\u201cThe changing of bodies into light, and light into bodies, is very conformable to the course of Nature, which seems delighted with transmutations.\u201d \u2014Sir Isaac Newton<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cMy position is perfectly definite. Gravitation, motion, heat, light, electricity, and chemical action are one and the same object in various forms of manifestation.\u201d \u2014Robert Mayer<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cScience is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis.\u201d \u2014Karl Kraus<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWhat makes a painting good is light. Light is essential to any good painting. You can\u2019t have a good painting without light. You can paint anything you want as long as it has light.\u201d \u2014Davyd Whaley<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n In the last months of his life, Davyd Whaley worked on a remarkable series of paintings, which he called the Sky Series. I have pondered them in the months since his death. They reflect his fascination with light, energy, color, and the deeper reaches of space. In fact I think one might argue that he was already moving away from his connection to this planet. He was moving into the mystery; his preoccupations were no longer with the dense manifestation of matter, but with the ways in which light defines our existence, makes us see objective forms, and the true nature of our very physical presence.<\/span><\/p>\n Davyd was a genius. He didn\u2019t always have common sense, but he had an extremely high IQ. After he died, I found several pages of mathematical equations in his desk. I have no idea what they mean but \u2014 between these equations, the writings in his journals, and his final paintings \u2014 it\u2019s clear to me that he was trying to make sense of the universe; a task finally difficult for all of us.<\/span><\/p>\n His paintings have names like Wave Length, Horizon, Nebula, Grand Nebula (Keyhole), Diamond in the Sky, White Dwarf<\/i>, and my favorite is called Reinventing En Plein Air, aka Scattering of Light<\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Light scattering can be defined as the deflection of a ray from a straight path, for example by irregularities in the waves, particles, or in the interface between the two. Most objects that one sees are visible due to light scattering from their surfaces. This is our primary mechanism of physical observation.<\/span><\/p>\n REINVENTING EN PLEIN AIR, aka SCATTERING OF LIGHT \u00a0—\u00a0<\/span><\/em>\u201cThe dispersal of a beam of particles or of radiation into a range of directions as a result of physical interactions.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n II<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIf there be light, then there is darkness; if cold, heat; if height, depth; if solid, fluid; if hard, soft; if rough, smooth; if calm, tempest; if prosperity, adversity; if life, death.\u201d \u2014Pythagoras<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWhat is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside? Can you take them to their places? Do you know the paths to their dwellings?\u201d \u2014Job 38:19-20<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n It has now been a year. Davyd died either late in the evening of October 14, 2014 or early on the 15th. I\u2019m not sure which date is correct and the coroner could only narrow it down to a span of hours. <\/span><\/p>\n Everyday I see pictures of my beloved Davyd on the Facebook feature that shows where we were a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, and I recognize such a change in his face. In the late summer it\u2019s clear I was losing him — it’s so evident now in the photos. He was transforming right in front of me. He lost so much weight and seems a shadow of his former self. There\u2019s a sadness and resignation in his eyes, perhaps because he realized something was happening that was moving us apart, and we loved each other very much. It’s painful to look at these pictures, but I continue to look, because I want to understand. <\/span><\/p>\n And there are no answers except that it was beyond either of our controls. Something else was at work in his psyche and it was pulling him away from me, just as surely as leaves fall off the tree in autumn. <\/span><\/p>\n I keep coming back to the analogy of the black hole. The burning star no longer has enough fuel to resist the gravity pushing in on it. The star collapses inward, and perhaps into some alternative dimension.<\/span><\/p>\n WHITE DWARF \u00a0—\u00a0<\/span><\/em>\u201cThe material in a white dwarf no longer undergoes fusion reactions, so the star has no source of energy. As a result, it cannot support itself by the heat generated by fusion against gravitational collapse, but is supported only by electron degeneracy pressure, causing it to be extremely dense.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n III<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe collective or star referred to as Black Hole is neither dead nor gone. Its focus of consciousness is just temporarily redirected into other dimensional coordinates that preclude its appearance in your space\/time continuum. Your scientists think of it as being sealed off behind its own event horizon. In fact it is human perception that is sealed off behind their current consciousness horizon.\u201d \u2014Elia Wise<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cDo you realize that if you fall into a black hole, you will see the entire future of the Universe unfold in front of you in a matter of moments and you will emerge into another space-time created by the singularity of the black hole you just fell into?