I realize that all of us living creatures are scientifically explainable up to a point. We are generally parts of the natural world and therefore part of what scientists study and attempt to suss out and, in some wonderful instances, they do manage to make great discoveries about just what we are and what makes us tick. But me, I don’t really get any of it.
How is it, for example, that I have all of the parts required for me to be athletic, and yet I have never become anything remotely like it despite any school-required or even occasionally, self-imposed, practices? I’ve seen incredible athleticism in people with far fewer obvious tools for the task, not to mention having a visibly smaller inventory of raw materials in the way of the commonly used senses—blind or hearing-impaired athletes, for example—or functional limbs: any Paralympic athlete could clearly trounce my trousers in a trice.
How come, with all of my commendable efforts at garnering a real school-based education and my various attempts as an autodidact, I’ve still got an ordinary intellect and not the mega brain I see in some who appear to have been born to create shade for my dim thoughts?
I say this not to complain but, surprisingly, because it impresses and even sometimes thrills me, this magical, miraculous existence that we have. It’s actually exciting to me to think that there is so much around me and about me that I can’t begin to explain or understand. It may drive me a little batty at times to realize, as I do increasingly with the passing of said time, how little I will or even can ever comprehend about who I am and how I fit into the universe, but then I catch one more glimpse of a star—human or celestial—and remember how fabulous, how inexplicably yet palpably rich, this life can be. And I am both humbled and exalted.
Art-Colored Glasses 
Great article thank you. Our life and the life around us is so complex and yet in other ways so simple. I will never know everything but what I do know and learn from this second on will thrill me although as ageing comes upon me I seem to have developed a hole somewhere as the more I learn the quicker it disappears through some vortex so I have come to the conclusion that I must enjoy the ah ah! moment and be satisfied that it won’t stay around.
I figure the briefest moment of enlightenment is better than none at all! We’ll just have to enjoy its fleeting glories while we can, no? 😉
xo
Oh, great post, wonderful thinking, and my fears expressed here too! In fact I just wrote a poem to this subject, ‘Combing The Beach in Winter’
http://aishasoasis.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/poem-combing-the-beach-in-winter-2/
So true! And so little time! I’ve been wondering about existence since a very young age… Maybe it’s something that carries on in you, when you’re re born if you believe in reincarnation x
Not to mention in that we are all so interconnected! 🙂
xo
It is like watching shooting stars in the night sky. Always makes me feel small but happy
Can you believe that at my great old age I’ve still never gotten to see a shooting star? But I give credit to the ‘lazy’ ones for the same effect on me! (After all, they’re kindred spirits in their laziness.) 😉
Woohoo, nice to know I am not the only one who thinks like this.
Have a beautiful weekend dear Kath.
🙂 Mandy xo
Hope you and Pete have a fabulous weekend, too! Enjoy your ‘head start’ on it!! 😀
xoxo
Trounced trousers, eh? 🙂 Do you know what your images reminded me of (and please don’t take this the wrong way) they took me back to my childhood and my Spirograph which is a happy memory.
Just proves that great minds think alike. Yes, I was absolutely channeling the Spirograph, and quite conscious of it. 😀 Good eye!!
xo
One thing I think you’ll take to heart is the cardioid, which is an epicycloid of one cusp:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardioid
I think I might classify it as *renoid* myself. Kinda looks like a little kidney bean! But it’s another charming mathematical progression, to be sure.
Because the suffix -oid is of Greek origin, mathematicians have used the Greek word for ‘kidney’ in naming a kidney-like curve. At
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephroid
you’ll see the nephroid, which is an epicycloid of two cusps (as opposed to the one cusp of the cardioid). I know that the math involved is of no great interest to you and most readers, but as an artist you may appreciate the simple way a nephroid can be outlined by drawing a bunch of circles. That’s explained in the linked article, in the section headed “…an envelope of circles.”
As always, I can count on you to know all this cool stuff. Of course I didn’t think anything of bashing up Greek and Latin together for my suggested naming, but then if I’d been smarter I’d’ve missed your follow-up offering, so I’m happy to sit back and enjoy the links and lessons! Thanks!!
Count—yay, math!—me among readers who also thought of the Spirograph, which I still have somewhere. It generates curves that are known as epicycloids and hypocycloids.Count—yay, math!—me among readers who also thought of the Spirograph, which I still have somewhere. It generates curves that are known as epicycloids and hypocycloids.
Yay! I know I can count on you to know the cool math stuff that I never do. 🙂 I shall, of course, enjoy reading up on epi- and hypocycloids. Now go and find your Spirograph. 😀
I also thought of the spirograph! My childhood was not that happy, but there were a few things that were happy and the image and the Spirograph was one of them. Me in my room smiling. 🙂
Laura, I’m sorry you were cheated out of a joyful childhood; that, if nothing else, qualifies you for the right to enjoy being childlike for the rest of your life in compensation. XO! As you can see from Teri’s note and my response, you were spot-on, both of you, in noticing the Spirographic fun. It is, in fact, really fun just to freehand it if you don’t have a Spirograph handy—a kind of little-kid zen sets in. Try it! 😀
xoxo
Thank you 🙂 I act like a child now sometimes which makes up for it hehehe. I spirograph reminds me of a flattened slinky btw. 🙂
Cool! Slinky!!
😀
So true! I am often reminded of this whenever I go to a science museum and learn about how large the galaxy is and just how small we are. I also felt this way recently when I watched Gravity in theaters haha (good movie!)
I’ll bet that *is* the perfect filmic representation of human tininess in the scope of things. I also love surfing the Hubble photo collection for that reason.
There’s a Big Question that scientists haven’t been able to answer: how does an arrangement of substances become consciousness?
That’s a doozy, no kidding.
Great post Kathryn. It made me think that it has actually taken the diagnosis and subsequent managing of a chronic progressive illness to recognise that palpable richness. I spent my whole life perfectly physically healthy and would never dare to go near a horse. Last week I had my first riding lesson at a special centre for disabled riders. It was terrifying, amazing, freeing and sinply deeply emotional. I an going every week. 😊 you write such thought provoking pieces, I am so grateful I met you. Xx.
You’re too sweet, Christine. I feel so fortunate to have met you, too. It’s the way things were meant to be, it seems to me! How fabulous that you’ve gotten started riding!!! Next you’ll have to teach *me*. 😀
Blessings to you, my dear.
Hey, what a gorgeous new photo of you, Beautiful!
Thank you Kathryn! I thought Id better update it a little! The other was a few years old! 😊