Wednesday, October 12, 2011

new ways of seeing

"Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads
The wind is passing by"

Christina Rosetti
(anthologized in A Child's Garden of Verses
the very first book of poems I know by heart to this day)
well, no it was from another book, 
so I don't remember as much as I thought I did!
corrected from info in a comment!




What made me think of this was a post here showing drawings of algorithms of the wind. It looks like some vast sea-creature to me. What does it look like to you?


31 comments:

Laurel said...

Yep. Sea creature. I get prehistoric manta ray. Although I guess that technically, manta rays are prehistoric. Pre-ichtheous, at any rate.

It is a really pretty image, regardless. It would make a cool print.

Gladspooky said...

It's an elephant munching on some grass, obviously. So now I'm just trying to decide if the world is filled with invisible elephants buffeting us around or if elephants are just wind gods who happen to live among us, like an old Shinto myth.

I like the first one more.

Unknown said...

Seashell.
I never saw a moor, I never saw the sea, yet know I how the heather looks and what a wave must be.

Emily Dickinson--my first memorized poem.

Anyway, that's what this image brings to mind for me.

Adele said...

Heads Up! I'm pretty sure that's the invisible energy cloud entity that drifted through the galaxy killing people in the original Star Trek series.

Kristin Laughtin said...

I thought sea creature as well, but also of that paper bag blowing in the wind in American Beauty (before I even read what the picture was)! I guess that means it's a good algorithm.

Marta Szemik said...

A sea creature, specifically from The Abyss (1989) by James Cameron. That's the first thing I thought about when I saw the drawing,

JS said...

Yes, some kind of megaray. Or a manatee. Beautiful!

Shaunna said...

If I could see a manatee's soul, I imagine that is what it would look like -- still gargantuan, but more graceful and aerodynamic.

Kate Higgins said...

I see the backside of a very exotic lily. I wish I could see the front.

Steve Stubbs said...

Looks like a shark to me. Of course, that is not surprising. Just recently everything looks like a shark to me.

Lori Safranek said...

It looks like a very soft conch shell, to me. At first I thought it resembled paintings I've seen of Native American women wrapped in a blanket (facing away from the viewer) but the line on the right side resembles the edge of something, like a conch shell opening, or as some of you said, the spine of a manatee!

ryan field said...

It looks erotic to me.

gregkshipman said...

Not that I want to get all Southern Baptist... but it looks like the veil on a grandmama church hat after the first hour of a hot sermon on an even hotter Sunday morning in Rocky Mount, North Carolina... and DAMN!... what's up with no air conditioning?... I'm just sayin'

Anonymous said...

A small section of a pencil sketch--on nubby, specially printed canvas--of the nose and lips of a female 'Cyrano de Bergerac'-type character. Except the nose comes to a most unflatteringly sharp point at its end--which we aren't privy to viewing--which may be all for the best.

Becky Mushko said...

A Child's Garden of Verses was by Robert Louis Stevenson, published in 1929. Christina Rosetti's poems were in The Golden Book of Poetry (1947).

My mother read Stevenson's poems to me when I was a baby. The first poems I memorized were from A Child's Garden of Verses: "Farewell to the Farm"
The coach is at the door at last/The eager children mounting fast . . . .

By the time Rosetti's book came out, I was already quoting Stevenson.

Laurie Lamb said...

If you turn the image clockwise, I see a duck sleeping with its head tucked on its back. Huddled against him is his mate.

widdershins said...

... and turned counter-clockwise, (widdershins!) it's the Enterprise-M time-slipping downwards from the 27th Century.

therese patrick, author said...

I got stuck on "new ways of seeing" since I have new glasses and it's great to see the algorithms at all. :D

Jen said...

Is this a Rorschach test? Because I'm seeing a nude female figure. Really. I have no idea what this says about me.

Anonymous said...

It's a shoggoth, a monster from HP Lovecraft horror stories.

Janet Reid said...

Becky, this is hilarious, because when I first wrote the post I put RLS as the author of Child's Garden of Verses.

Then I googled just to doublecheck I had the poem right (it's been awhile!)
and found the author was Christina Rosetti.

I didn't take the next step which I should have, of actually looking at the actual book.

You're right! I must have heard this poem from another book.

Patrick DiOrio said...

Yep, an elephant with his trunk curled around.

Pat Hatt said...

Could be a mantra or maybe a sack or a floppy chef hat.

S. D. Grimm said...

It looks like a towel ready for the wash.

But I looked at the other pics on the website too, and the second to last one was definitely Casper, the friendly ghost.

swedishfish said...

I *love* Christina Rossetti. My first book has a ton of Rossetti references in it. I didn't really know her before I wrote the book, and just fell in love when I was trying to find the poet muse...

Alice Sabo said...

To me it looks like something trying to get out of a sack. Too much Mummenschanz as a child?

Melissa said...

I was thinking fortune cookie! I'm hungry...what do I know?! Ha!

angie Brooksby-Arcangioli said...

My first thought was ARP, the sculptor. After I clicked on the link and read about the artist I thought of Pininfarina aero-dynamics studies.

Judith Gonda said...

Late to the party, but it reminds me of days when my daughters played volleyball, looks just like one of their knee pads they pulled off and dropped on the floor.

Michael said...

It looks like a smoothly differentiable vector field to me.

Or a Lovecraftian whale. Either one.

Michael McClung said...

...and its name was Sussuruss...