\u201d \u2014Neil deGrasse Tyson<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n At the end of his physical life, Davyd suffered severe mental disturbances. His headaches and insomnia became out of control. Noises bothered him, sounds bothered him, smells bothered him. It felt as though he\u2019d become completely uncomfortable in his physical shell. It almost seemed his body didn’t fit him anymore, in the same way that we outgrow clothes. <\/span><\/p>\n He disappeared from our house the last two days of his life, checking into a hotel a couple of miles away. I was panicked and not sleeping because I was so worried as I tried to find him. By the morning of October 14 I had tracked him to the hotel by credit card, but the management kept denying he was there. I called repeatedly, asking if he\u2019d checked out or might have used another name, but they kept insisting he wasn\u2019t there and would give me no other information.<\/span><\/p>\n During the night of the 14th I believe Davyd\u2019s energy came to me. I’d been dozing, as I hadn’t slept in two nights, and then I suddenly sat up, as though shocked by an electrical bolt. I felt his presence very strongly and I knew something awful had happened. Though there is no way to prove it, I feel absolutely certain it was the moment he died. But whether that was late on the 14th or the early hours of the 15th I cannot say. Those hours are now a fog in my mind. I only know that after driving to the hotel in the middle of the night, finding his car, and finally appealing to the police to help me with the recalcitrant hotel staff, we discovered he was already dead.<\/span><\/p>\n WAVE LENGTH —\u00a0<\/span><\/em>\u201cIn physics, the wavelength of a sinusoidal wave is the spatial period of the wave\u2014the distance over which the wave’s shape repeats, and the inverse of the spatial frequency. The range of wavelengths or frequencies for wave phenomena is called a spectrum. The name originated with the visible light spectrum but now can be applied to the entire electromagnetic spectrum as well as to a sound spectrum or vibration spectrum.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n IV<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be borne.\u201d <\/b><\/span><\/em>\u2014William Styron<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cKilling oneself is, anyway, a misnomer. We don’t kill ourselves. We are simply defeated by the long, hard struggle to stay alive. When somebody dies after a long illness, people are apt to say, with a note of approval, \u2018He fought so hard.\u2019 And they are inclined to think, about a suicide, that no fight was involved, that somebody simply gave up. This is quite wrong.\u201d \u2014Sally Brampton<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n I am annoyed by those who would suggest that Davyd\u2019s actions were selfish or weak. People who say such things reveal how little they know about mental illness. They are ignorant of depression and the physical repercussions it presents. Their comments are callous and glib \u2014 demonstrating a perspective about life that lacks true empathy or understanding.<\/span><\/p>\n Even in my survivor support groups there are those who talk about suicide as though our loved ones had a choice in the matter. But in most cases I don’t believe that. In this<\/i> case, there was something happening with Davyd, with his consciousness, with the chemicals in his brain, that was no longer within his conscious ability to fight. Earlier in my life I have seen people succumb to other kinds of illness, more overtly physical diseases, like pneumonia or cancer. They grew too weak to fight it; there was a point of giving up to processes that are beyond conscious decision-making. <\/span><\/p>\n In those kinds of cases we don’t say things like, “Why was this person so selfish? Why did this person choose to die of cancer?” They didn\u2019t, of course. They succumbed to forces that were beyond their control.<\/span><\/p>\n I have come to feel that when people truly reach the point where they are willing to override their own survival instinct, then there\u2019s very little anyone can do. I have talked to many suicide survivors, read many accounts, read a lot about mental illness. It seems to be progressive, like a virus, and one of the foremost indications of a truly suicidal personality is distorted thinking. Something mysterious is happening with the brain, something that is beyond our present understanding. <\/span><\/p>\n There is no doubt that my spouse Davyd knew how much I loved him, and yet at the end that wasn’t enough to pull him back. I have berated myself, repeatedly throughout the last twelve months, wondering if there was something else I might have said or done that might have changed things. But I have come to realize it just wasn\u2019t the case. <\/span><\/p>\n In my survivor groups, I\u2019ve seen that so many of us were hyper-vigilant about the health and well-being of our loved ones who suffered mental duress. So many of us felt unable to even let down our guard for a second. And yet, in the end, our hyper-vigilance did no good. One of the hardest things about grief is coming to grips with one\u2019s own personal limitations. Our loved ones were ill; they did not have the inner energy to sustain, and there was finally nothing we could do to save them. But I believe those we\u2019ve lost to suicide knew we did the very best that we could for them. And our love endures.<\/span><\/p>\n HORIZON —\u00a0<\/span><\/em>\u201cIn general relativity, an event horizon is a boundary in spacetime beyond which events cannot affect an outside observer. In layman’s terms, it is defined as \u2018the point of no return,\u2019 i.e. the point at which the gravitational pull becomes so great as to make escape impossible. An event horizon is most commonly associated with black holes. Light emitted from inside the event horizon can never reach the outside observer.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n V<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind, but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature.\u201d \u2015 Gabriel Garc\u00ed\u00ada M\u00e1rquez<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cLife is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.