April 2, 2018

 

PSI-1 March 29, 2018

(Post-Stroke Impressions)

I began this note on March 29th but here I am finishing it on Easter Sunday which is at the same time, ‘April Fools Day’.  Is that a coincidence or is there some hidden meaning in it?

Here is the elusive ‘understanding’ that I am trying to bring ‘down to earth’ at this time.  That is to say, it is not yet an ‘understanding’ that I have brought down to earth as an explicit finding; i.e. it continues to flirt with me and yet elude me, in a manner that calls to mind a phrase that stuck with me from earlier philosophical readings;

 

“For Kepler, ‘geometria’ was the source of nature’s mystery and divinity (Kepler once asserted; “Why waste words, geometry existed before the creation, is co-eternal with the mind of God, ‘is God himself’) and the uncertainty associated with its multivalent harmonies and self-referentiality was an innate source of beauty in nature. Kepler quoted Virgil in regard to the elusive absence of finality in astronomical space-time relationships; “Galatea seeks me mischievously, the lusty wench; she flees to the willows, but hopes I’ll see her first.””  — The Sleepwalkers, Arthur Koestler

 

This observation was something I made note of in an essay written 20 years ago which I introduced with the following quote from Lao Tzu;

 

Geometry and Culture: ‘Burying The Hatchet’

May 15, 1998

“Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub;

It is the center hole that makes it useful.

Shape clay into a vessel;

It is the space within that makes it useful.

Cut doors and windows for a room;

It is the holes which make it useful.

Therefore profit comes from what is there;

Usefulness from what is not there.”

— Lao Tsu, “Tao Te Ching”

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