Amorphous Ruminations

  "Be you.  Do you.  For you." I found this quote online.  It's attributed to ourmindfullife.com. Today is the second anniversary of the day John and I adopted one of our cats, Loki.  He is now nine years old.  This household would not be complete without him. I made this fractal on November 11, 2021.

 "Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It is already tomorrow in Australia." ~Charles Shulz

  "Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything." ~Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) While it's not everyone's cup of tea, abstract art is my favorite style of art, and one of the many reasons I love it so much is that there are few rules to making it.  It doesn't matter if the piece is imperfect.  There are no judgments.  It can be made intuitively and it flows from the very core of our being. There is little in the way of planning when I sit down to create art.  I don't think very much about it, I just do it.  When I make fractals, I use a lot of trial and error.  When I make more traditional forms of digital art, I let my instincts guide me.  I explore, experiment, and play.  It is this method that helps me the most, mentally. I really don't have any goals in mind when I create.  I make art for the purpose of making art.  It is the creation of it that gives me the most benefits.  Secondary to that, I like sharing my ar

  I've been exploring other forms of art.  I've been making fractals since 2005, and while I'll never get bored with making them, I've decided recently that I'd like to try something new.  The image above is mine.  I'd like to make some abstract art.  I will be watching and reading some tutorials on how to do this form of art.  Also, if anyone knows of any software for creating art, please let me know.  I will be trying Krita and ArtRage.  I already have Corel Paintshop Pro 2021 Ultimate.  I'm open to ideas and I'd love help, instruction, and ideas on making abstract art, or really any kind of digital art.  I'm especially interested in tutorials or guidance.  Thank you.  In addition to the fractal art that I post on this website, I will now be posting other forms of digital art.  I hope you enjoy it.

  "The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you." ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson

"Mathematics is as much an aspect of culture as it is a collection of algorithms."  ~ Carl Boyer I suffer from insomnia on a regular basis.  I usually go two or three nights without sleep.  Then, on the third or fourth night, I get some, but not a lot.  On some nights that I have slept, I have dreamed of fractals.  I've already mentioned one such dream elsewhere on this blog.  Earlier this week, I dreamed of a beautiful fractal that had lots of mandelbrots.  Each mandelbrot was labeled with a different name of fractal software.  It was a very beautiful and colorful fractal image. (Fractal file: UltraFractal-210403-22)

  "I believe that scientific knowledge has fractal properties, that no matter how much we learn, whatever is left, however small it may seem, is just as infinitely complex as the whole was to start with.  That, I think, is the secret of the Universe." ~ Isaac Asimov, I Asimov, 1995 I had an interesting dream last night.  In reality, I haven't used the Apophysis software to make fractals since 2016 or 2017.  In my dream, I was using it again. That's it.  That's the dream.  It was short and sweet. In other news, we are now living in the condo we bought.  We moved in on January 24th.  It was delayed a little bit from the first estimated date because we didn't close on the house until December 15th.  Then, it took a while for the painters and flooring contractors to finish the place. It's a much bigger house than the apartment we were living in.  Our cats Sheba and Loki love to run around like wild cats, chasing each other around because there is so much room

  “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” ― Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol Speaking of change, a big one is coming my way.  My husband and I are buying a condo.  I've lived in apartments since 2010 when I divorced my first husband.  I hate to think of all the money I've lost on rent, money that could have been used to build equity in a house.  At the same time, I have appreciated living in an apartment because the grass is cut, the snow is shoveled, and the maintenance is taken care of.  We've been wanting a condo, but there is a shortage of them in the area we live in.  Finally, one became available, and we fell in love with it.  It will be nice because, like an apartment, the grass is cut, the snow is shoveled, and outdoor maintenance is taken care of by the homeowners' association.  This is important to me because I have MS, and need someone else to take care of the yardwork and outside home maintenance.  My h

"Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants."  ~Epictetus

“The older a wizard grows, the more silent he becomes, like a woody vine growing over time to choke a garden path, deep and full of moss and snakes, running everywhere, impenetrable.” ~ F.T. McKinstry, Crowharrow Two nights ago I had a dream that was very realistic.  I did what seemed like astral projection.  I floated through the walls and up through the ceiling.  I went up into the sky and through the atmosphere.  I was floating in space and I saw shooting stars and constellations.  Then, a magic walking stick appeared in my hand and I knew that I was a wizard.  I discovered that I could use the wand to steer my way through the stars.  This dream was very exhilarating and in the dream, I was the happiest I have been in years.  

“If you remember me, then I don’t care if everyone else forgets.” ~Haruki Murakami  

"When levitation fails, a ladder prevails." ~ Becky Stark I sometimes have dreams where I am levitating.  These are the most interesting dreams I have.  In my most recent levitation dream, a female Indian guru was waiting for me by a big lake of water.  The water was still and had a perfect reflection on it.  The guru was going to give me lessons on levitating.  When I have these dreams, I awaken feeling exhilarated.  Then the feeling turns to disappointment that in reality, I can't levitate.

“Once you begin watching spiders, you haven't time for much else.” ~E.B. White Last night I dreamed of a spider crawling up the wall.  The spider had wings.  It was moving at a very accelerated speed, much more quickly than spiders in the non-dream reality we live in.  It was so fast that I had decided - in the dream - to write a scientific paper about it.  I remember I was sitting at a computer, typing the paper, with the species' name at the top.

Armageddon in Retrospect is the book I'm currently reading. It's by one of my favorite authors, Kurt Vonnegut.  It's a book of essays and short stories about war, peace, and humanity's tendency towards violence. It has a nice introduction written by his son, who is a pediatrician.  His son, Mark Vonnegut, is also an author who wrote about his journeys with mental illness. Mark has a genetic disposition to schizophrenia.   I'm going to read his books soon, not only because he's the son of Kurt Vonnegut, but because I, too, have had my own experiences with mental illness. I met Kurt in 1996.  I was a senior in the AP literature class at Floyd Central High School in Floyd's Knobs, Indiana. We had just finished reading one of his books, Cat's Cradle, for the class. He came to talk to our class and spoke about his writing and time spent as a prisoner of war in World War II.  He was a very kind man.  I took some pictures of him and had him sign a book for me,