, a garden, or a beautiful person? Such things as proportion, perspective, elements of color theory, composition, and texture, to name a few, all these make up a part of each pattern of beauty, and each element is mathematical in the order, and place, and connection with the entire web of the Cosmos.

A saying in China is "Even a journey of ten thousand miles begins with the first step."  Learning is the journey and adventure of life: without learning, life would be just sitting in a waiting room for death to call. We are all born out of the darkness which is ignorance, and with a first hesitant step we gain the horizon of today, but each tomorrow is  a further adventure in our role as explorers of the Cosmos. Learning is freedom, and is the basis of anything we wish to do. When we gain understanding through observation, or our actions, we can interpret it, filter this through our memories and heart, and express beauty in our own creative and unique way. It is like the path of caterpillar to the flight of a butterfly. True freedom is to understand the laws of flight.

Science is the art of studying to gain understanding, art is the science of creativity, and math is the handle, by which we may hold both lens and brush.

Across the Barb Wire

I grew up in the Texas panhandle on the cap rock and short grass prairie. During the winter an oft repeated joke was that the only thing   between us and the north pole was a barb wire fence. The humidity was low and it seemed that the wind was always blowing to some extent. Out in the countryside where in the silence I could hear the wind rattle the leaves of the cottonwood tree  and the seed pods of the black locust, sometimes  I could even hear the soft whistle of wind across the barb wire of the fences. Once those fences had tamed the Texas longhorn but now there are very few of them left.

For me the barb wire fence was more than a boundary of how far I could go, but more like a marker for the imagination.. As a teen-ager into photography I climbed quite a few fences to be at the place where I wanted to take a good photograph . The usual subject were windmills, and especailly if I could find one on a hill and take a picture of the sunset behind it.

The barb wire fence became to me a metaphor for boundaries and limitations. Instead of accepting such things without question I always tested them, because that is the only way to find the truth.

Penjing of the Heart

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Penjing
of the Heart

A common perception today
concerning the symbolic heart is that it is the source and object of romantic
love, or at least that it is merely something about emotion. But in ancient
times the figurative heart was not confined to being the seat of affection
and motivation, or  limited to the intellect. "Among the Semites
. . . all that was peculiar to man, in the category of feelings as
well as intellect and will, was attributed to the heart." It is "the
sum total of the interior man as opposed to the flesh, which is the exterior and
tangible man."—The Metaphorical Use of the
Names of Parts of the Body in Hebrew
and in Akkadian, by E. Dhorme, Paris, 1963, pp. 113,
114, 128 (in French).

Also it is said to stand for "the
central part in general, the inside, and so for the interior man
as manifesting himself in all his various activities, in his desires,
affections, emotions, passions, purposes, his thoughts, perceptions,
imaginations, his wisdom, knowledge, skill, his beliefs and his reasonings, his
memory and his consciousness."—Journal of the Society
of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, 1882,
p. 67.

Now a little about Chinese. The word for
Landscape are the characters " mountain" +"water". The word
for "garden" is "rock" +"water". Then there is
"Penjing" which is ("container" or "pot" )+"scene".
So there is a natural representational progression from the great and ideal
reality down to the symbols of reality. Now consider that in this container
(like a clay pot) of our body,
there lives and grows an interior man . As the person we are on the outside
grows older and perhaps less healthy and attractive, (if we ever were in the
first place), the person we are on the inside, who we really are, can become
ever more beautiful with time. Similar to the way a tree becomes more beautiful
with time, and in this way it is a bonsai of the heart. A garden is only as
beautiful as the design and care that the gardener gives to it, and thus it is
true also of the person we are inside: this is dependent on the care and effort
to which we give to becoming the best person we can become .

The art of Penjing began to be
developed in the Tang Dynasty(618-907) and there are three types: Shumu (tree),

Shuihan (water and land), and Shanshui (landscape).  There are five
elements in Chinese symbolism: water, earth, air, metal, and stone.  