\u201d <\/b><\/span><\/em>\u2015 Ralph Ellison<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n We look for order in our lives, and we like to think that we have control. But we don’t. I’ll be sixty years old this fall. My body doesn’t respond as it once did. It’s harder to do certain things. And each time I have difficulty with something that used to be easy, I try to remember that Davyd struggled so hard towards mental health \u2014 through repeated head injuries, several trips to the emergency room, a couple of near death experiences, numerous seizures, unbearable migraines \u2014 and finally things became too difficult for him. <\/span><\/p>\n I feel nothing but compassion for Davyd, and his struggle. And I can only find peace when I accept the fact that I will never be able to completely understand; anymore than I can understand why some people get sick with cancer and others do not; why cactuses survive easily and orchids don’t; why some organisms adapt to their surroundings and others perish.<\/span><\/p>\n A friend recently asked me if I was angry at God. It was such an odd question to me, as though in any conception of “God” there would be a God that owes me something. And furthermore, in any case, what would I be angry about? That my life has not unfolded exactly the way I thought it should? Is there anyone whose life has happened without pain, without sadness and difficulty? Isn’t our shared pain the very thing that connects us to the rest of humanity? And I thought, how can I be angry? I had such a wonderful, fulfilling relationship, for many years, in spite of an encroaching mental illness. I am grateful for every single day of that journey, the highs and the lows, and there were many of both. Yet all of our experiences brought us closer together.<\/span><\/p>\n INTERIOR RED —\u00a0<\/span><\/em>\u201cRed giants are stars that have exhausted the supply of hydrogen in their cores and switched to thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen in a shell surrounding the core. However, their outer envelope is lower in temperature, giving them a reddish-orange hue. Despite the lower energy density of their envelope, red giants are many times more luminous than the Sun because of their great size.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n VI<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhat hurts you blesses you. Darkness is your candle.\u201d \u2014Rumi<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.\u201d \u2014Frederich Nietzsche<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.\u201d \u2014Og Mandino<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n This year has been hard for me, harder than I can adequately express. People say to me, \u201cIt looks like you\u2019re doing well. It\u2019s good to see you smile.\u201d And I nod and say thanks. But on most days I feel enormous pain. I long for Davyd\u2019s presence so very, very much. It\u2019s awful and unrelenting. It\u2019s hard and it\u2019s arduous, like hiking uphill in bad weather. But it feels that this is what it must be right now. How could it be anything but?<\/span><\/p>\n I miss everything about Davyd, but most especially the shape and value he gave to my life. I miss his company and conversation; his intelligence, his gentleness, and his tenderness; his humor and his sweet, kind smile. He gave me so much confidence \u2014 he made me believe all things were possible \u2014 and he made me feel so very loved. I have never been happier than I was in the years I was with him. He made me understand the nature of true spirituality \u2014 true, unconditional love that goes beyond what can even be talked about. I appreciated everything about my life more because he was in it, to bear witness with me. He was the most extraordinary person I\u2019ve ever known.<\/span><\/p>\n And now I am alone, and learning who I am without him. I struggle, every day, trying to figure out what\u2019s important to me now. It\u2019s often very hard. I have little patience with superficiality, and those who don\u2019t want to dig deep. I can barely watch the news, with its constant exploitation of people\u2019s fears and paranoia and small-mindedness. I cringe at the platitudes of those who want to justify their own greed and self involvement; who think that life is some kind of contest in which there are victors and losers. It\u2019s such a lie.<\/span><\/p>\n But I\u2019m also full of gratitude. I have been blessed with work that engages me, and I am appreciative of my colleagues and friends, who have offered me love and support. I\u2019m grateful for the kindnesses and humor that surround me on a daily basis, and I enjoy hearing about other people\u2019s lives and the things that are important to them. I share in their struggles and in their joys. We\u2019re all in the same soup. We are all at the effect of loss. We all suffer and must find meaning in our suffering.<\/span><\/p>\n Nevertheless the pain of Davyd\u2019s absence always waits for me at the end of every day, when I return to my solitude. I confront a blank horizon when I raise my head to look at the future. My existence abides on an existential knife blade. I am constantly asking myself, why are we here? What is the best way to use my remaining time?<\/span><\/p>\n So my life is a constant circle of the light and the dark: the most extreme and the most mundane; the comic and the tragic; the beautiful and the difficult. It is both.<\/span><\/p>\n NEBULA —\u00a0<\/span><\/em>\u201cIn these regions the formations of gas, dust, and other materials “clump” together to form larger masses, which attract further matter, and eventually will become massive enough to form stars. The remaining materials are then believed to form planets and other planetary system objects.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n VII<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe Uses Of Sorrow —<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n (In my sleep I dreamed this poem)<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Someone I loved once gave me<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n a box full of darkness.