Replying to LO28968 --
Dear Organlearners,
Andrew Campbell < ACampnona@aol.com > writes:
>What I have written out below (information) is an arrow
>pointing to an MS Word file I have asked Rick to help
>make visible. In all the words below; -) the word "unless"
>took my eye.
>
>[Host's Note: Andrew's file, as a .pdf, is at
>> http://www.learning-org.com/images/LO28968_DustDevilsAndIcarus.pdf
> .. Rick]
Greetings dear Andrew and Rick,
Thank you for making possible this work of art. The two paintings on the
sides of page 1 reminds me of the intense veld fires inland during winter
when everything is bone dry.
This is so common that many of our indigenous plants have evolved in such
a way that they need such a veld fire to flower the next year or for their
seeds to germinate with the summer's rain!
The central painting reminds me of a landscape the day after it was
consumed by a veld fire. Black soot scooped up by gushes of wind while
some log still have embers glowing.
The painting on page 5 reminds me very much of the inner corola of a
flower from a plant in the Asclepidacea family. The corona is about the
size of a pinhead! It has five lobes, often with a chin in each lobe as
you have depicted. It is pollinated by insects like flies or moths, but
not bees or butterflies, depending on the scent with which it attracts the
insect.
Often in my nursery, where such insects were absecent, I had to act like
the fly or the moth. I use a stiff hair like from a cow's tail and then
push it into the cleft formed by the fold. Inside on each side there is a
purse of pollen called pollina, connected by a band. The idea is then,
with the tip of the hair, to pull the band upwards and push it inwards so
that the pollina brush aginst the underside of the stamens where they will
break off and then pollinate it. The volume in which I have to do this
flicking of the hair's tip is about a tenth of the size of a pin head! I
cannot see what I am doing so that I do it purely by imagining the hair
acting like the probiscus (tongue) of the insect. Imagine yourself to be a
fly to have success!
If my imagining and delicate handling were successful, two follicles will
begin to develop afterwards -- in some genera after weeks and in a genus
like Trichocaulon after almost a year! These two follicles are shaped and
orientated very much like the two horns of an antelope. When they ripen,
they burst open to set one of nature's miracles free. The seed, usually
flat and oval, is attached to a beautiful, thin umbrella (looking like a
miniature web of a spider) by which it will rise up in the air at the
slightest breeze. When the wind dances through the trees, the drifting
seeds dance too, almost like minature angels.
The real expertise is not to get the flowers pollinated, but to get the
seeds before the follicle bursts open. For every day which the follicle is
picked too soon, the germination of the seed lowers by 15-20%. In other
words, should they be picked five days before they burst open naturally,
the germination rate has dropped to almost zero. On the other hand, within
an hour after they they have burst open, especially with a wind blowing,
they will be miles away to set up a new life.
These plants have helped teaching me to observe all the minute signs of an
emergence carefully and patiently wait to step in at the right moment.
>"Dreams are illustrations from the book your soul
>is writing about you." Marsha Norman
Yes, it is very true. Sadly, by denying people their soul which creates
art and which our dreams catch glimpses of, the world has become a
nightmare.
>There is, according to Augustine, an 'inconceivable
>simultaneity'. In this, his way;-) ..."temporality is not
>based upon our mutability and transiency, but is
>inherent in the relationships between parts and the
>whole. "Creator and Creature", Arendt
I think that this "simultaneity" can be "conceived" once we have reached a
certain level of wholeness. This we can learn from the very example which
Einstein gave us. By his imagination he healed the rift which had
developed between mechanics and electromagnetism. But even his E = MxC^2
became misused to make the world even more of a hellish nightmare.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@postino.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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