Here is a haiku:

"AS THE HEART TREE GROWS

By power of light,

Of earth from air and water,

Through fire, bound by stone."

Most of the atoms of a tree are
synthesized from atmospheric gases and water. Only about 1 or 2% come from the
minerals in the soil. Who we become as a person may seem to be from an as
intangible source, ( i.e. mind is intangible compared to the brain), and
individually we may have come through and been altered by the fire of own
trials, and  we are restricted by stone-like limitations. A modest person
will recognize this, that is, their own limitations, and will understand that
every choice we make not only shows who we are but further directs us in our
growth as a human being.

A scripture from the Bible is appropriate
here:

" Instead your beauty should
consist of your true inner self, the ageless beauty of a gentle and quiet
spirit, which is of the greatest value in God’s sight."

1 Peter 3:4

                                            
Bambootiger

co-operation

Years ago at a place where I used to work I took my lunch outside and ate it while sitting on a grassy hillside. While i was thee it began to rain, and instead of going inside I stayed for awhile to see what would happen. As the drops of rain fell each one was caught by a blade of grass, and that blade would bend over and gently lay it on the ground and then straighten up to catch another drop of water. The little streams that began to flow downhill were stopped by the rhizomes that connected all the grass blades together . Working together the humble little blades of grass helped each other and protected their little place in the world. Wouldn’t it be great if humans were like that?

Pointing to a Deer and calling it a Horse

zhi lu wei ma

  One of the most successful dynasties of China was the Han dynasty which lasted for four hundred years beginning about 201 B.C.E.. Just before this, however, there was a short lived Qin dynasty. This is a proverb from this latter dynasty involving an adviser, named Zhao Gao, of the second emperor who rose to great power. The following is from the book A Thousand Pieces of Gold: Growing Up Through China’s Proverbs by Adeline Yen Mah.

     "Unaware of the smoldering turmoil within his empire, the Second Emperor, after Li Si’s death, promoted Zhao Gao to the post of prime minister. All affairs of state were decided by him. He was now so powerful that he began to have designs on becoming the emperor himself. Only one man stood between him and the throne. On September 27 of the third year of the Second Emperor’s rule (207 B.C.E). Zhao Gao decided to test his authority on the ministers to see whether they would yield to him. Shiji relates,

     "One day Zhao Gao presented a deer to the Second Emperor all the time pointed to the animal and calling it a horse. The monarch laughed and said "This is not a horse. It’s a deer. Why do you call it a horse?" Zhao Gao repeated that it was a horse. The emperor then turned to ask his ministers around him. Such was the terror instilled by the eunuch that most of those in attendance claimed it to be a horse. Some remained silent, but there were a few who spoke the truth and agreed with the emperor. Later Zhao Gao arranged for all those who called it a deer to be either killed or arraigned.

     "The emperor thought that he was zi yi wei huo, ‘suffering from hallucinations.’ He became alarmed and consulted the grand diviner, who advised him, ‘Your Majesty has not been sincere enough when carrying out the suburban sacrifices in the ancestral temple during the spring and autumn. Therefore you have come to this. You must fast and purify yourself.’"

      From this comes the Proverb "Pointing to a deer and calling it a horse."

     When I read this story one thing which comes to mind is the idea of evolution. Evolution is presented as if it were an unquestioned fact in school text books from the second grade on, and yet evidence is not presented along with these dogmatic statements. Neither is an opposing viewpoint or explanation. Students are pressured to accept unsubstantiated statements without critical analysis and any who question what they are taught or who have a different opinion are subtlety punished , ridiculed, or discriminated against. This process of indoctrination and brainwashing is continued in the professional science, and teaching fields, and those who do not fall into line or quote the party dogma continue to be ridiculed and discriminated against. The people like "Zhao Gao"  are not interested in the truth, but only in their own power, independence, and advantage.

