Volume 1. Chapter 21. Articulation

Willing coherence

Your associations enter everything. Thoughts and feelings intervene. An uncertain shape becomes an animal. A curved line becomes a leaf. The artist might have seen these, too.

Synthesis

We are bundles of contradictions with purposes and reasons to avoid them. Out of balance, we totter from possibility to possibility.

Shifting opposites

To walk is to shift imbalanced weights. Shadow and light, left and right, to and fro.

Color spaces

All colors can’t be mapped in only three dimensions. Infinite options could extend in all directions but still be limited, while texture and lighting make dyes and pigments seem foolish.

Dimensions

A moving point defines a line; a moving line defines a plane. Spinning a line makes a cone; spinning a circle makes a sphere. If the mind turns around a form, the form turns around.

Three fishermen

Three fishermen in a small boat float over a large fish. They pass a bottle while waves imitate their heads, their oars, a tree on the bank, and the shoreline. Seawater surrounds them.

Leap day

A tulip leaps from its vase, its stem in the air, unlike itself, a fish out of water, in flight.

Unnatural

The body lay in an unnatural position. A large bird had appeared where detectives expected the head. Gradually, they pieced together the sequence of events at the scene of the murder.

Middle ground

Nothing takes the middle. The mind assembles eyes, ears, an arm, and who knows what from past glimpses. Cats walk about on the floor, looking for trouble.

Arrogance

This one is sure of his success, although eventually he’ll fall. Others have lost their balance and are hanging on. He’s thinks he’s different because he’s made a deal with the devil.

Unhappy balance

Things always started out of wack, but it was possible to compensate. He never got lucky but he made it work.

Child’s game

A game has rules but a child has her own process of development. A previously unknown connection awaits a happy conclusion.