Star Wars’ weapons. Chemical light sticks. Flashlights in the night sky. Disco mirror globes. We mesmerize ourselves with streaks of light against dark backgrounds. We appear, at any age to derive pleasure upon seeing a circular wave of light. Something in the back of the brain says, “Keep it going. Draw a figure in the darkness.”
Is it the contrast? Or, are we just addicted to light, that mysterious sometimes-a-wave-other-times-a-massless-particle phenomenon? When we are engulfed in light, we pay attention to the surfaces it reveals. Bathing light roots us in place. When we are engulfed in darkness, we pay attention to the light itself. Maybe in daylight we are just overwhelmed by light, and we long for a moment with it alone. Just the two of us, one with a seemingly identifiable character standing rather motionless contrasted by the other shrouded, so to speak, in the mystery of its nature as it dances brilliantly. We make an odd couple, don’t we? We don’t even see ourselves and can’t find our way until this strange partner is present. But in darkness we cast our attention on the dancing flash.
Draw a circle in the darkness with a light stick. Twist the stick as you turn to make a Möbius strip with the vector or line of light simultaneously drawing a cylinder, a circle, and the befuddling circle-with-only-one-side Möbius. Just mesmerizing, isn’t it? How can we have multiple phenomena from a single action? The vector of light, a line of brilliance in contrast to background darkness, twists and inverts to make a circle with a single side, revealing a unified identity that manifests itself in multiple forms. Hey, did I just describe you?
You are a kind of vector bundle whose dance of life stands in contrast to a background. Twisting into different shapes and forms, you retain an identity that defies explanation. You seek self-illumination as your temporary shapes keep moving against the background. “Who am I?” you ask when you are not concentrating on all those surfaces bathed in the light of everyday activity. You see the shapes that you take, wish to capture them in the moment, but find that they keep changing just like the moving vectors of a light stick in the night. Yet, wow! In the flash now and then, the back of your brain takes pleasure without fully understanding, and you plead, “Keep it going,” in hopes of comprehending all your vectors simultaneously.
Is it the contrast? Or, are we just addicted to light, that mysterious sometimes-a-wave-other-times-a-massless-particle phenomenon? When we are engulfed in light, we pay attention to the surfaces it reveals. Bathing light roots us in place. When we are engulfed in darkness, we pay attention to the light itself. Maybe in daylight we are just overwhelmed by light, and we long for a moment with it alone. Just the two of us, one with a seemingly identifiable character standing rather motionless contrasted by the other shrouded, so to speak, in the mystery of its nature as it dances brilliantly. We make an odd couple, don’t we? We don’t even see ourselves and can’t find our way until this strange partner is present. But in darkness we cast our attention on the dancing flash.
Draw a circle in the darkness with a light stick. Twist the stick as you turn to make a Möbius strip with the vector or line of light simultaneously drawing a cylinder, a circle, and the befuddling circle-with-only-one-side Möbius. Just mesmerizing, isn’t it? How can we have multiple phenomena from a single action? The vector of light, a line of brilliance in contrast to background darkness, twists and inverts to make a circle with a single side, revealing a unified identity that manifests itself in multiple forms. Hey, did I just describe you?
You are a kind of vector bundle whose dance of life stands in contrast to a background. Twisting into different shapes and forms, you retain an identity that defies explanation. You seek self-illumination as your temporary shapes keep moving against the background. “Who am I?” you ask when you are not concentrating on all those surfaces bathed in the light of everyday activity. You see the shapes that you take, wish to capture them in the moment, but find that they keep changing just like the moving vectors of a light stick in the night. Yet, wow! In the flash now and then, the back of your brain takes pleasure without fully understanding, and you plead, “Keep it going,” in hopes of comprehending all your vectors simultaneously.
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