      In this case the "deer" is genetic variation. All living things on earth propagate themselves in a way so that the descendants vary in form and tolerances for the environment in which they can thrive, or merely survive. However they can change over a period of time within pre-programmed tolerances and the variations over a period of time are not linear, but have more of a spiral pattern so that a frog may have descendants different than itself but each one will always be a frog, no matter how far in time this passes, and not only that, but eventually down the line of descendants there will be more frogs like the original. There will never, for example, be the gene in this line for "feathers". When we examine fossils what we are looking at is a "phenotype", and there is no way to examine the DNA of fossils to see if, or what degree of, variation of the "genotype" is over a period of time.

      What is the "horse" that evolutionists claim to identify? A term that they use is "micro-evolution", and thus they imply that genetic variation is a vehicle of evolution which will lead from one form gradually into another form, entirely different. The problem with this fantasy is that it is also a lie. Though there are more than a hundred million fossils catalogued and studied in museums around the earth it is plainly evident that not only do they not support "micro-evolution" ,or evolution in any form, : they never will.

       There is another way in which evolution is like the above story.  In the field of science the basic premise beneath every study is  "Since evolution is true then…". If any scientist wants to seem credible he or she has to make gratis references to evolution to make whatever supposition they are advocating appealing for the approval of the "peer review" system, who also assume the same view. The only reason that they give is that to believe in anything otherwise would be to believe in the "supernatural" or "myths". It is evolution, though, which is a myth, and since it is not true, or a part of the natural system, then it is evolution which is supernatural.

Mai du huan zhu

        There is another proverb: "Mai du huan zhu" which means  "Purchasing the box and returning the pearls." The following is also from the book A THOUSAND PIECES of GOLD:

"A jeweler from the state of Chu went to another state to sell a strand of beautiful pearls.  He made a box for the pearls with fine-grained wood from the magnolia tree, treated it with sweet-smelling perfume made from osmanthus blossoms, mounted it with white jade, decorated it with rose-colored precious stones, and lined its borders with green jadeite.  The craftsmanship was so exquisite that a man bought the box and returned the pearls to the jeweler. It can be said that the buyer made a strange decision.  He was so much swayed by the beauty of the box that the never noticed the value of the pearls.  The proverb mai du huan zhu, "purchasing the box and returning the pearls, " describes a person who grasps the image but lets go of the substance."

          Evolution is presented in a fancy box: so much so that few people bother to look inside to see if it contains genuine "pearls of wisdom"; any real provable truth.  This facade of intellectualism appeals to pride and insecurity: the desire to fit in with the group which is in power and looked up to by others. No one really wants to be left out and looked down upon. Also this fancy "box" is certainly used by many as an attempt to justify a course of life which is alienated from God, or in opposition to him.

        I remember one person I was talking to and even when I quoted dictionaries and encyclopedias he wouldn’t accept anything they said because he claimed that they were written only for the "ignorant layman" and had not been "peer reviewed".  Basically then such a person as this accepts as a basis for thought or argument that which only supports their own view exclusively. This is very convenient since there is no proof or substantial evidence to prove their beliefs. It is just an empty box, and is only accepted as valuable because the only alternative is , to them, unpalatable. 

I have posted this message on some message boards and have gotten the comment "Actually the Chinese have no problem with evolution".  First of all no where in this message did I say that they do, and secondly, not all Chinese people believe in evolution; there are some who believe in a creator.

Bambootiger

Beauty and the Golden Empress

Beauty and the Golden Empress

by Bambootiger

Beauty

In nature

"Nature is the art of God."—so said Sir Thomas Browne , a 17th-century physician. To illustrate this a woman who lives in Spain, vividly recalls one November evening several years ago when she stood beside a remote lake and watched the sunset. "Flying toward me came wave after wave of cranes calling to each another," she says. "Thousands of birds were strung out across the crimson sky in spidery patterns. Their annual migratory journey from Russia and Scandinavia had brought them to this Spanish resting-place. The experience was so beautiful that it made me cry." 

