Thursday 7 January 2010

The Dancing Frost

The winter holidays are over today and Jack Frost painted patterns across the windows of the engawa for the pleasure of the children. The engawa forms an air lock between the inner house and the elements, and though we are warm in our little cocoon, the frost still descends and the pipes still freeze.

Each pane of glass has a different design, no two are the same. This is the beauty and wonder of pattern in nature. The elements of the material world find form through aligning themselves with the interacting forces of nature. These infinitely variable combinations give rise to a never ending parade of unrepeatable beauty. A beauty that we humans can appreciate.

We too are the product of those forces, our physical beings built of elemental building blocks, constructed by universal forces, driven by life in its desire to become. We are the stuff of the universe, self conscious, aware of our being. We experience the world around us and find the things within it, the things which are born of this natural process, beautiful and good.

Beauty and good, however, are abstract and immeasurable ideas that only we, thus far, have found reason and means to communicate. The rest of the universe simply is. It's elements rearrange themselves endlessly in an ever changing dance. This mornings frost will evaporate into the water vapour that it was, and perhaps tomorrow it will be mist, and the next day it may be snow, only to melt in the spring to be a river, a lake, a glass of water, me.

Our spirit, our consciousness, is as real as any other thing in this sea of stars. Even though we cannot measure it, it exists as surely as the frost on the window pane. It has it's time in this form, and looks at the world in wonder. We are the universe, looking at itself, giving itself abstract meaning, the universe made self conscious. We have this time to live and love, and through our art and literature pass that on to those who follow in this ever lasting dance.



4 comments:

  1. Very cool frost. We used to get the feathery stuff up in IN, but down here in NC it's mostly a star/snowflake shaped pattern. something to do with the humidity/temperature patterns I'm sure.
    Maybe once a year we'll get feathers on the car windows.

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  2. Hi Euan, Just like to say what a great post and the pictures are almost as spell binding as your words. your post inspires me, just wish that my own scribings are as rich and as full-filling as this.
    Best regards,
    John

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  3. Such an exquisite post. Your words are like poetry. I am going to share it with my dance community. I come to Japan frequently and am a friend of Robert Yellin's. Will be back in May and would enjoy visiting you in Mashiko, if possible?!

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  4. Thank you for those profound words...

    Stay connected...

    Blessed be,
    Monique

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