Patterns...

Patterns in nature always intrigue me - from the bark on a tree to the strange synchronicities we experience in our dreaming and waking lives. Lately I have been having a recurring theme in my dreams about clothes - needing to wear certain clothes for certain situations. Now I am looking at these photographs of magnolia, rhododendron and sassafrass leaves I took a couple weeks ago - their patterns seem to mimic, among other things, highways and byways and the subdivisions between them. And at the same time they are the garments the trees are shedding as we pass from warmer to cooler, from active to more subdued time of year. Looking closely at the patterns within the sassafrass leaves, I am drawn into their spaces and shapes and am inclined to blow them up and print them out and put them around me. There is fluidity in the pattern here, as if there is a progression and order within it, and as if I might see movement in here if I continue looking - one of the white dots in a green area might march into the next quadrant and talk to another white dot in a red or yellow area, maybe tell it that the time has come to shift to the next hue...