Tim E. Turtle (for Willoree)

Here is a good, good story.

Today, as I worked, the noise like a roar - 

there were forklifts and hammer drills, deliveries and more:

plasterers, plumbers, and masons by scores!

Above the din, I heard a small voice,

"I'm so very hungry and that cracker looks choice!"

I shared cause my Momma just raised me that way,

and thought, "I shall make a great friend here, to-day."

We finished our repast, and both wiped our faces,

and shared our penchants for finding new places.

We exchanged our names, both him and me:

I was Tom Tom, and he was Tim E.

He scaled the escarpment I'd known as my truck,

and merrily shouted out, "Hey, we're in luck!

I carry my home on my back, don'tcha see, 

and your camper top seems to re-semble me!"

I asked him along, though a loner - a rebel.

His response shrilled high in reptilian treble,

"Come out of your shell, there's much fun in store!"

So I stuck out my neck and opened the door.

Assertive, young Tim headed straight for the wheel;

"You work the gas and let's make this rig squeal!"

"Slow down", I implored, which I meant as a joke,

and he cut me a look and I thought I would choke.

I said, "Here's a chill-pill and please, listen to this".

So he took my ipod and looked through the list.

"This hip-hop is cool", (down shifting the cogs).

"Way cool", he replied, "and its not just for frogs!"

We cruised the two lane, and I made conversation - "What's

the E. for?", I asked, and with no hesitation,

he cleared his scaled throat and got down to brass tacks:

"E.'s none of your business. E.'s not your beeswax."

That Tim is sure funny, so you  wait and see. Soon you'll be Tim's friend,

just like me!

With love from Tom Tom and Tim E.

From the "Little Empathinc. Reader" Collection ©

"Spatiotemporal Scales"

"Over Head Starts Here" 2006

From "The Systemic Amazement Factorial"©

"My soul was as big as the universe and frolicked with glee in a boundless sea"
Jill Bolte Taylor, PHD My Stroke of Insight

"Fractal Fireflies #3"© 2009

From The "Spidey-Hole Series, Fractal Fireflies Subset"

“This being so,” asked the Earl of the River, “may I take heaven and earth as the standard for what is large,
and the tip of a downy hair as the standard for what is small?”

"Releasing Occlusions" 2009
From "The Systemic Amazement Factorial"©

“No,” said the Overlord of the North Sea. “Things are limitless in their capacities, incessant in their occurrences,
inconstant in their portions, uncertain in their
beginning and ending.

"Our Guernica" (detail, "Spaceboy Aghast")© 2006
Interactive Mural (currently located at Sanctuary Bar, Charlotte, NC)
Visual dialogue between artists Tom Schulz and Isaac Schulz.

For this reason, great knowledge observes things
at a relative distance;
hence it does not belittle what is small or make much of what is big, knowing that their capacities are limitless.”
Chuang Chou, ~300 B.C.

"Constellations" (installation view) 2003
Modular cement units, acid stain, 110 fiber optic lines
The Clay Center, Dexter School Brookline, MA

In his book "The Ways of Seeing", John Berger writes that, "Soon after we can see, we are aware that we can also be seen. The eye of the other combines with our own eye to make it fully credible that we are part of the visible world."

"Fractal Fireflies #1"© 2009

From The "Spidey-Hole Series, Fractal Fireflies Subset"

But this viewpoint leaves us with significant boundary value problems. For while it is prudent, perhaps even necessary to work under the assumption that the visible world is seen in the same format to the one as it is to the other, it has not proven to be a particularly effective strategy for being, nor for being in community. It allows that we operate out of a perceived commonality, and that this system of correlating factors - known as truth, known as laws, known as reality and civilization - functions in a mechanically determinable fashion. Tidy.
I'm wondering if we could extend this visual concept of seeing, and of being seen. In my more gracious moments, I am able to imagine that each cell of my body is the manifestation of countless intersections of starlight. Each junction becomes the moment that absorbs the rushing towards of the light as well as the rushing away.
I like this image.
This is what I receive from you. It is what I have to give. Incandescence.
Fractal fireflies bound together in the magnificent exhibition of our reciprocating light.

