I have a strange personal relationship with the symbolism of bees.
Bees, with their associated goings on and the intricate structure of their hive societies are the perfect symbol of some kind of natural order in things - the rigging behind Mother Nature's Dance of the 7 veils.
At the same time I know enough to realize that this view is essentially mistaken - life is fractal, chaotic, a vast interlocking game of chance built on increasingly complicated evolving dynamic systems.
The honeycomb then is a flawed symbol - but a symbol that while being wholly wrong radiates a kind of perfection in and of itself. True or not by virtue of its sheer potency, its immediacy, it becomes a kind of tulpa - a craiggy strange attractor that parts the incoming waves a thought.
It's much like a siren song, you want to believe in the pleasures it has in store for you, but go wrongheaded and you will be torn apart by the vagaries of an uncaring universe. The temptation to reduce the world to a honeycomb, to reduce the nature of beauty itself to the golden mean has a kind of visceral appeal. We'd like to think that we understand and the bait's so fresh and sweet.
Maybe if I spend more time inspecting pollen and being slowly seduced by the delicate humming of my bee brethren I'll come across a beehive Mandelbrot set that will in a flash reveal to me the secrets of order, thought and time. Then I'll be caught up in a haze of strange events like an apiarist protagonist in some half-finished Philip K. Dick novel, a hero to the certainty that lies only in madness.
But more likely I'll gather some toast with honey, sit outside in the welcome Montreal sun, ponder and write, trying to make people laugh and trying to make sense of it all.
Bees, with their associated goings on and the intricate structure of their hive societies are the perfect symbol of some kind of natural order in things - the rigging behind Mother Nature's Dance of the 7 veils.
At the same time I know enough to realize that this view is essentially mistaken - life is fractal, chaotic, a vast interlocking game of chance built on increasingly complicated evolving dynamic systems.
The honeycomb then is a flawed symbol - but a symbol that while being wholly wrong radiates a kind of perfection in and of itself. True or not by virtue of its sheer potency, its immediacy, it becomes a kind of tulpa - a craiggy strange attractor that parts the incoming waves a thought.
It's much like a siren song, you want to believe in the pleasures it has in store for you, but go wrongheaded and you will be torn apart by the vagaries of an uncaring universe. The temptation to reduce the world to a honeycomb, to reduce the nature of beauty itself to the golden mean has a kind of visceral appeal. We'd like to think that we understand and the bait's so fresh and sweet.
Maybe if I spend more time inspecting pollen and being slowly seduced by the delicate humming of my bee brethren I'll come across a beehive Mandelbrot set that will in a flash reveal to me the secrets of order, thought and time. Then I'll be caught up in a haze of strange events like an apiarist protagonist in some half-finished Philip K. Dick novel, a hero to the certainty that lies only in madness.
But more likely I'll gather some toast with honey, sit outside in the welcome Montreal sun, ponder and write, trying to make people laugh and trying to make sense of it all.
VIEW 25 of 43 COMMENTS
kaffeine:
Oops because I wrote a comment to someone else in your journal. And since I was tired, I simply replaced it with "oops." Becasue I am a silly girl. Tee hee hee. Ahem.
zak:
i love that tree so much.. over the past 15 years, it went from a small alcove of emptiness at the bottom, to this full open hollowness that you see today. weird and cool.