Pale Blue Dot

Seen from about 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles), Earth appears as a tiny dot (the blueish-white speck approximately halfway down the brown band to the right) within the darkness of deep space.

Wislawa Szymborska, RIP

Nothing can ever happen twice.

In consequence, the sorry fact is

that we arrive here improvised

and leave without the chance to practice. 

Even if there is no one dumber,

if you're the planet's biggest dunce,

you can't repeat the class in summer:

this course is only offered once. 

No day copies yesterday,

no two nights will teach what bliss is

in precisely the same way,

with precisely the same kisses. 

One day, perhaps some idle tongue

mentions your name by accident:

I feel as if a rose were flung

into the room, all hue and scent. 

The next day, though you're here with me,

I can't help looking at the clock:

A rose? A rose? What could that be?

Is it a flower or a rock? 

Why do we treat the fleeting day

with so much needless fear and sorrow?

It's in its nature not to stay:

Today is always gone tomorrow. 

With smiles and kisses, we prefer

to seek accord beneath our star,

although we're different (we concur)

just as two drops of water are. 

Mike Kelley, RIP (1954-2012)

Mike Kelley, Memory Ware Flat #45 (2007)

Moonlight on Lake George (c. 1879-1885)

GIF made with the NYPL Labs Stereogranimator

Jonathan Borofsky: Voices for Beijing

Hami-Koskimo
Photographer: Edward S. Curtis
c. November 13, 1914

A broken heart is blind.

 

As God poured the Light into the vessels, they catastrophically shattered, tumbling down toward the realm of matter . . .

Tacoma Narrows Bridge (1940)

Robert Fludd, The Primordial Darkness before the Moment of Creation

Sparks of the divine may be rare, but they do exist

Jamie Beck & Kevin Burg – Cinemagraphs

Richard Pousette-Dart, Radiance #8

Steve Wheeler, Big Shape

Gathering the scattered pieces of light

Yayoi Kusama constructed a large space resembling the interior of a home and painted every surface in it a brilliant white. Over 2 weeks, children visiting the museum were given thousands of colored dot stickers and invited to stick them wherever they wished within the space, turning it into the pulsating room you see above.

Helen Frankenthaler, R.I.P.

Helen Frankenthaler, A Green Thought in a Green Shade (1981)

Julian Stanczak, Intertwined

Georges Seurat, Forest at Pontaubert

Raimundo Figueroa

Aaron Siskind

Ain't no use jiving. Ain't no use joking.

God created the world by forming vessels of light to hold the Divine Light. But as God poured the Light into the vessels, they catastrophically shattered, tumbling down toward the realm of matter. Thus, our world consists of countless shards of the original vessels entrapping sparks of the Divine Light.

You're literate, so words are what you feel.

They Accuse Me of Not Talking, by Hayden Carruth

North people known for silence. Long
dark of winter. Norrland families go
months without talking, Eskimos also,
except bursts of sporadic eerie song.
South people different. Right and wrong
all crystal there and they squabble, no
fears, though they praise north silence. "Ho,"
they say, "look at them deep thinkers, them strong
philosophical types, men of peace."

But take
notice please of what happens. Winter on the brain.
You're literate, so words are what you feel.
Then you're struck dumb. To which love can you speak
the words that mean dying and going insane
and the relentless futility of the real?    

from Hayden Carruth, Collected Shorter Poems. © Copper Canyon Press, 1992.