Looking Up and Looking Down...

   On my recent trip into Cambridge, I felt like such a tourist!  I'd lived in the city for 2 years after I graduated from Harvard but this day, it all seemed new to me.

   Walking between the museums gave me lots of contemplative possibilities but I settled on the juxtaposition of the orderly and random.

   Cities, by their very nature, are man's attempt to bring order and structure to the world.  The beautiful tower of Memorial Hall on the Harvard campus is covered with intricate geometric patterns and is a masterpiece of symmetry and balance. A perfect example of the rational mind.  Yet, when viewed against the random and shape-shifting clouds, it takes on a different meaning for me...it is a dialogue between the rational and the mystical mind.

    There are those who maintain that if you can't categorize it, measure it, label it, and prove it scientifically, then it doesn't exist.  They discount all else.  The mystical world is just so much nonsense.  Of course, they are entitled to their opinions but for me there is something more at play in the world.  Call it what you will, but there is a knowing beyond knowing and it can't be categorized, measured, labeled or proved.

   When you look up, you look out into that world.  When you look down, you look into your own world.  I found that analogy beautifully and simply illustrated at my feet.  The curved and random seed pods laying on the ordered, logical brick pattern...two distinct worlds - and world views - which are interconnected yet separate.  Some minds, fortunately, can accommodate both viewpoints.

The most beautiful thing we can experience 

is the mysterious.

 It is the source of all true art and science.

Albert Einstein