The Immaculate Doodle

Destiny

2007-04-27T23:04:00.000-07:00

Here, we are reminded that we are surrounded by indications and hints. Sneaking suspicions. Tell-tale clues and evidence from deep within ourselves. Shards of half-remembered truths. Mind molds past into present and then into future. It is where these spheres overlap that we find ourselves in the whirlwind we know as fate.

Currents play across an inner topography; eddies spiral upon themselves to reveal guiding principles. The figure is movement and symmetry, pattern and pattern's answer. In it, we see windmill, flow, energy. The repetitions numb as echo builds on echo, numb as ceremony can numb us, forcing us to bore down into ourselves. Into the stillness inside the motion. Into the silence inside the noise. Into the Heart of the World. And it is, perhaps, only there we can be agents of Plan as Plan gives birth to us. Or is it the other way around? It is—it must be! And yet... In this shadow world, a world beyond clarity, a world whose every instant is coterminous with every other, our being precedes us. All notions of temporality are too-fragile things. They crumble beneath the weight of observed—felt—truth.

That which must be, already is.

Metaphor

2007-03-29T23:52:00.000-07:00

Removed from the First Cause, the families of Effect, these ripples, draw us outward. Like the dazzle on water obscures and tempts us toward a belief in That Which Is Not. Or the reflection in a mirror, pomp and ceremony. They clothe us in the regalia of the crowned child.

Ultimately, this is where symbol loses its luster and referrent achieves a clarity previously thought impossible. In this way, the crucate figure in the center is seen as the foundational element. Around it, beyond it, visual echoes are feeble attempts at "explanation." Yet nothing needs explanation. Nothing adequately serves. And, here, each successive argument is more dilute—the angled forms, the cutting black blades. Insubstantial and pale, a dissipating spirit. Which renders the enterprise irrelevant, a distraction from the object of adoration. In paradoxical splendor, this brings the object into greater focus. And isn't this more properly called prayer?

The seed need not grow to be the seed it is.

Illusion

2007-03-12T20:14:00.000-07:00

Through the scrim of our misapprehensions, our misconceptions and misinformations, we view the universe. Self-deceit can become a permanent appendage, a new leg that renders us lame. To the Hindu, maya; to wanderers of a more literal nature, mirage. Ever out of reach, ever over-reaching. We chase the ignis fatuus—the foolish fire of our hearts' blinded eye—into we-know-not-what.

The central figure is night and twilight, cloud and haze. Where it is not black, it is gray, lined with parallelisms. Everything is obscure, half-hidden, unknowable. Tantalizing cutaways are falsities—pretenders to light and knowledge. Around the periphery, the way is fraught. A world pushing past its own too-tight boundaries, to spread its—what? Its nothing? To spread its nothing then! To sow the seeds of distrust! Of disloyalty! A smothering blanket of denial. Repudiation! And now, finally, travel inward and see it, at the bottom, as of a plumbless well: the one unveiled, untainted glimpse at Truth.

To see clearly, close the eyes of seeing.

Renewal

2007-03-06T23:50:00.000-08:00

The blossoming Now is daughter to a blossoming When. Seeds to roots to flowers to seeds to roots. The progression of living states proffers a recapitulation of all possible pasts as the present funnels its energy into putative futures.

Note the skewed black squares at the four corners of the calyx, the final forms still incubating, still out-swelling. They echo the white square of the stigma, the flower's central spire. And around this, paired triangles like split squares, kissing vertex-to-vertex. The figure is an ariose meditation on becoming, separating, coming together, and re-becoming. Birth and loss contained in a corolla, a being infused with the perfume of life and of decay, whose shadow is nothing less than ourselves.

Life turns toward Life, like flowers face the sun.

Transcendence

2007-03-03T21:42:00.000-08:00

Rise! Rise above your earthly pains. The pains of loss, of doubt, of that which is no longer and that which will not be. It is the pain of change. Once aloft, freely rising—to float—the world is so small, a brilliant bauble of no more consequence than diamonds to the Devil.

