Tag Archives: Einstein

Keeping Up With My Own Evolution: Reality

Deep Thoughts and Musings, Keeping Up With My Own Evolution, SherrieZone Quotes, Watercolor Paintings, , , , , , , , , ,

Perhaps, just maybe, the one thing I can say with a reasonable amount of certainty today is: “Reality is Individual”.  I no longer look around and think that I see my surroundings the same way everyone else sees them and especially that we feel the same way about them.  I also recognize that I see and feel about them differently from day to day. So not only is my reality different from the others around me; but, minute by minute, it is different for me myself.

I can accept that my reality is always changing.  For instance, at 7:00 a.m. this morning the sky around me was a bright hazy peachy-apricot color…..luminescent.  Twenty minutes later, clouds had accumulated so thickly that the sky was dark, grey and threatening.  Obvious, right?

But, what about the sunny day that I see as cheerful and then minutes later view the same bright blue sky as boring, or even worse, depressing? That had nothing to do with the sunshine or sky and everything to do with how I felt.  How I felt changed my perception, my reality.

Okay, this is the thought I am trying to let crystallize.  My beliefs are changing, evolving.  As they change, my reality changes. And….. I am beginning to recognize that how I feel means everything to me.   As my feelings change, everything about my reality changes.  I am causing these changes by being aware of my feelings and caring about feeling good, and feeling better, and even feeling great.

My mind-blowing conclusion is that my reality coalesces around me based upon my perception.  I love that word:  coalesce.  I love the images and feelings I have as I just even think the word.  As all of the relationships and things I want swirl around me, and congeal, coalesce, they become my reality.  How does this happen?  I have no idea.  I only know that it does.  I witness it happening every day.

Lately, I’ve been enjoying the paintings of surrealists of the late 1800’s, early 1900’s.  I’m enjoying reading their biographies and seeing how their paths crossed with each other and the intellectuals of their time.  I feel them speaking directly to me as I patch together  their observances and quotes.

Salvadore Dali said, “One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.”  When he used the word “officially”, he couldn’t have meant world-wide…..could he?  Because reality is individual and no two humans have the same reality.  It is inconceivable to me that a large group of people could agree on such a thing.   We are all in such different cultural, social, political, economic and physical circumstances.

Dali’s friend, Rene Magritte, is quoted:   “If the dream is a translation of waking life, waking life is also a translation of the dream.”  Waking life is what we realize as our reality, our conscious life.  The dream, our subconscious.  We are riding on a constantly twisting ribbon of dreams, imagination, subconscious and conscious flow.  We are carried along, if we allow it, to greater creativity and satisfaction.

Another of their buddies, Pablo Picasso, said, “Everything you can imagine is real.”  I agree.  Focus on what you imagine and it will expand until others can see it is real also.  That’s what reality is.

These surrealist artists allowed their beliefs about their dreams and subconscious minds to flood onto their paintings, untamed, in order to present a perception of reality that would cause the viewer to question his own perception and even the perception of the whole culture in which he lived.

I want those who view my paintings to question my inspiration, my intention, my sanity…..it doesn’t really matter…..just question.

Everything Is A Miracle

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Albert Einstein is said to have said:  “There are two ways to live your life.  One is as though nothing is a miracle.  The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

Lately, I’ve been playing a game with myself.  I look for miracles in everything I do and in everything that happens around me.  The fun thing, the exciting thing that happens, is that I find them.  I find them in the synchronicity and serendipity of the smallest things.

Last January, I wrote a blog about it, I witnessed a miracle.  Hundreds of starlings staged a spectacular performance in my backyard.  It was a sweeping panoramic production.  From the time it began, or that I became aware of it, only minutes passed and it was over.  We were left there with our mouths open, mute, in wonder.  What just happened?  I’m convinced that things like this are happening all around us.  We are just not aware of them.

One evening, recently, my husband and I had a busy afternoon and evening and as everything wrapped up he commented “this would be a good time to go to Nielson’s” and disappeared into his office.  About 9:30 p.m., I peeked in and asked “were you serious?”  “Not really, but, yes!”  30 minutes later we were out the door.  Nielson’s closes at 10:30 p.m.  We talked about going through the drive-thru or sitting out on their patio, going inside or ordering at their walk-up window.

As we ordered, a friend from Oregon recognized us.  He had ordered inside but Nielson’s doesn’t take credit cards, so was on his way to a ATM.  What are the odds?  He had been introduced to Nielson’s on his LDS mission in his twenties.  Being in Salt Lake on business, he couldn’t resist driving up to Bountiful (Nielson’s Concrete is afterall a local institution) for ice cream.  He almost aborted the trip on the freeway…..it’s late, it’s a long drive for an ice cream, etc.  But, there he was and there we were at the same place and the same time.  We marvelled at the circumstances that had brought us there together.  We sat and ate ice cream/concrete and talked long after Nielson’s closed.

images

Not really a miracle, more of a coincidence…..you say?  We run into old friends in odd places all of the time.  I used to believe in coincidences.  But not anymore.  Now I believe that everything is a miracle.  And…..I see more of them everyday.  It’s FUN!

 

Picasso On Imagination

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Pablo Picasso said “Others have seen what is and asked why.  I have seen what could be and asked why not”.

In my imagination, I see a group of artists lounging around Gertrude Stein’s salon in Paris discussing what is real…..what is reality…..what is imagination and creation.  I see Pablo Picasso, George Braque, Salvador Dali, Maurice Princet and Ernest Hemingway with Gertrude and her brother.  I see them pouring over Henri Poincare’s book, Science and Hypothesis looking for details about the fourth dimension.

I imagine a lot of standing up and pacing and arm flinging with emotion as these subjects are analyzed, scrutinized and thoroughly discussed.  I can imagine Picasso saying “Everything you can imagine is real”.  I love this visualization.  And, then Braque says “Real discoveries are made beyond the limits of knowledge”.  Gosh, doesn’t that sound like something Albert Einstein or Nikola Tesla would say?

In their cubist paintings, Picasso, Braque and Chagall created images that on first glance look fragmented;  but as we look closely, they have actually shown ALL of the subject, from all angles.  The painting above, Le Reve, shows the woman full face and in profile.   Picasso said he was painting not what he saw but what he knew was there.  At that point, the rest is left to the viewers imagination.

Chagall said “I upset in order to find another reality”.  Did he mean for him to find another reality or to challenge us to do it.  I’d love to sit down with him, well with all of them, and ask “What did you think about Einstein’s Nobel Prize research and how much did the scientific discoveries of your time influence your lives and art?”

I love to read about the lives of these people who were instrumental in changing our world’s reality.  I love the idea that we, too, can use our imaginations to discover and create our own reality.