Fractals

Today I’m sharing my next essay/photo creation for the project I am working on. It’s called

Fractals

Fractals are complex shapes that upon a closer look are composed of parts that appear to be a smaller version of the whole. In nature, fractal shapes can be seen in ferns, trees, plant shapes, roots, river deltas, clouds, and coastlines.

In living things, the fractal design allows for efficient delivery and distribution of water and nutrients. The circulatory and respiratory systems in our bodies follow fractal patterns as do the root systems of most plants.

Fractal plant shapes have always fascinated me, especially ferns and trees. I love to watch ferns slowly emerge from the ground in the springtime and unfurl into delicate patterns and shapes. But I find them devilishly difficult to photograph well. Though I strive to express both their delicacy and beauty as well as their fractal nature I most often feel that I fail to do so.

When I was looking for fern photos in my catalog of recent images, I found a lot of fern photographs but few expressed the wonder and appreciation I feel when I observe them in the springtime.

They emerge from the ground tightly curled and then before you know it they have grown up and unfurled into feathery fullness. It feels like a miracle to me each spring when I see them emerge and unfurl. Perhaps part of the appreciation I feel for them stems from how I too am made up of many fractal parts and systems.

Fractal systems can seemingly transform into infinitely smaller and smaller parts. And as they transform the shape they create becomes more and more detailed, more and more beautiful. It’s a kind of nested recursion into infinity.

In the mind’s eye, a fractal is a way of seeing infinity.
― James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science

Order Within Disorder

In this complex world where we think we know so much yet understand so little, looking at life as a fractal pattern creates a sense of order for me, within all the disorder. Finding beauty in nature amidst all of the loss, chaos, violence, and disorder in today’s world is my lifeline.

Wage Peace

Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children and fresh mown
fields.

Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.
Make soup.

Play music, learn the word for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.

Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Don’t wait another minute.

— Mary Oliver

I would add to Mary Oliver’s list in Wage Peace above —

• create something beautiful
• contemplate and breathe in beauty
• notice fractals in nature all around you
• do something good today, even if its as simple as smiling at a stranger

The simple existence of fractals teaches me about the intelligence of life. Despite all evidence to the contrary, life is a beautiful miracle, full of emerging patterns of grace waiting to be discovered in ordinary moments. Each and every moment of our short precious lives is a gift. Treasure it.

May you walk in beauty.