Ice is even better with trees growing through it.

It is an illusion … well, yes, if we live in a world of things. If we live in a world of energy, it’s no illusion at all. Here, too, where a bit of sky between the ice does wonders. Ya, I know, it’s not “really” clouds, but it is a form of energy from clouds, a kind of relationship of energy and elements. As a human, I appear to be able to read those energies instantly.

Perhaps beauty is a measure of energy. Look what happens when clouds mix it up with the ice.

All these are energy transfers given by light and water. Look what happens when the earth gets mixed in:

Or all these elements together…

Water, light, earth, and the boundaries between liquid and solid…these are the habitat for life. Perhaps the ability to read energy is the ability to read life … not life as it is biologically explained but as a quickening, as a potential.

Sure, you could say that humans learned this behaviour as hunting animals: you’ll find plants and game by difference, by the contrasts it makes, in shape and form against backdrops into which it blends, sometimes quite perfectly. But is it just that?

Maybe to think that way at all, there has to be a background of energy, and when the energy matches the ability to read energy, as humans we know we are in a human place, or at least one that supports some form of human energy.

And why not call that human? That space, that beautiful space. To see such space is to look within yourself, and extend your capabilities of thought by extending your capabilities of sight.

And to do it, you don’t have to think at all, or say a single word.

Ah, but then, what are words for?

For giving names to spiritual energies, perhaps, so that the life in them can be extended from the visual life of humans to their physical and social selves. I thought I was looking through the camera at this ice…

… but I was making it human at the same time that I was making myself ice.

Biologically, beauty is a characteristic that the viewer and the creator make together. Among birds, it might be brilliant plumage and display that males do, because females like it, and so it becomes a part of the species. It might be the white fur of a snowshoe hare in winter, or the brown feathers of a summer grouse, and the way those are read by the lynx that hunts them. In all cases, even among humans, it is a way of making a biological, self-sustaining unit. I call that a living thing. I call this a living moment:

Because I am a creature that reads energies, when that gull is dead, so am I, but when I am dead, the gull is just fine. This is respect. It gives me, as a human, a place. It is not a place of ideas or objects. It is a place of presence. This is a human:

This is a human:

And so is this…

… and this …
… and this…
What does it mean? The question is absurd.