"Illuminate Yon Woods Primeval"

Across the expanse of yard and fence:

 asphalt, gravel, concrete. A nursing home.

A star wrestles past the lamp post like an oversight.

Here, emergency lights illuminate a chromium bumper.

There, a street signal changes to green.

"Fractal Fireflies #6"©                                 2009

From The "Spidey-Hole Series, Fractal Fireflies Subset"

A helicopter searches for a lone assailant, 

two klieg lights herald a cross-town club. 

One hundred tons of shattered meteors 

commence their sylphidine dusting. 

Countless tiny footprints will be unrecognizable by sun rise.

"Dance of the Mohawk"© (detail)                                         2006

Study for Great Hall Installation Arkell Museum

Canajahorie, NY

Dusk cues the fireflies to saunter on stage. 

One at a time and also in pairs - 

stitching together a luminescent scrim that portends tomorrow's mapping.

They will all be asleep by nine.

"Systems Analysis"

Willoree Photos/Modified                                                                                                2008

Glow worms echo patterns from the Maidenhairs. 

Creating rhizomorphs of time in the loam.

Spatial systems of some resolve, 

they'd lead a billion Lovells home.

"Urban Foxfire"©                                                                  2005

From the "Systemic Amazement Factorial"©

We join along in our technoluminescence.

We twitter, we flickr, we flash. 

Our expressions are wired into grid-type meshes;

 fractal fireflies.

"Fractal Fireflies #2 "©                                2009

From The "Spidey-Hole Series, Fractal Fireflies Subset"

"Calling for Response"

Emmanuel Levinas considered that when we looked into the face of the Other, we were looking into the face of God.

I'm thinking, this evening, that by turning our gaze on any Other  is to turn our gaze upon God.  Be it human or not, any state of Being may be considered Other, including our own shadow, our own core, our own Mystery - that which we are often so slow to explore.

Willoree                                                                November 2008

On the other hand, Theodor Adorno said that we may only know ourselves by knowing our fractured selves.

While I am no stranger to fractures - broken bones, divorce, death, fire, storms of many natures, and all sorts of pestilence, much of which has been by my hands alone, regardless of how I would prefer to view it in the moment.

Or now, in this moment, for that matter.

Bronxscape - Photovoltaic array 2009

Parsons School of Design

Roof top "oasis" at a home for assisted living. A gathering space for those individuals that have 'aged' out of foster care.

Perhaps, as is most often the case, we may come to perceive our intersections with Otherness in an Other way. As an extension of osmosis - a free exchange that interacts with both our interior and exterior extensions of our selves. A format of being that is not without boundaries. Rather, it exists as a method of respect -enacted.

"Fractal Fireflies # 5"©                              2009

From the "Spidey Hole Series - Fractal Fireflies Subset"

To see the world as marvelous is to acknowledge a praxis of participation. A healing practice that goes beyond the beginning and the end. That hears the tree falling in the forrest. That acts in thankfulness, not in the seeking of reward. For reward, like the right of way, is granted, not taken.

Carrie and Isaac, NYC                                2009

On the event of Carries graduation (MArch, Parsons)

First Corinthians:13(KJV), says, "for now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face.

 The human body is up to 78% percent water. Today, in Charlotte, NC, the humidity level was 65%. In this state of saturation, let us flow into and around one another.

Let us respond when called.

Go where we are sent.

Make few, if any assumptions.

And question everything.

Question everything.

 

"Aqueous Motif"                                                                  2008

Acid and polymer on concrete

" The Go-Between"

“The go-between wears out a thousand sandals." Japanese Proverb

—

"She Didn't Call Me Here"©                             2008

From The Inter-Faith Prayer Painting Series / Derivations

 “When before the beauty of a sunset or of a mountain, you pause and exclaim Ah!, you are participating in divinity.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth, quoting The Upanishads

"BronXscape             2008         Parsons   The Design Workshop

"No, I have seen the mirage tremble, seen how thin

The veil stretched over apparent time and space

To make the habitable Earth, the enclosed garden."

Kathleen Raine      Three Poems on Illusion

UPenn SAS Music Building Renovation       2009

"We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with an other."