Beauty is evident everywhere we look.

 Iridescent colors are especially common in hummingbirds. What makes their plumage so dazzling? The top third of their unique feathers breaks up the sunlight into distinct rainbowlike colors—somewhat like a prism does. Common names of hummingbirds, such as ruby, sapphire, and emerald, aptly testify to the glittering reds, blues, and greens that adorn these jewellike birds. "What is the purpose of the magnificent loveliness of these exquisite creatures?" asks Sara Godwin in her book Hummingbirds. "As far as science can determine, it has no purpose on earth except to dazzle the beholder," she replies. "Flowers," said the English statesman William Wilberforce, "are God’s thoughts of beauty, taking form to gladden mortal gaze;—bright gems of earth, in which, perchance, we see what Eden was—what Paradise may be!" Paul Davies, in his book The Mind of God, explains that "even hard-nosed atheists frequently have what has been called a sense of reverence for nature, a fascination and respect for its depth and beauty and subtlety, that is akin to religious awe."

A sense of beauty is one of the many attributes that distinguish mankind from the animals. The work Summa Artis—Historia General del Arte (Comprehensive Treatise of Art—A General History of Art) points out that "man could be defined as the animal that has an aesthetic capacity." The book The Painter’s Eye, by Maurice Grosser, explains that "the painter draws with his eyes, not with his hands. Whatever he sees, if he sees it clear, he can put down. . . . Seeing clear is the important thing."

The Golden Empress

Ancient Chinese legends  tell of a golden age in the days of Huang-Ti (Yellow Emperor), who is said to have ruled for a hundred years in the 26th century B.C.E. He was credited with inventing everything having to do with civilization—clothing and shelter, vehicles of transportation, weapons and warfare, land management, manufacturing, silk culture, music, language, mathematics, the calendar, and so on. During his reign, it is said, "there were no thieves nor fights in China, and the people lived in humility and peace. Timely rain and weather resulted in abundant harvest year after year. Most amazing was that even the wild beasts did not kill, and birds of prey did no harm. In short, the history of China began with a paradise." To this day, the Chinese still claim to be the descendants of the Yellow Emperor. In Greek mythology, the first of the "Five Ages of Man" was called the "Golden Age." In it humans lived happy lives, free from toil, pain, and the ravages of old age. 

Hesiod’s poem Works and Days speaks of the Five Ages of Man, the first of which was the "Golden Age" when men enjoyed complete happiness. He wrote:

"The immortal gods, that tread the courts of heaven,

First made a golden race of men.

Like gods they lived, with happy, careless souls,

From toil and pain exempt; nor on them crept

Wretched old age, but all their life was passed

In feasting, and their limbs no changes knew."

 Persians, Egyptians, Tibetans, Peruvians, and Mexicans all have legends about a time of happiness and perfection at the beginning of mankind’s history. The Avesta, the sacred book of the ancient Persian Zoroastrian religion, tells about "the fair Yima, the good shepherd," who was the first mortal with whom Ahura Mazda (the creator) conversed. He was instructed by Ahura Mazda "to nourish, to rule, and to watch over my world." To do so, he was to build "a Vara," an underground abode, for all the living creatures. In it, there "was neither overbearing nor mean-spiritedness, neither stupidity nor violence, neither poverty nor deceit, neither puniness nor deformity, neither huge teeth nor bodies beyond the usual measure. The inhabitants suffered no defilement from the evil spirit. They dwelt among odoriferous trees and golden pillars; these were the largest, best and most beautiful on earth; they were themselves a tall and beautiful race."

