Geometries of Emptiness

The geometry of the Universe, it's inherent structure, is a dynamic entity, that deforms, ripples, twists, and, as some places, sinks. It all depends on the energy and matter that fills it. 
—Ersilia Vaudo

Near ground-level, three discrete petroglyphs in close proximity on the north side of a low canyon wall. I wonder as I kneel to take the pictures:  what, rather how, is the meaning of these deceptively simple yet unusual geometrics? Visionary? Experimental? Messages? I won’t know intent, though I sense a presence.

Susan Murphy takes us deeper: 
Who is this person who genuinely wonders, Who? as they write, or read, or walk, or talk? The vast emptiness that walks about upright in a human form—bones, flesh, hair, eyes, hands, feet—and feels waves of loneliness, desire, boredom, fear, overwhelming joy ... who is this? Easy responses die fast and something else opens up, a rich and productive form of silence that is strangely embracing and unflappable, when that question is simple and steadily held.

 

The ephemeral rock-well at the terminus of the low canyon, carved in bedrock through various ice ages past… to be continued.

NOTES
—Ersilia Vaudo in The Story of Astrophysics in Five Revolutions (2025, trans Italian)
—Susan Murphy in Red Thread Zen: humanly entangled in emptiness (2016)
—Photos:  DB, Lake County, Oregon, September 2026
—Vaudo adds, quoting American physicist John Wheeler:

"Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve.”