This group of five short movements was made as portraits of the limit set of the free monoid on two generators, where for the portrait the generators are represented as affine transformations of the Euclidean plane. In each case, the two transformations are contractive maps (i.e. they decrease the distance between points). This means that they each have a fixed point, which I have arranged to occur at (0, 0) and (1, 0) on the X axis. Moreover, I have arranged that each map sends the other map's fixed point to a third common point (α, β). Thus there is a strange attractor for the free monoid which is a closed curve beginning at (0, 0), ending at (1, 0), and passing through (α, β) at its midpoint. Of course, this closed curve is fractal, and may appear to have fractional dimension greater than 1.
The title references "Auguries of Innocence" by William Blake, which begins:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
Instrumentation: two pianos