... why my icon is king kong was thought provoking ... the web (flickr, twitter, friendfeed ad infinitum) relentlessly demands an image ... for years cast about changing icon and have settled on this black&white photo of the northern lights (aurora borealis) ...

history ... it is a photo my father took while working in Fort Churchill Manitoba Canada ... he had till then devoted his life to plasma physics & upper atmospheric research spending nights on the lookout tower photographing the sky ... my mother found the negatives in one of the clean outs following a moment of transformation (birth/life/death) ...

title ... from the beginning (2002) called my blog if & later as my presence webbed out adopted the tag ifsphere ...

place & imagination ... the icon spells if ... the solid tower & wave lights ... visualizes the splendour of the night sky ... hints at the mystery of l(if)e ...

"As the solar wind interacts with the edge of the earth's magnetic field, some of the particles are trapped by it and they follow the lines of magnetic force down into the ionosphere, the section of the earth's atmosphere that extends from about 60 to 600 kilometres above the earth's surface. When the particles collide with the gases in the ionosphere they start to glow, producing the spectacle that we know as the auroras, ..."(aurora borealis)

- See: icon

:: note :: ... what i love is though much thought goes into such things it is often an intuitive act and then only much later comes the articulation of the process ...