CONSIDER THE SUNFLOWERS
of
the field
They toil not
neither do they spin
and yet I
say
Van Gogh in all his glory
did not depict
like one of
these.
THESE FLOWERS
ARE REAL
Seedlings transplanted on a desert floor were
bathed with intense, searing, solar heat but their roots were kept cold,
very cold, by the flow of deep ocean water. Each morning and each evening
a gentle spray of freshwater provided both sunscreen and balm. Soon a
classic stalk and flower appeared. Human intervention now cut off the
supply of cold and wet. The desert drought and noonday sun told the plant
it was soon to die. No longer did the sunflower "give to her God when she
set, the same look that she gave when he rose". Photosynthesis forgot, the
plant prepared to go to seed. Then the cold water was reintroduced. and
like a miracle, flowers adorned the full stalk. Here was an array not
often seen in nature. Here was an arrangement that, heretofore, could only
be depicted in the mind's eye of a great artist.
THESE FLOWERS ARE
VIRTUAL
Van Gogh never saw sunflowers in a field in the
arrangement depicted in one of his most famous paintings. The flowers he
used as models came from many stalks. One cannot verbalize the aesthetic
message presented in this famous painting nor characterize the afferent
reinforcement involuntarily experienced by many viewers. Indeed as
presented here the picture here is nothing more than a collection of
pixelized photon streams which do not have the information content to
produce a hologram. No indeed the sensory impact on our retina has nothing
to do with sunflowers or three dimensional objects but we have all made a
construct in our brain which, somehow or other, induces a psychological
response that reminds of sunflowers reaching for the
sun. For most, the world of the future may be nothing more than the virtual
reality constructs induced by the electronic page, but, if you believe
in reality, the
photograph of the coldag sunflowers is one step closer to the humanity of
the flowers of the field which toiled not, neither did they spin; but
they were, for a few days, on a hot dry desert, the glory of their times.
For a few more morning and evening glories return to the home page of your
Common Heritage