According to the account in the Bible the last creation of god was a wife and complement, a helper, for the man he had created. Many a great human artist produced their greatest work last. So it could be said that at least that one particular women who was the wife of the Golden Emperor, Adam, and thus was the Golden Empress, was likely the most beautiful of creation. Her beauty was twofold. She was a two sided mirror: one side reflected all the beauty of the universe, and the other side reflected the invisible beauty of God. Thus the greatest beauty of a beautiful woman is not merely the proportions, colors, and textures of her form, but in the way she uses her mind, and the quality of her heart. The Golden Empress did not make a good choice, and because of this choice she never realized the infinite potential of her mind. Today an artist could spend a lifetime studying the most beautiful women in the world, and in trying to find a common basis for understanding what makes a women beautiful, but would likely find the other side of the mirror lacking in most of the subjects of his study.

The beauty on the hidden side of the mirror is manifest not by something that I as an artist could portray, but by the endearing traits displayed in everyday life that makes a person pleasant to be around, valued as a friend, and great, not just in the way of looks, but also in the measure of what they are as a human being. Thus some of these valuable qualities are: courage, faith, humility, generosity, kindness, patience, and love for others shown by empathy and hospitality. 

The Bible book Song of Solomon tells of a beautiful young country girl, a Shulammite, who was in love with a local shepherd boy. Her beauty attracted the attention of the king, and he had her brought to Jerusalem in hopes of making her his wife. This was a great opportunity for a young woman in that time period and culture and the other women of her time urged her to accept the offer of marriage. Solomon, the King of her country, was  the richest and wisest man in the world .There in Jerusalem, she could exploit her good looks to find favor with her husband and gain a position of wealth, power, and influence in the kingdom. But the young girl resolutely spurned the flattering advances of the king. She turned her back on the glitter and wealth of Jerusalem and remained faithful to her shepherd boy with his limited material prospects. In her case, beauty was not one sided. She was not shallow, opportunistic, or greedy. Rather, she had an inner beauty, a reflection of the other side of the mirror, that her ancestress Eve lacked. Her loyal love and unwavering devotion to the ordinary man she loved revealed that her inner beauty was the equal to the beauty she possessed on the outside. The difference in the two is that, in the world as we know it now, beauty on the outside is transitory, but when it is found on the other side of the mirror, and kept polished, then it becomes ever brighter and greater through time.

The woman of today who is exceedingly beautiful is likely to be spoiled; perhaps not so much because of her own vanity as because of the selfishness her beauty arouses in others. Both in men or women, for different reasons. It may be true that she receives too much praise. Likewise those who idolize beauty, and who put it above the invisible qualities, might be likened to those ancient worshipers of beauty, the Greeks. Thus the historian Lord tells us that "the real objects of Greek worship were beauty, grace and heroic strength." And a leading religious encyclopedia says: "The Greeks were eminent for their appreciation of beauty in all its varieties; indeed, their religious creed owed its shape mainly to this peculiarity of their mind." Their religious deities being immoral , shallow, one-sided and selfish, was incidental to them, so long as these were beautiful.

Isolating the Elements of Beauty

Paul Dirac said "God is a mathematician of a very high order, and He used very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe." Wherever we might look, or what we might hear, that we might describe as beautiful, is an arrangement of some sort, based on principles, and a carefully balanced order and contrast between variety, and the uniform adherence to physical constants. To look through a powerful telescope into the universe is to confront beauty no matter which way we look, and here on our planet a beautiful garden is based on, or an enlargement of , the principles of beauty observed in our landscapes. The beauty we admire in plants, animals, and in people is always based in various ways upon mathematics, because beauty is mathematical in the way it is arranged; even if we do not consciously think about it. Even the people who hate math or know nothing about it appreciate the forms and colors and sounds which are very mathematical in some , or various ways.

Proportions. What is it that makes a face beautiful? The chief trait of beauty are the proportions of the features and of them to each other, and their proportions in the face. The most important aspects of a beautiful building or of a garden design are largely a matter of  proportions, as well as textures, colors, and various features. It is to a large degree her proportions, in face and figure, which makes a beautiful woman appear to be so. In the Bible men are called beautiful also, and when their looks are remarked on it is usually their proportions which are described, and then their countenance, and in the case of Absalom; his hair. Some scientists have made a study of human proportions to find some general guidelines, and plastic surgeons in particular use these guidelines in adjusting or repairing a face.