The tapered lines of this figure create a gleaming icon. One can almost feel the heat and light. The acute angles capture and transmit a dazzle that is possible only after rising above a world in which change can act, above a galaxy of constant laws, above a universe of separation. Above. And in the center, in the very heart, the eye of self-knowledge. It is the axis upon which everything turns.

To discover, escape.

Introspection

2007-02-14T22:37:00.000-08:00

Imagine a tunnel, a well, a mine. It is in this innermost temple—this most private sanctum sanctorum—that the jewel of personhood is shaped and polished. By methods far simpler, and more impervious to words, than prayer, the self attains its own panorama.

This figure presents a depiction of a factory of conscience, sanctuary of consciousness. How bare! What fragility! Such is the impression given by the long lines, long like the legs of herons. But this place is built of eternity. Of bone. Of stone. Cell by cell, piece by piece, brick by brick, the mind in repose, in observation of itself, limns its mandala. The order that results, the map of unutterable harmoniousness, leads through itself and on into the reaches of the universe.

Mind is the pebble, self is the ripple.

Sovereignty

2007-01-23T23:40:00.000-08:00

Hereditary power, power seized by the manipulation of earthly desires. Feuds inflamed and hatreds stoked. Class and caste. The domination of the weak. The rape of chaste justice. This figure contains all of these worldly crimes.

The vicious, black triangles—are they blades? fangs? the wicked barbs of spears?—can only be the instruments of a state made mad by its own power. Whether interpreted as police badge or military medal, the statement the figure makes is the same: You Must Submit. The negative shape in the center is nothing more than a new “crooked cross,” an antiseptic swastika. You Will Submit. Note the “talons” surrounding this icon. Their purpose is to remind the people that they can be removed. They can be plucked from the crowd. And within the sea of the State, every drop is invisible. Submit.

The wise practice obedience through resistance.

Martyr

2007-01-19T15:41:00.000-08:00

The massed forces of Man at his most foul—the brazen, the proud, the faithless frauds—descend from every corner. Within, the center withstands the crush of fear. And lo! Still the light shines! Within its cloister, even within the airless space left behind after defiance’s flame has flickered, Truth still glows. It fills its chamber as the censer fills a cathedral.

We imagine the weight of heathen ways, of idols made of brass, in the forms arrayed around the heart of this figure. The shapes—sickeningly corporeal (carnal, even)—gather like bubbles in oil. They choke, they sting, they press and twist. As long as truths still prove themselves in every breath, all is for naught.

The faithless cannot stop a faithful heart.

Apostasy

2007-01-10T12:18:00.000-08:00

The serenity of the Center! Simplicity, balance. All things equal, thrilling to the echoes of a golden ratio, precursor to all that is worthy of worship. As pure as numbers, the initial state bears witness to nothing less than itself. And how plainly this serves as a metaphor for the Self. Such then is the pain—the self-effacement—of the betrayal visible in this figure.

The points that stretch and deform and finally puncture the sheltering sphere as surely as arrows pierce the flesh—caltrops for the hooves of Heaven’s horses!—are the outward marks only. Beneath the scars is a kink, an imperfection, a misgrown bone so bold it nearly reeks. Surpassing even blasphemy in its enormity, the twisting seeks to claim territory already bequeathed, like a raven atop the Temple. Walk away, heretic! We’ll be the better for your absence!

The renouncer inherits a ruined kingdom.

Crux

2006-12-29T00:02:00.000-08:00

Here, the elemental state that is the crossroads: black balanced by white, lie by truth. The basic condition in which first we wander, and only later overcome. Our nature is seeking, if only seeking the possibility of the possible.

Doorways yawn, gateways lure, and pathways emerge from Mind. This figure—with its mystery breeched by the prisms of revelation—is a representation of the inner landscape. Only in the center, the Garden, can be found the solidity of the four-sided, the earth-force. Beyond, perched in the jaws of Dilemma, there to be pierced by doubt and hesitation, we choose because—chastened by the clarity borne by the exigency of the universe—we must. Such a ticklish paradox! Choice driven by choicelessness. All seekers face the darkness, redeemed by oases of illumination. Therein lies the challenge of wayfinding—to find the destination that can only exist after our arrival.

To choose is to die and, dying, to transcend.

