The Limits of Our Perception

No. 3 from The Celadon Suite

Hello....another Monday and we are pushing our way toward the end of the first week of February already! The days are noticeably longer now and I have begun to think thoughts of spring. Even though we've had a roller coaster of a winter, it's basically been mild....it will be in the 40s most of the coming week.

Last Friday afternoon, as I was driving back from Sioux Falls, I heard a short, but fascinating piece on All Things Considered about homing pigeons and a theory developed that they are using infrasound waves to find their way home. These are sound waves that are a level too low for humans to hear, but not for homing pigeons and presumably other animals. For example, our lowest threshold is 20 hertz, but the homing pigeon can hear infra sound at a level of .05 hertz. Apparently, at least according to the researcher's theory, they are using these sounds waves that generate deep within the oceans and move up through the earth and out into the atmosphere. The whole notion got my mind spinning and I was reminded of a wonderful book I read decades ago, The Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman. I was struck back then, as I was struck the other day, by the limits of our perception....we take in the information of the cosmos through our senses, but there is so much out there that is far beyond our capability to perceive. I half remember some tidbit from the book about the sense of smell of a sheepdog being exponentially more acute than ours....not surprising, yet still astounding.

So, early this last Saturday morning as I sat in my cozy chair in the still darkness with my cup of tea, watching the day dawn and the light change, I pondered these things....how we, as humans, carry a sort of arrogance that one day we will comprehend it all, that we can learn and gain understanding of everything somehow....but there is so much we can never see, or hear, or smell or taste....there is so much we will never know and yet it all goes on, quite well, without us. Think of it....the difference between 20 hertz and .05 hertz.....think of all the sounds out there that move around us and through us....quite without our knowing. And that led me to ponder....as our words carry out into space and fade away beyond our hearing....does the sound still echo at some level ringing in the ears of birds or other creatures. Do they detect the sound of our cries, of our woes, of our joy for a stretch of time long after events have faded from our own memory? And for how long...days, decades, centuries? I do wonder.

The days unfold and the daily drawings continue....another week of them are posted at MissouriBendMusings....the teabags are definitely back, at least for now!

January 29, 2013

January 30, 2013

January 31, 2013

February 1, 2013

February 2, 2013 

February 3, 2013

February 4, 2013

I'm grateful for those quiet moments when the mind is free to wander....to ponder all the possibilities. Never enough of those times....life is busy for us all! Enjoy your week and see you next week, if not before. New Celadon piece and another new one in the Notes From The Ancestors series are in the works in the studio and hope to have them finished by next Monday.  Cheers!