I stumble into it— amid the chaotic, semi-darkness of dread. During a week of wars and rumors of war, political mayhem, and monstrous weather, I glimpse, like Gretel and her brother escaping the grim fairy tale forest, a subtle map . . .

. . . in my case, a design covertly laid down for me to trace, akin to bread crumbs marking the way home. Where hope lives.

Patterns: I hunt them, love them. Armed with a camera I’m the one belly-down in the dust framing shots of thousand-year-old lichens, scaly doilies of living graffiti.

Dreamer’s the guy on a ledge seeking vistas and panoramas — ideally, with moody skies and mountains.

Twyla Tharp, eminent dancer and choreographer, believes we all like to take in the world from our preferred focal length. If I had vanity plates, they’d read Z00000M.

Recognizing patterns delights me. Discovery can redirect my angst, make me believe under-the-radar love is still at work, brilliantly choreographing possibilities. Invitations.

Or is it coincidence?

In a week of worldwide upheaval, a trail of crumbs points me toward renewed hope.

A friend forwards an announcement: the immersive Vincent van Gogh exhibit’s in town.

Dreamer and I and one of our daughters immerse: WOW! Vividly exuberant, sometimes wrenching, wall-to-wall-to-ceiling-to-floor imagery — unfolding via ingenious, computerized motion — swirls around us in glorious patterns. And vital breaks in the pattern, which further intrigues a viewer’s eye.

Family photo-op: We pose with a reproduction of “The Starry Night” as backdrop. The photo now resides on our fridge. As if we are still living inside the painting.

News items yesterday: French and Chinese researchers have analyzed van Gogh’s “The Starry Night,” including color choices, brushwork, and the roiling, celestial panorama. Turns out the images intuitively follow the mathematical theory of flow patterns, kinetic energy, and turbulence — discovered 52 years after the tormented artist expressed, in paint, these very equations.

Fourteen of the vibrant swirls and the spaces between them closely align with Russian mathematician Kolmogorov’s theory of turbulence.

“Turbulent flows are a frequent occurrence in everyday life,” Yongxiang Huang says.

We see them in time-lapse cloudscapes, a gushing hose, and river eddies.

Van Gogh’s smaller brushstrokes mirror another law related to turbulence, called Batchelor scaling, which describes the way fluids mix. Picture Joni Mitchell’s “oil on the puddles in taffeta patterns that run down the lanes.”

How do things like this happen? Vincent, in his final year, amid schizophrenia’s disordered thinking, glimpsed a truth about nature yet to be identified and explained. He followed a trail of crumbs to see where it led. Living in a psychiatric asylum at the time, he could not have framed the imagined scene for us, in our day, without his particular sensibilities and turbulence at work in the world.

Astronomer Janna Levin says “There’s no star, besides our sun, close enough to look like anything but a twinkle.” She adds, “The only reason it twinkles is because of the turbulent air ….”

That luminous shape in “The Starry Night,” near the horizon? Most likely Venus.

Turbulence enables us to perceive light. Beauty in motion. Order beneath chaos.

Our world keeps shifting like mad. Thank God for every crumb that leads us toward a brighter outlook!

Friends, the captain has turned on the seat belt sign. Turbulence ahead . . .

 

Do patterns delight you? In what ways have they altered your outlook?

LINKS: high-resolution scan by Yinxiang Ma: “The Starry Night,” accessed via Google Arts and Culture. More info here

You might also enjoy “Each Day’s Election,” from the archives

Photo, courtesy of Vincent (and exhibit personnel)