Piety

2006-12-10T15:40:00.000-08:00

Notice the aims of Man’s every urge: a cathedral, an Alhambra distilled to its essence. And here, a cruel geometry that men might worship, and, worshipping it, draw Rule into their veins. But while Rule can bind Flesh, it cannot guide Spirit. The pious harken to Example.

But what exists beyond the strictures of the tabernacle? Outside the shrine’s walls—and its niches, naves, and ranks of cardinals—the Eternal lies in wait. The Eternal, defined by absence as much as presence (represented here by the nothingness floating, ghostly, within a field of nothing) bears the unanswerable force of impending judgment, and more order than all the orders of Man.

The heart’s command speaks louder than any Church.

Haruspex

2006-11-28T17:00:00.000-08:00

The innocent heart wrested from its sanctum. The belly laid waste, and for what, save love of gore? Here, we look down on the altar to see the heathen’s crooked hopes, as well as his hubris. As though prophecy arranged itself in flesh and blood for him to see!

The theme of this figure is savagery. This is sacrifice, indeed, but not holy sacrifice—the One offered in consideration of the many. No, this is barbarism: the dumb brute slaughtered for the supposed wisdom contained in its viscera. The curving black forks—splinters of clavicle, scapula, rib—offer mute testimony to those who shiver for want of grace. To the over-reacher, the omen-monger, sky-watcher, shabby “priest.” (Ha!) The wavering, parallel inscriptions are empty repetition, epitaphs for illiterates.

Wrong questions lead to wrong answers.

Fallacy

2006-11-21T14:51:00.001-08:00

The eye of a storm, a whirlpool that drags men under, the ring of fire. These circular motifs are bearers of tragedy. Beware those who liken life itself unto a circle.

The falsity of the metaphor is apparent, and the figure underscores this conclusion. The cycle—with its endless repetition of anthropocentric stages and achievements—bears no resemblance to the true nature of existence. Redemption is a destination, not a way-station. The circle admits no endpoint, hence, no final reward. Time, like grace, is an arrow, and it points only one way. It is bestowed, not merely experienced. The past might be prologue; regardless, it will ever remain past. The only wheel with the power presumed by this figure is the wheel upon which the disbeliever’s body was broken that his soul might be mended.

Hell is a circle. Salvation is a lifeline.

Messenger

2006-11-07T16:34:00.000-08:00

The soul’s journey to its ultimate post-life? An enticement to embrace a pan-naturism? Answers prove elusive as the Wander continues. We strain to hear echoes of the Word.

It is as though a guide has led a reluctant protagonist through realms both inherent and elemental—witness the water and flame forms, repeated as a rebuke of nihilism. At last the quest denied is taken up! At last, action is initiated! The messenger—communer with the Outer and the Inner—is the spark, the instigation of motion: O, Impetus! Seen in this light, the entire figure takes on the appearance not of aura, formless energy, but instead of a compass rose, that which orients.

We are never alone who listen for the Voice.

Sorcery

2006-10-26T15:41:00.000-07:00

Such simplicity? But see! The geometry is warped, betraying even numbers. Peer into the talismanic Eye (of Dischord, of Faithlessness) and feel the obscene tug of “magic.”

Necromancy—the use of the dead for divination and influence—is symbolized by the four stark spurs that lead to the corners of time and place, ravening with imagined power. Surrounding them is a web of perverted faith, sagging under the weight of its heresy. Attend in particular to the negative forms (candle flames? hatchet blades?) and the malice they imply.

The Sorceror’s gaze looks inward, seeing nothing.

Mammon

2006-10-16T20:44:00.000-07:00

Has the seduction of greed ever been more plainly put? Here, all is guile, all is sheen, the captivating image in the mirror.

The pervasive theme is overabundance, an offensive visual gluttony. Note the arcs, bedotted so as to resemble kingly ermine or heraldic gold; the solid circles—coins—at ordinal and cardinal points of the perimeter, the gaudy humps round as bulging pockets. And at its heart: an asymmetry that could only represent corruption, of the Soul, of Nature, of Possibility. The diagonal axis at the center reveals a structure incapable of stability, a spirit incapable of grace.

The coin is Man’s heaviest millstone.

