Every year Groom and I have a tradition involving the Holidays, which officially begins on June 25th. When I turn to that page in the calendar, I announce, “only six months until Christmas.” He groans, I giggle and we start our gift account. We save our sheckles, occasionally selecting what we think is the “perfect thing” for somebody along the way, but mostly we wait until December to do our shopping proper.
This is because of Thanksgiving. After the turkey has been ravaged, but before dessert, we all pull out our gimmee lists and distribute them among relations. Lest you think us greedy, we all receive the “Do you have your lists ready?” email, reminding us to have them in hand along with the deviled eggs and the relish tray. I don’t think anyone is allowed at the table without The List.
Now that we are in possession of the Master List, that is, what everybody is bugging Santa for, we have been granted permission to finally unleash our pent up energy and engage in some old-fashioned retail therapy.
Finally the day has arrived and it is TODAY! I woke up at 5am, too excited to sleep, and rolled over and whispered to Groom, “Wanna go shopping?” Now it’s his turn to giggle. I’ve been whispering that to him in the dark once a year for over a decade and a half. Our shopping day cannot commence unless we wake up too early for sense and I speak softly those magic words.
The iPod weather report this morning was 9 degrees Fahrenheit. Single digit temperatures. A bit later, it dipped to 8. There’s ice on our windows. On the inside!
I wish you could see the photos the way we do in our preview. They tell a story from start to finish, one leading to the next, according to color, pattern, shape or content, but by the time the program squishes them together, they don’t flow as smoothly as we’d like. It’s tempting to pout, but really, what good would that do? To compensate, I simply request that you enlarge them. Big feminine sigh…. Now I’m fluttering my eyelashes. Is it working? 
Unable to sleep, the idea for this week came to me while cozy in bed. The idea was fractals in nature and man-made lines and how the two harmonize. I shan’t pretend to know the official definition of a fractal, so I will make it up. In my world, a fractal is ordered chaos. The word sounds too much like fractured for it not to share the root, so if I had to guess, a fractal would be the way leaves fall from trees and land in a comforting pattern on the ground. The leaves, once attached to the big picture and forming a complete whole, are now fractured, disconnected, but still form a reflection, a mini-portrait.
They do not fall in straight lines the way an orchard is planted, or the way the yellow stripey line is painted on the road, but they float to the ground randomly and arrange themselves harmonically. Fractals are nature’s repeating geometric patterns, the smaller part (ooh, a fraction?) looking like the whole. 
They are not mirror images, perfectly round, straight or triangular, yet they form completeness by the very nature of their broken pieces. Think lightning bolts etched across the sky, mountain ranges varying by angular degrees, and the limitless design of snowflakes.
Wait. I think I just stumbled upon something profound, perhaps the reason this idea presented itself to me in the first place. Yet they form completeness by the very nature of their broken pieces. Yowza! I’m verklempt. A medieval scholar presented herself at our booth recently and shared a tidbit with me which now seems entirely relevant. 
She studied mosaics, which are designs made up of little pieces of glass or stone, and she told me that instead of the shards being set flush, they are embedded into the surface at various angles. This is so they will catch and throw light.
How many of us feel broken, or at least as though we have broken shards? I struggle with this and yet fractals, things that are fractured, or mosaics comprised of little pieces to reflect light, are made complete by the very nature of their brokenness? Eeee, I wonder if coastlines doubt themselves because they are jagged or if a flower becomes depressed because it has an odd number of petals? 
Our photos on this, our high shopping day, represent some of each. Since it was a balmy 8 degrees out this morning, we begin our tale with a lone tree, silent in the winter sky, its bare branches looking like that lightning I mentioned earlier.
The spectacular bridge in Portland is an example of linear art placed against a backdrop of fractalicious clouds and what I call “heart-breaking blue.” Groom calls it “drunk on blue.” Do you have a personalized blue?
After the bridge comes the ice du jour. I see an owl with a scarf, or maybe it’s a kitten, in one of the clusters, do you see any creatures, people or funny shapes?
Transitioning from the frozen ice (what other kind is there? Diamonds, of course), we get the man-made kind. Oooh, pretty. Jewels are often referred to as “rocks,” so that leads us to the calming arrangement of the pebbles. It’s easy to see how nature composes them, and then what man does with them.
From circles in nature to circles in industry, on they go… Swirls, grids, curves, ridges, pleats, sprouts, criss-crossing, interlocking, overlapping, undulating. The pattern of nature combined with geometry engineered is co-creation at its best.
Cheers and ta, we’re off to go shopping! 
Great Photos and Great Text. Thanks.
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