Actually, we can go right back and ask if there would be things not consciously known in Heaven. Seems like that could be good for a divinity thesis or two.

And yes, that’s a manifesto I can get behind. I generally subscribe to the idea that we and every point in the universe are in a process of compilation,analogous to the way that propagating waves are described. Nothing is ever known in an absolute sense because everything about it and the knowing of it is changing in infinitesimal and infinite abundance. So one’s inward searchings reveal the new as they themselves change. It was nice knowing you steve. Hi STEVE.

You can take comfort knowing that the possibilities are unlimited.

Can you imagine, perhaps, art in heaven where there is never any hurry?

Yes, I have the tools to work with color “at will” — which means the possibilities are so limitless, it’s hard to know where to begin. I do occasionally use color, and in one series I have emphasized the color. But I’m working mainly in black and white in part as a constraint to reduce the universe of possibilities. That said, I sometimes examine low saturation versions along the lines you mention, and I do find that can be effective for some images. Ah, for infinite time…

At some point in this discourse the matter of color came up in reference to your waterfalls.

Makes me wonder if you have experience with some form or another of color modulation. By that I mean perhaps a thinning-out where color becomes a suggestion, a scent in the air. This happened to me recently on the beach. The combination of a bright sun, residual snow and sand overwhelmed the camera, leaving a bleached image. Adjusting the levels brought back some sense of contrast, but the colors existed more in spirit than in actuality. Nevertheless, what remained seemed to contribute.

Your perceptive comments are very helpful, as always. I love seeing something of mine through someone else’s eyes. You’re right about the last coming out of the plane more. That was actually a semi-conscious choice, driven in part by reading Frank Stella’s Norton lectures, which you mentioned a while back, about abstraction and space. Still working it all out, of course.

Poetry-wise, here’s one for you (with your mind on winter) — and D.:

Say even that this complete simplicity
Stripped one of all one’s torments, concealed
The evilly compounded, vital I
And made it fresh in a world of white,
A world of clear water, brilliant-edged,
Still one would want more, one would need more,
More than a world of white and snowy scents.

I’ve been revisiting these photos since they went up, without having the time to comment.

I responded to each of them differently, and the differences seem best explained by the last one, which comes right out of the picture plane at me. It looks like the same waterfall as the first photo, but there, you’ve distanced yourself. The sense of force and distance and power and pounding/building are different in each, but the group seems to revolve around these notions for me.

In the winter ones, there’s a piling up, a building that’s happening at the very moment we are looking at it. Whereas in the others, there’s a rushing away, a sliding down the shiny slopes that’s almost visceral. It’s like there are multiple themes going on here — the abstract one that I’m most familiar with, where the froth is contained and surrounded by the rock, the dome of building ice, and the free-flung, rushing and directed force.

I also can’t resist: “That with music loud and long,/ I would build that dome in air,/ That sunny dome! those caves of ice!/ And all who heard should see them there,/ And all would cry, “Beware! Beware!/ His flashing eyes, his floating hair…” (Coleridge, Kubla Khan).

Now don’t you feed edified and culturated for the day?