Thomas Merton - Author, Trappist Monk

"Portal Study" ©                                                                    2008

From the Spidey-Hole Series - Bloated Geometries

For the first time in my life I saw the horizon as a curved line. It was accentuated by a thin seam of dark blue light—our atmosphere. Obviously this was not the ocean of air I had been told it was so many times in my life. I was terrified by its fragile appearance.

 Ulf Merbold -  ESA Astronaut (Germany)

"Bench Seat"©                 Jack Matney Courtyard                  2008

Multicolored cast concrete, acid stains, shattered tempered glass.

I wonder when we began to define our lives as a parenthetical expression: a life lived between the confines of life and death. 

                                                                                       Beginning and Ending.                                                                                                       I would prefer that the "in between" that we define as life would be more expansive. 

In my thinking (and please understand that I neither exclude, nor diminish your thinking),

we as individuals, and as a people, would embrace the possibilities that surround the one and the other, the Life and the Death.

I'm thinking that the 'thin space' could become the 'broad space'.

Dimensions once brought asunder; married in a new union.

"Which Frightened Both the Heroes So"

Eric Charles White wrote in 1987:

Kairos is an ancient Greek word that means "the right moment'" or "the opportune."

"Nebulous Grid"                                   2009

From the Spidey Hole - Bloated Geometry Series

"The map is a significant cultural document. The native mapmaker employed an indigenous graphic system of circles, lines, and alternating scales to portray his knowledge of the physical and social geography of nearly a quarter of the continent."

Another America: Native American Maps and the History of Our Land   Mark Warhus    1997

"Loaded: the Weisiger Chapel Project"                               2009 

".........it's so friggin endless it's like poems endless everywhere and no one knows why bettern old Buddha you know where he says it's like "There are immeasurable star misty aeons of universes more numerous than the sands in all the galaxies, multiplied by a billion lightyears of multiplication, in fact if I were to go on you'd be scared and couldn't comprehend and you'd despair so much you'd drop dead," that's what he said in one of those sutras - Macrocosms and microcosms and chillicosms and microbes and finally you got all those marvelous books a man aint even got time to read em all...."

Big Sur Jack Kerouac  1962

"Leaning Psalm"                                                                2009

Weisiger Chapel Project  Hospice, Charlotte NC

"........which frightened both the heroes so, 

they quite forgot their quarrel."

Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee

"Expulsion From the Grid"                     2009

From the Spidey Hole Series

I operate my busy-ness primarily from Chronos time: deadlines, appointments, schedules. I'm pretty good at that. Daytimers help. As do your calls and reminders (thank you very much). But my life is more based in Kairos time. My personal narrative mapped out in a survey of bruises and good-byes. Aches and hellos. Healings and salutations. My days are a palimpsest of heavings and liftings and measurements and wishing. My nights are filled with wandering around back into the day, bringing forth images more dense than any laurel thicket. The blinds are opened; the blinds are closed. I mark my territory with lemon juice, and read the directions by holding the image to the light.

How does your time work, human?

"The Words of My Roaring"

"To the Chief Musician"

"Motif Motif"            Study for Weisiger Chapel               2009

"The straight warp of necessity, not to be swerved from its ultimate course - its every alternating vibration, indeed, only tending to that; free will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads; and chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines of necessity, and sideways in its motions modified by free will, though thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the last featuring blow at events."

Hermann Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale 1851

Pew End Detail              Weisiger Chapel                       2009

"Roll away the stone

Don't leave me here all alone

Resurrect me and protect me

Don't leave me laying here

What will they do in two thousand years?"

Leon Russell 1970

Motif and Actuality - the Concrete and the Abstract

"Eli, Eli, lama sabach'thani"

"Clarifying Arrangement"

Copper and Stainless Steel Armature, Cement, Black Walnut. Metallic Paints and Reactive Patinas        2009

To be forsaken is to place oneself in the position of opportunity (if we keep our heads about ourselves). Each new threshold may only be crossed when the old world is left behind with abandon.

But fear not, 

 for we shall (each of us) be recognized by those willing to see us.

I would never insinuate that such a passage is without its own specific trials and traumas, but still I maintain that such is the fodder of many a great narrative.