As we head towards the midpoint of the year and the first glorious days of June arrive in London, I'm continuing to think about symmetries in Nature. In everyday life, we often think of mirror reflections when we think of symmetries, though more generally a symmetry is a regularity, meaning something that remains the same if we make a change, for example if we move the thing along in space a little, rotate it, swap it, or do something more complex. If it still looks and behaves the same, it has a symmetry.
Symmetry offers effective perspectives when analysing nature and figuring out her patterns. It is an intiguing subject, though can be tricky and is best considered gently, by following short bursts of hard thinking with longer ones of walking around looking at other beautiful things, some of which also have symmetries. Here are four gathered in the last 48 hours:
A flower in Hyde Park.
An Alexander Calder mobile: 'Blue and Yellow Among Reds', 1965 at Dominique Lévy gallery.
Two pages from Henry Irving's marvelous book - 'How to Know the Trees'. The words and images are his.
and Pablo Neruda's 'Ode to a Star'
Appearing at night
on the terrace
of a bitter and very high skyscraper,
I could touch the nocturnal dome
and in an act of extraordinary love
I seized a sky-blue star.
The night was black
and I slipped along
the street
with the stolen star in my pocket.
Of tremulous crystal
it seemed,
and suddenly
it was
as if I was carrying
a package of ice,
or an archangel’s sword at my belt.
Fearful,
I kept it
under the bed
so nobody would discover it,
but its light
first pierced through
the woolen mattress,
then
the tiles,
the roof of my house.
The most private needs
became
uncomfortable
for me.
Always with that light
of astral acetylene
flashing like it wanted
to return to the night,
I couldn’t tend to all
my duties,
and so I forgot to pay my bills
and wound up without bread or provisions.
Meanwhile, in the street,
passerby milled around,
worldly
vendors
doubtless attracted
by the unusual brilliance
they saw coming from my window.
Then
I picked up
my star again,
carefully
wrapped it in my handkerchief,
and disguised among the crowd
I could pass unrecognized.
I went west,
to the Green River,
for there under the willows
it was calm.
I took the star of the cold night
and gently
cast it unto the waters.
And I wasn’t surprised
that it floated away
like an insoluble fish
moving
in the night of the river
its diamond body.