<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n It took me years to understand<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n that this, too, was a gift.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>\u2014Mary Oliver<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cOne does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.\u201d \u2014Carl Jung<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n This last year, it\u2019s been difficult to focus on anything but the dark; I wander there in the deep shadows; in the sad thoughts and the memories of the very best person I ever knew in this world. <\/span><\/p>\n I actually find comfort there, because when you explore the dark you release yourself from fear. There are no monsters hiding in the blackness anymore. There is no longer anything that can harm me. The worst has already happened. <\/span><\/p>\n A dark room now actually comforts me. We turn off the lights to go to sleep, to travel in our dreamscapes. And Davyd comes to me sometimes in my dreams, and when he does I\u2019m always surprised, and relieved, to see him. \u201cPlease don\u2019t leave again,\u201d I say, and he answers, \u201cWhere would I go? I am right here.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n And I believe him. I wake up and move into the light again, and I feel him with me everywhere, almost more connected than we were in life (if that\u2019s possible.)<\/span><\/p>\n So perhaps there is beauty in exploring the dark. I\u2019ve realized you can see further in the night than in the daylight. You can see into the recesses of the universe, just as in Davyd\u2019s paintings. I look up at the stars and I remember that we are small and passing, and yet we also all know there is something that is constant if we are quiet enough to listen. And that realization liberates me.<\/span><\/p>\n GRAND NEBULA (KEYHOLE) —\u00a0<\/span><\/em>\u201cThe bright reds and yellows of this nebula represent gasses that have been heated by nearby stars to the point where they give off light. The dark clouds consist of cold gas molecules and dust. These clouds may be undergoing gravitational collapse to form small clusters of stars.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n VIII<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cTo Nature nothing can be added; from Nature nothing can be taken away; the sum of her energies is constant, and the utmost man can do in the pursuit of physical truth, or in the applications of physical knowledge, is to shift the constituents of the never-varying total. The law of conservation rigidly excludes both creation and annihilation. Waves may change to ripples, and ripples to waves; magnitude may be substituted for number, and number for magnitude; asteroids may aggregate to suns, suns may resolve themselves into flora and fauna, and floras and faunas melt in air: the flux of power is eternally the same. It rolls in music through the ages, and all terrestrial energy \u2014 the manifestations of life as well as the display of phenomena \u2014 are but the modulations of its rhythm.\u201d \u2014John Tyndall<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThe tendency of modern physics is to resolve the whole material universe into waves, and nothing but waves. These waves are of two kinds: bottled-up waves, which we call matter, and unbottled waves, which we call radiation or light. If annihilation of matter occurs, the process is merely that of unbottling imprisoned wave-energy and setting it free to travel through space. These concepts reduce the whole universe to a world of light, potential or existent, so that the whole story of its creation can be told with perfect accuracy and completeness in the six words: \u2018God said, Let there be light.\u2019\u201d \u2014Sir James Jeans<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n If we acknowledge that we are essentially energy, and that energy doesn’t die, then doesn’t it make sense that the same energy which animated the physical shell of our loved ones would be absorbed into the things around us, and even within our own selves? Doesn’t it make sense that the energy that existed as the love between us takes a larger form? <\/span><\/p>\n When I say that I carry Davyd within me, I mean that in a very literal sense. It is the scattering of light. I feel that I have absorbed his energy within me; the same energy that was always the great affection that existed between us; and my dog has absorbed that energy too, as have my cats, and his friends, and also the birds that fly around me. <\/span><\/p>\n As anyone who knew him will tell you, Davyd\u2019s energy was generous and soulful and beautiful and expansive. I can\u2019t help but believe it continues in every single thing I encounter, in every reflection off every surface around me.<\/span><\/p>\n I have heard theories and ideas that suggest the world of spirit often communicates through electricity. I cannot speak to the objective truth of that, but I can say definitely that the lights in my house will frequently dim for no reason and then come back on full force. If nothing else, it reminds me of Davyd and that’s enough to make me feel the continuing presence of his love.<\/span><\/p>\n If I can believe that he came to me, in that moment of his physical death, and that I knew so definitively something had happened, it’s not that big a stretch to think that he still comes, in gentler, warmer ways, to reassure me that all is well; that perhaps, at last for him, he’s free of the illness, the difficulty that made it hard for him to be in his body. I choose to believe his spirit is bigger now, because it includes all that he loved; he is the very light that he so loved and looked for in his paintings. And if I can receive that love, and see that light, then I feel a sense of peace descend.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/normanbuckley.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/Sky-Series-Reinventing-in-Plein-Air.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n