Fractal Dragonography

   by Shaun Lawton 

 You got to dive deep to ride the Fractal Dragon. I mean, it doesn't just come undulating up towards and unfolding all around you in its radiant glory out of nowhere, not really, which is really rather telling, I suppose. With me, it started in 1982, when I was seventeen and subscribed to Omni magazine. I read that issue about fractals, and it captured my imagination. I think I did a report on them for a math or science class. How they resembled continental coastlines, as well as spiral galaxy and plant formations, right on down to the serrated edges of leaves, themselves similar to coastlines, in a manner that unfolds in the mind as naturally as an origami work of art. 

   By now you're not the only one beginning to get the picture, by certain degrees, we all are. Little by little the populace is affected in a combination of direct and indirect ways. The beautiful thing about the technological singularity is that it's not so important to understand how it works, as it is to realize it mirrors the patterns we've learned in life as a continuation, a shed echo of sorts, haunting the byways of our lives. To have our decaying old worlds mixed up in the steam of our waking dream is an all too common malady, I'm afraid. These demons are executed on the chopping block of time. But enough of fractal dragonography. What is it about us that can be made known? To find the answer to that, the Mandelbrot set seeks balance.  

   

 

   It sees itself in a reflection of seeing that it can't see a thing, revealing its oncoming blundering to the multi-eyed fractal dragon plunging through autumn to emerge in the spring, an explosion of variables thriving in perpetuity, alive and shining, a guiding light upon all the pioneers who have surfed the unknown into depths as of yet still unfathomed, 

to capture at the end of a tentacled grip the scope of a galaxy or an atom.   

   The fractal dragon is a shadow of an outline generated by a mathematical equation cast by the sunlight of intelligence.  It's the continually unfolding idea of a constantly ongoing phenomenon, the reaching forward to self identify becoming a look in the rearview mirror. Revealing a world codified into being from a margin without error.  Reflecting the fun house of reality we all become the heirs of. It's the hypothetical chimerical beast as much of a code as a chemical. It's charged with the insurgence at the very least of the electrical heart of the matter. It's symbolic of the dividing line in the operations of chance. It's the delineation which defines the shape of the matter at hand. A tool for remembering that endless twists may be just the beginning. Any fool can dream up dragons like an equation of mathematics. Once met eye to eye, there's no getting by the potential for turbulent self mockery. 

   

 

   When you stoop down by the riverside after dark under the bright full moon light

to see your own shadow's outline as a reflection blended into the town sky line, 

 the signals from the temples transmitted into the distant twilight echo on

for a long time to come, like the ripples on a pond during and after the rain. 

   All flow follows the rule of liquidity, having to do with the shape taken naturally after water. The molecular combination of hydrogen and oxygen is the shape of the keyhole 

that unlocks the equation of life and its inherent ability to flow forward,

as a relentless persuasion, or any other combination of iteration you care

to place before the scope laid out as a map before you: the cyber-lanes of information. 

   Fractal Dragonography, might as well call it.  It don't matter none, what they hear is how you see. We're all walking in file, along a thin line, after a glittering piece of bait from an angler's hook.  Nevermind that its grown out of our own foreheads. We are the self electrocuted unicorns from our own dream. Their antennae were the conduit we mistook for poacher's game, when it turned out to be the umbilical cord that held together the forest. Even the smallest micro-particles of water got carried out to the farthest away and driest of places. The glittering spiderweb mosaic lit up the darkness in a diamantine veil, over-shrouded. With the guideline of imagination, this map can help us toward any achievement in conscientious auto-evolution (to be cont.)...

Acoustic Interiors

 by  shaun lawton 

     

digital art mashup by s. lawton & c. carter       

  Our focus as individual human beings seems keyed to differentiating wavelengths or frequencies generated from our own biological OS. It seems to be a matter of the ratio of our perception, from exterior toward interior reflection. We know many people are born on the spectrum.  

   I am near-sighted, and have worn corrective lenses since the age of fifteen. This near-sightedness seems related to my mental acuity and perspective; a reflection of it. I have always had difficulty as a creative writer in the "nuts and bolts" aspect of plot construction and, to an extent, characterization.  

   It seems to me that I am attuned to the "inward" world that silently shuttles beneath the surface skin of things. The more I focus, the deeper into this hidden landscape I manage to see. Distances become blurry. I'm all about focusing in on the microscopic elements of our evolving world.  

   I once considered that I don't use words to write about things; rather, words use me to express themselves. As if I'm a conduit in an eternal line of codified programming embedded within our dna. The more I write, the deeper within the interior I go. Almost as if I'm bent on breaking a code. 

   I've glimpsed hidden clues winking in the mica chips protruding from the surface of things. I've noticed recurring patterns out of the corner of my mind's eye. I'm compelled to write these developing notions down. As if this line of thought were an umbilical connection to the cosmos. 

   As if the universe has been compelling me to get these concepts out there for others to latch onto, despite the fact I write my creative visions for no audience but myself. As if I may or may not be the only one in existence, or at least one of the very few, with a focus on the interior world. 

   Depending on whether I'm to be preaching to the choir, if I'm not the only one, or necessarily attempting to toss a lifeline to any in the crowd at risk of being drowned whose ordinarily exteriorized mode of thinking could benefit from these insights. As if my own lonesome subset needs to grow like any other plant or life form.