Colony

2006-10-13T10:05:00.000-07:00

The three basic principles of life: symbiosis, parasitism, and hierarchy. Note the dominance of these patterns throughout the spectrum of Organism. Volvox, mycelium, hive—all require an adherence to a common structure.

The figure’s trilateral symmetry is especially significant as a statement on humanity’s contemporary reality. Three (3)—the sacred numeral—permeates the figure, and its multiplicands provide an almost musical argument in favor of mutualism: Man as Symbiont. I, you, we.

To be is to exist, to be with is to live.

Canon

2006-10-09T17:05:00.000-07:00

Our footprints provide the best guide. And only by recitation and convocation are we permitted to enter into the next Realm.

The watchword of this figure is system. The connotation is architectural in its accessibility: The universe is inherently habitable. Is this Nest? Palace? The mandalic quality reveals the salience of place within any system of rite. Everything here—the structure, the filigree—gives further evidence that history is servant to future as much as scribe to past.

Memory is the foundation for future action.

Abyss

2006-10-09T12:58:00.000-07:00

Dissolution, a depletion of Spirit. The mockery of iconography is informed by the renunciation of sacrament. The land of the crippled opens its necrotic arms and confers unending mutilation.

This figure represents nothing less than hatred, foul condemnation, and abject misery. No pattern, no structure, no symmetry. No basis. No principle. No foundation. Nothing to offer redemption. The lack of order is so extreme as to be disorder.

The Beast is Chaos.

Telesis

2006-10-05T15:48:00.000-07:00

Man's aspirational impulse! The indications—signs—all looking outward, all pointing beyond, toward transcendence. In this sense, the figure is a paean to civilization as the machine of Hope.

From the center—a hive of digital binarity—to the forms that push against the perimeter (as though forcing expectation to greater dimension), we are left to contemplate a utopian future for humanity. However, the alternating solid and skeletal shapes warn against complacency by insisting that in a binary reality—On/OFF—plenty stands alongside plague.

The polity is the enemy of entropy.

Primordium

2006-10-02T20:55:00.000-07:00

A blind sifting, an unmindful search for nutriment, stimulus-triggers guide the Primitive. Do we dare recognize ourselves in this brainless grasping, in this reflexive grope? Take note: even the body primeval allows the soul to inhabit its withered spaces.

This figure reminds us that Mouth and Orifice—the Stomata, the Spiracle—are fundaments, the sine qua non of Being. The rigid articulation of forms, the acanthine overtones, connote an almost unicellular innocence. Unlike previous specimens, the only symmetry on offer here is bilateral, fitting for this portrait of the all-Alpha.

All beginnings are small.

Doctrine

2006-09-29T15:08:00.000-07:00

Tacit understanding—of Self, of Universe, of the myriad ways they intersect—surrounds us as a fragile halo. Right action moves along the framework like current down a wire.

This piece deals with the nature of ethical behavior. Far from presenting a constraint on action, the underpinnings, the scaffolding of Code, offer the opportunity for limitless invention. Joy becomes possible—witness the eightfold figure in the center—when the methods for obtaining it are explicit.

Rule gives birth to vision.

Ego

2006-09-28T18:39:00.000-07:00

The assembled might of Man gathers unto itself a hollow authority. When Man mounts the turrets of his defense, what has he left untended?

The dominant element of this figure is an out-thrust dynamism. Reminiscent of armor, battlements, and stockades, the dentate forms are as weapons. This fearsome grandeur is nominally in service of protecting the Citadel (the self). In the end, the projection of strength is clearly shown for what it is: a stance, a pose.

Eventually, every sword pierces its owner.

Stasis

2006-09-26T09:25:00.000-07:00

The Spirit's goal: a tranquility possible only through the mastery of contradictory forces. Grace flows when positive and negative are held in one hand.

A perpetual expansion and recession offers both ecological and personal insight. Inner and outer tensions perfectly maintain balance. The rings of pyramidal forms (cenotaphs?) orbit the solid center, pulling and pushing simultaneously, held in exquisite opposition by their own metaphysical gravity.

Change defeats change.

Devotion

2006-09-25T09:46:00.000-07:00

When the Idol gazes, His gaze is refracted through the prisms of the assembled. But, like mirrors, the exalting chorus has solidity: They are pledged, not surrendered and not taken.