Forms and Patterns. We live in a world of multiple forms, not only size and shape, but also the type of form such as hard or soft, static or dynamic. Chaos and order are not exclusive to each other but are different facets of the same gem we call the "ko’smos", or the order of the physical universe. Some forms are linear like the columns of a clump of bamboo or geometric like a spider’s web, or the diatoms’ crystal snowflake-like cell, whereas others are shapeless like a cloud that changes constantly. there are the various forms of crystals and colors as well as different ways they reflect or refract light. Many forms are attractive, whether they be an exotic orchid, the spirals of a seashell, or even the branches of a tree that has shed its leaves.

I love the texture and forms of some of the ornamental grasses, and every type of tree has a distinctive silhouette caused by the manner of its growth, such as for example, whether the tree is opposite or alternate leaved. Look at the spiral patterns found in everything from flowers to snails. Many , if not all, of these forms have a mathematical basis in their design, and it is this math which appeals to our mind as beautiful.  When the same form is repeated, it creates a pattern that may also be visually appealing. For example, imagine a stand of tree trunks in a forest. Their forms—each one different, yet similar—create a pleasing pattern. Once when I stood in a grove of Aspens. I looked at their white trunks reflecting the shafts of pure sunlight through the roof of the forest like some form of temple, and the green sparkling shadows filtered through the leaves waving their shiny side in the sun. Then on a nearby mountainside I saw a deer running and leaping across and up the slope. There was a form of slender and graceful beauty to the deer and a ballet to the way it ran and leaped with the power of beauty.

Light.

The distribution of light gives a special quality to the forms we find attractive. Details are highlighted, the texture is colored, and a mood is created. Light varies, in color and quality, according to the time of day, the season of the year, the weather, and even the place where we live. A cloudy day with its diffused light is ideal for appreciating the subtle tones of wildflowers or autumn leaves, whereas the crags and peaks of a mountain range show off their dramatic forms when sculptured by the rising or setting sun. The soft, wintry sunlight of the Northern Hemisphere lends romance to a pastoral landscape. On the other hand, the bright sun of the Tropics converts the shallow sea into a transparent wonderland for snorkelers. The decrease of light, or the opposite of it, is shadow, and the colors and quality of shadows vary in several ways. In drawing it is shadow that reveals and describes the form and texture of what we draw.

Color. It gives life to the different objects we see around us. While their form may distinguish them, their color highlights their uniqueness. Furthermore, the distribution of color in harmonious patterns creates its own beauty. It may be a vibrant color like red or orange that cries out for our attention, or a relaxing color like blue or green. Color affects our emotions and adds both variety and understanding to what we see.

Imagine a patch of yellow flowers in a glade. The light catches the yellow blossoms, which seem to glow in the morning air, while dark tree trunks fringed by the morning sun form a perfect backdrop. Now we have a picture. All we need to do is "frame" it, which is where composition comes in.

Composition. The way in which the three basic elements—form, light, and color—combine determines the composition. The view point, the place of it , and the angle through which we see through it, determines how we see the composition which is there. Just by moving slightly forward, backward, to one side, higher, or lower, we can adjust the elements or the lighting in our picture. We can thus crop the picture to include only the elements that we desire. A beautiful landscape is well composed, and in garden design the composition, how the elements are arranged and fit together, is more important than the content, the individual elements, of the garden.

 It has been said that the difference between a gardener and a landscaper is that a gardener tends to be a collector of different plants and find a place where they will fit; while a landscaper uses relatively few different plants and is concerned more with the overall look than with having one of everything. The landscaper then is a composer, just as a composer of music works with sound, the landscape designer composes a three dimensional living arrangement of beauty. In Chinese tradition a garden is considered an art form and the elements are symbols of other realities.A painter likewise has the opportunity to make whatever changes that skill and imagination allow.

