- Coming home from the Joint Mathematics Meeting (JMM) of the American Mathematical Society conference, Hynes auditorium, Boston, January 4-7, 2012.
- Sitting at a window seat on the right side -relative to the direction of motion- of a Peter Pan bus, as it churns down a stretch of Route 84, from Worcester, Massachusetts to Hartford, Connecticut.
- I have no reason to suspect that there could be anything to hold my attention in the monotonous landscapes unfolding through the window pane. Everything beyond the highway's banks is blocked by bushes and trees, the road itself but a strip of black asphalt between ABC and XYZ. There is nothing to arouse my curiosity, or gratify a mind eager for distraction - not so much as an addle-eyed cow. Neither city nor country; a bleak desert.
- Or so it seems.
Clear and darkly blue,these are New England's afternoon skies . A mild fog, not even a mist. There is activity, there is motion: trees, bushes, fencing and sign posts pass by, so quickly they could be optical illusions. One readily distinguishes several species of tree (not that I know their names.) It is the wrong season of the year for the brilliant foliage one sometimes sees in these parts, usually at a great distance: bright green, brown, orange and ochre , "hectic red" ; dusky greys. Some of these colors reflect the presence of mineral wealth beneath the roots. An isolated cluster of bright red foliage can signify a lode of iron beneath it. Each leaf is its own spectrograph; provided one knows how to read them ..
As I recall these things I become aware, within the range of this subdued palette, of a complex organization of colors, patterns and textures. Thick masses of obscuring green are raised up by bushes,blocking the spaces between trees. Twigs and vines separate or dangle, their filigrees cross-hatched or sparse, like the threads of antique garments. Mortal beings, sighing, shaking in the slow winds.
Under the pressure of my idle gaze, the landscape's floral variety appears to increases remarkably. On a lone hillside there stands a network of some dozen trees, a parade of dark leaves and black trunks, girded round with thick stumps like the bodies of bumpkins. Members of the same family, the intrepid pioneers of a single colony. Just behind them stand a more willowy community, weaving textures like patches of clothing hung up out for display in an open bazaar. Beyond them march cavalcades of flags and banners of nations; while in among these stand thickets of canes whipping the wind like the hickory sticks of nasty schoolmasters
And then! Is it because I'd just finished reading the 1986 Memoir of the ballerina Gelsey Kirkland, "Dancing on my Grave"? Or the recent discovery that, despite a lack of training or experience, I enjoy drawing? Or because the recent lectures on fractals and chaos have made me alert to exotic patterns in nature?
The realization that, right from the departure from Boston, I've been missing the greatest drama of all, strikes me with the power of an epiphany! I am spontaneously smitten, whatever the catalyst. Up until now unperceived by my dumb and insensible consciousness, a mighty drama has been unfolding before my eyes for upwards of an hour: the frenzied, indeed at times fiendish, yet for all that intensely delicate dance of branches, twigs and leaves, as the different ranges of trees, backed up to 6 or more, stream by at different speeds before my eyes!
My hasty conclusion that all the phenomena in such an environment had to be drab and monotonous, was, like most art criticism, not only wrong, but wrong-headed! My impressions were those of a teacher who believes his student is a fool, only to realize that, all along, he's been miseducating a genius.
Let me explain: everyone of us has had the experience of looking through the window of a bus, car or train, and observing how all objects in the field of vision, houses, roads, fields, hills, trees are moving past us in a graded hierarchy of velocities. Objects in the far distance appear to move very slowly, like a train of camels on safari. The clouds appear not to move at all (An observation of Lucretius, who deduces from this, correctly, that they are of enormous size)
Farms, fields, buildings in the middle ground move at a leisurely pace. Strangely, they seem to gyrate, not in straight lines, but in wide semi-circular arcs. The nearby trees, fences, signs and rocks just whip by, with a rapidity approximating that of the vehicle we happen to be traveling in.
Thus! I suddenly realize that each of these half dozen ranges of trees, some with outstretched, some with drooping arms, appear to be (and, in an Einsteinian interpretation, are in fact) rushing past me at different speeds as a function of distance from the bus. ("That very instant passed/On a strange Mob of panting trees" - Emily Dickinson, Johnson Edition, poem 1593: "There came a wind like a Bugle")
The result is a true work of art, a scintillating dance of trunks, branches, leaves, and twigs, a dazzling counterpoint to draw the admiration of J.S. Bach, an "apotheosis" worthy of Beethoven's 7th Symphony! Varying from moment to moment, never flagging in interest, it works on me like a kind of sorcery, thrilling, bewitching, even hypnotizing.
I feel as if I could gaze at the spectacle for hours; in real time, nothing ever holds our attention for that long: I watch for about half and hour, then turn back to whatever else I was doing, in regret though not unsatisfied.
This Is Dance! Gelsey Kirkland, Baryshnikov, Pavlova,all of their art has been assimilated to the cosmic order, like the gods and goddesses that were transformed into constellations. This Is Counterpoint! The wild interplay of contingency, of the phenomenal multitude, high and low, strong and weak, large and small, a dance as simple as it was complex, opening its revelation up to me merely through my willingness to really pay attention to what was happening in my environment.
Is this not the way we tend to experience life? What is beautiful and momentous just passes us by, while we remain buried in our stodgy preoccupations. Only occasionally do we think to lift up our heads to admire the gorgeous pageantry that surrounds us at all times.