This figure presents a veritable manual on the way of the Disciple: the compliance of the curved lines suggests subsumption of the self. But note that the sacrifice is not utter. The blank spaces—the floral forms—provide a bold counterpoint, a representation of Will, of an offering unmade.

True devotion is never total.

Insigniae

2006-09-24T10:36:00.000-07:00

By the act of assigning, of ordering, reality is warped. Emblematic of this distortion, these symbols of a chain of command (chain of Being), create false need.

Tokens of class and power—of any human-ordered system, any orthodoxy—including these small, practically featureless figures, deceive. Their simplicity is their danger. “You are here.” They create distance by their very nature as bearers of iconicity.

Identity conceals as it reveals.

Sphinx

2006-09-23T18:48:00.000-07:00

Intentionality and obstacle collide, buckling expectation. Thus, the pilgrim must confront the central riddle of his pilgrimage: Where lies the destination? In the world or in the Self?

A labyrinthine figure—suggesting a hierarchy of possibility—faces us as we comprehend the path. At its heart, where directions converge, square within square within square represents Enigma. Continuing, each node—each station—is a milestone. Supplication seeks a clue. Which way? Is progress illusion? An Eye watches, unblinking.

The Path creates the pilgrim as the pilgrim creates his Path.

Cosmology

2006-09-22T13:50:00.000-07:00

A central spark illuminates the form, resulting in an evocation of supranatural space. The tessellation of inner and outer existence is both cause and effect of Consciousness.

This figure bespeaks a material density and a metaphysical expansiveness, much as ripples on water—dependent as they are on a physical medium—transcend their context. The triangles—stretched, deformed (de-formed!)—provide the underpinning and the ornament. The effect is to reinforce the suffusion of matter and meaning.

In a universe of reverberating energies, all are welcome.

Nexus

2006-09-21T09:47:00.000-07:00

The invisible is made visible as the underlying structure of the form moves from background to foreground. Is this a challenge to faith, or its very embodiment?

In this figure, the tacit becomes plain and thereby recapitulates the act of creation—all acts of creation! And note the oblique exisiting in harmony with the grid. Each cedes ground to the other. What appears to be formless is seen as the tension between rectilinear and diagonal. (Man vs. Spirit.) The abundant connections emerge as an earthly dazzle. (A paradox?)

He that nurtures Pattern banishes doubt.

Propagation

2006-09-20T13:29:00.000-07:00

The Eternal resides within an intrinsically natural context. Vibration is the force that carries information to the edges of the knowable universe.

The figure's dominant motif: the fanned lines—the vein forms—cast from the inner to the outer ring. Everything this implies—kinship, culture, translation of Self to Other, the Self's discovery of itself—is held in balance. The movement of the piece is apparent, from the perpendicularity of the central element to the oceanic nature of the cardinal foci.

Transmission is a trinity: Sender, Receiver, Message.

Organicity

2006-09-19T16:34:00.000-07:00

Within the form lies the seed of its own rebirth. And in that concept lies the singular Body. Straining within the confines of the seed, life pushes in every direction, limning the sphere of being.

Take note of the elements used in this specimen: in the center, the Inscrutable. Beyond that, a cross-hatched nimbus reveals that which cannot be revealed. But bursting from that central enigma, that instantiation of The Mystery, round forms. Round! The very kernel of life, of the feminine, of The Real! The shape of encapsulation, the something-in-the-midst-of-nothing, the renunciation of absence!

Flying from the center, The Thing cannot be denied. The Thing is all.

Apotheosis

2006-09-19T16:03:00.000-07:00

In its disarming simplicity emerging from disorder, its overall outfoldedness, this figure describes the quintessence of the Divine.

Note the rotated—that is, marked—central figure, in this case a square embedded within a hollow square. The degree of rotation of the outer feature is small enough to be overlooked. Indeed, its effect on the overall symmetry is practically nonexistent. One level from the true center, the hollow square's corner spurs have righted themselves, achieving perfect alignment, obliterating every vestige of the Flaw.

Within the opening of every Flower, a universe trembles.