Details and The Grand View

When we look at even ordinary things, a closer view, the picture within the picture, reveals more layers of beauty, and these pictures within a picture are described by photographer John Shaw in his book Closeups in Nature: "It never ceases to amaze me that a close view of a natural detail always invites an even closer view. . . . First we see the great vista, then a patch of color in one corner of the frame. A closer look reveals flowers and, on one flower, a butterfly. Its wings reveal a distinct pattern, the pattern is produced by a precise arrangement of wing scales, and each scale is perfect in and of itself. If we could truly understand the perfection that makes up that one butterfly wing scale, we could conceivably start to understand the perfection of the scheme that is nature."          

 William Blake once wrote:

 "To see a World in a Grain of Sand 
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, 
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 
And Eternity in an hour."

Even a grain of sand has a signature of the beauty of the universe, if we look close enough, and if we look within it, we can imagine everything else. The laws of the Cosmos are evident in every particle of it.

Interpreting Beauty

Giovanni Battista Agucchi noted "The most worthy painters, without departing from the likeness, have aided nature with art. They have portrayed the faces as more beautiful and more noteworthy than in life, indicating, even in this kind of work, a recognition of that greater beauty."
And Leonardo da Vinci said "Whatever exists in the universe, whether in essence, in act, or in the imagination, the painter has first in his mind and then in his hands".
If the painter or other artist may be allowed to interpret the beauty of the universe through the filter and imagination of his own mind, then the result reveals a measure of the beauty which dwells in his mind, or the lack thereof. Thus the artist is not just a camera, who captures the most accurate representation of what they see, but is a part and element of the beauty of the painting.

BE FREE (THE MATH OF FREEDOM)

 

This is a poem I wrote some time ago, but is also the lyrics for a song I plan to write the music for someday. I know the basics of music theory and have composed music before, but that was some years ago. I need a velocity sensitive keyboard to do what I want, and I don’t have one now, but it is still something have sort of "on the shelf" until then. There are three verses, a chorus, a bridge, and a coda.

 

Be Free (The Math of Freedom)

By Bambootiger

Sail with me, in freedom,

Across the vast and trackless sea,

Don’t be afraid, of its’ depth of darkness,

There’s no need for you to be,

Sail on, and between your horizon,

And sun, or north star,

When you use your compass,

I will be the cosine, that tells you where you are,

Mark your place in the world,

Far from every rocky shore,

And you will never need to fear,

Of being alone, and lost, anymore.

 

By means of your hand, measure of heart, math of mind, be free,

Step out of the darkness, and share the beauty of light with me.

 

 

Feel the wind, my Eagle,

And see the mountains far below,

Among the clouds, soar with sunlit rainbows,

Over vales where rivers flow,

Soar high, far away from your shadow,

As wind, fills your wings,

I’ll be means and measure,

I’m the way of your flight, and the freedom it brings,

Make your home in the clouds,

On the peaks of a mountain height,

Where sun first shines in the morning,

And even at night, you sleep, in starlight.

 

Count each day to see what you’ve given and gain,

Be free and treasure every moment, within your heart and soul,

And remember that love, is what keeps you sane and whole.

 

By means of your hand, measure of heart, math of mind, be free,

Step out of the darkness, and share the beauty of light with me.

 

 

Leave the world, beneath you,

Sail out from this sphere into space,

On solar sails, into depths of darkness,

Along trails without a trace,

Sail on, in between the galaxies,

Past sun, or faint star,

When even light fails you,

The physics of your flight, will point to where you are,

Far away from this world,

There in infinite time and sky,

Lies a treasure and place for you,

Waiting to be home, you’ll find, if you try.

