p r o l o g u e

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When I left our ancestral sea, across a waste of inland sands, I looked back; past an impossible distance forever extending towards the blue Argon Precambrian sky and Prokaryotic color fields of green. Some odd billion-years later and it’s still, all just a blur.

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Imagery, although, has stayed with its descendants. As a species we turned upward and outward to gaze at the heavens, there we communed with gods then theorized their dominions in the surrounding possibilities. We built instruments, charted maps, navigated ships through seas of stars, discovered continents, and a strange other people there. When we stare deep into the heart of a cold vast emptiness, we look to see what, if anything, is looking back.

Then, as now, our ability, to know what it is we are truly looking at, is limited. If what is above symbolizes our yearnings to know the mysteries of life, then what is below must be contained, in some fashion, by the question itself. Yielded through nature and the nurture of our Earth, a common experience eventually forged the origins of ancient tribes, civilizations and nations. It was from within the diversity of these cultural experience that our symbols and systems of understanding evolved. We believe ourselves to be aware, cognizant, possessing the full faculties of reason, determining meaning, recognizing potential, and appreciating its value.

The advancements in technology we see about us, today, are likely first sights of the coming paradigm shifts of the 21st Century. The very ideas of progress, under these circumstances, may exploite the very limitations of our perception. We are prompted to look deeper and deeper within the substance of lives, yet as we do, life, as we know it, becomes increasingly, more and more detached. This disconnect, which masks or, at best, unwittingly denies a crisis of the 20th Century's unrestrained social and economic behavior, if left unchecked will eventually drain the colors of our world.

This grayness manifests itself with no sense or purpose. The absence of color strips away all value. Without value one is left a naked function in a cold and unfeeling mechanism, groomed for propagation, new denizens become lost and confused within servitude to meaninglessness. If we disengaged from our intuition, institutions of learning, systems of politics and practices of worship will loose touch with the only insight into the wonder, beauty and mystery, which is our lives. We will have forgotten that within the human experience we have the power to inspire and effect change.