Sight: Enjoying Our 7-Dimensional Visual World

This post has many photos. But it is not about photography. It is about encouraging you to delight in all the sights we can see, even in a typical day.

One powerful Zen koan is the question “Who Am I?” In the Zen training I got from my Waking Up app, an answer I really like is “I am everything I see, hear and otherwise experience.” (See “Zen Koan Practice with Miles Kimball: 'I Don't Know What All This Is'.”) This is quite literally true in the sense that everything we experience directly has already been highly processed by the sensory parts of our brain (with inputs from other parts). It is also metaphorically true in the sense that evolution designed us to be connected to the world and to each other. Or as Max Ehrmann’s poem “Desiderata” has it, “You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars.” Here is the full poem, which was extremely popular when I was young:

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

How do I get to 7 dimensions? The first is time, represented by the one photo at the top. This is a view out of my bedroom window in the “blue hour” between when it gets light and sunrise. Things look very different at that time of day than when the sun is up. And a whole new set of wonders becomes visible at night.

The next 3 dimensions, to give their local names, are north/south, east/west and high/low. That gives your position—your standpoint. Then there are two dimensions for the spherical angle in which you are looking. Finally narrow/wide focus gives a very different visual experience. That makes 7. And I am not even counting other dimensions such as color, which are less straight forward, but still possible to focus on or not.

The point is that there are riches of visual experience to be had—here the blessing of dimensionality rather than the curse of dimensionality.

In what follows, I’ll dump in the photos I took yesterday on a single walk. At 4 or 5 locations I looked in a set of 4 horizontal directions at 90-degree angles from each other and straight up and straight down at wide focus and at narrow focus. (Straight up was similar enough at the different locations I sometimes skipped that.) I think the high dimensionality of visual potential is clear from these photos. And even though I used an iphone to document these views, seeing them doesn’t require any technology at all.

(Note: This post is still under construction. More photos to come.)