 

By means of your hand, measure of heart, math of mind, be free,

Step out of the darkness, and share the beauty of light with me.

 

Be free forever, be free in heart, mind, and soul.

Perspective without vanishing points

             Everything here is based on the station point; this is where you the viewer are in relation to everything else. It is often called the "principle vanishing point", but I would like to stay away from any terminology here that uses the words "vanishing points". If you use vanishing points then there is a real problem involved. Even in "one point perspective" you need to use at one other, and that one other vanishing point will not fit on your paper, or even on the drawing table. So why not just figure out where it is, and diminish the scale toward it according to how far away it is, instead of trying to trace lines to it? As far as the horizon is concerned let’s just say that scale equals distance, so that if something is twice as far away as our base scale, then it is half the size? Let me show you the picture I drew in scale without vanishing points.

               To start with consider the base scale of the drawing. The station point, the "diorama peephole" through which we are looking, is at an altitude of 34 and one half inches. In the picture the horizon is at 8 and three quarters from the base edge of the paper. If you divide 8 and 3/4 by 34 and 1/2 you get a base scale of 35/138  of life.  Since the tiles of the floor are 8 inches square then that means in the picture at the base edge they are 2 and 1/32 inches apart. I round everything off to 1/32 inches because that is the ruler I am using.  The station point is on a line 4 and 10/32 inches from the right side of the paper. So if you label anything on the right side of the station point as positive, and what is on the left side as negative, then the position of the base lines of the tiles are  -x (5 and 15/16; 3 and 29/32; 1 and 7/8) and then +x (5/32; 2 and 3/16; 4 and 7/32). In practice all you have to do is to measure any one of those points from the right side of the paper and then put each of the others at 2 and 1/32 inches apart. In that case the last point named, 4 and 7/32, would be 3/32 inches from the right side. The next question to consider is "How do we come up with where the next horizontal lines would be on the paper when it is 8 inches farther away?

               The base is 4 times 34 and 1/2 inches away, or in other words the distance to the first edge of the floor we see is 11 and 1/2 feet , and if we add 8 inches, or 8/12 feet to that, we come up with a distance of 12 and 1/6 feet. To find how far that is on the paper I used this formula :

(8 and 3/4 – ((11 and 1/2 divided by 12 and 1/6) times 8 and 3/4))

That equals 35/73 and that times 32 is rounded to 15. So the next horizontal line for the tiles is 15/32 inches from the base.

The scale at that distance is ((8 and 3/4 – 15/32) divided by 8 and 3/4)  which is 53/56 times the base scale, and that also means that the converging lines for the tiles are 1 and 15/32 inches apart. I can take the position of any point on the base and multiply it by 53/56 and I get the position of the new point. That’s the way I did the rest of the tiles.

Let me tell you about the distance and scale of the first wall. The base of the first wall is 6 and 1/2 inches from the base.

((8 and 3/4 divided by (8 and 3/4 – 6 and 1/2)) times 11 and 1/2)= 44 feet and 9 inches, if you round it off.

Here’s the scale:

(( 8 and 3/4 – 6 and 1/2) divided by 8 and 3/4)) times 35/138) = 3/46 times life. The blocks are 18 inches on each side, including the joints.

So 3/46 times 18 = 1 and 3/16 inches. That is the size of those blocks in the drawing, and it is also the scale of everything on that wall, except the front of the fountain, which is closer to the viewer than the back of the fountain on the wall. The fountain is slightly higher than the station point and so since the back part is at a slightly smaller scale and recedes downwards . That accounts for the amount of the curve upward I put in the front edge of the fountain. Using this method you can figure out how to draw circles in perspective.

There are some other aspects of how I figured the perspective, but you get the idea from this description, I hope. What I didn’t do in this picture was to also diminish the scale to the right or left as objects are farther from the station point in those directions, but I believe that the same method can be used in that way also, and drawing a scene that diminishes in all directions will be a future project.