Rhythms.

Rhythms are many places.

Your body is an assembly awash with rhythms.

Some of the faster body rhythms include heartbeats and eye blinks. Breath rhythms are a little longer. Cycles of hunger and thirst occur multiple times daily. Sleep cycles are yet further apart. A host of rhythms are circadian, controlled by the 24 hour cycle of light and dark. Yet further apart are hormonal cycles, like the 28-day pattern of menstruation. Then come seasonal and yearly patterns.

In music, in sound, in percussion, is rhythm.

There are rhythms in language, and in poetry, in words.

There is Tennessee.

Tintinnabulation, too.

And Mississippi.

The other day I had to do some waiting. So I spent about a half an hour “waiting” with the camera. One of the things I was thinking about, not always overtly consciously, was rhythm.

Symmetrical rhythm in the fabric of a waiting room chair. I couldn’t stay in the waiting room for very long. The weather was too exciting, sun was coming, and I could still wait while walking and looking.

Slabby base rhythms in a stack of bluestone paver pieces.

Ascending sunny steps repeat rising planes.

Pilings and slips under swirling skies.

The Victorian design sensibility knew the worth of repetition, variety and contrast. The eye likes to have big, medium, and small. A good landscape has far, middle, and distant. Music is better when it has loud, middle and soft intensities. Rhythm backs up music. You dance to rhythm.

Five hemispheres are the rhythmic basis for this reflective self-portrait. Five is not our customary “western” rhythm, but it’s a nice rhythm, nonetheless.
Think “one-two one-two-three”.
Five can really rock.
Think Brubeck’s “Take Five”.

This day, this day that I write this, is too nice not to go outside.

Time to take five, I guess.

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