Heroes Not Zombies

Yesterday I wrote about the difference between viewing a garden from the perspective of inside a building, to that of viewing it as you walk around the garden itself.

The photo I used for the first perspective showed a traditional rectangular shaped doorway, all straight lines and 90 degree angles between them. So I thought I’d contrast that today with this photo, taken at a different temple, but again showing a garden viewed from the perspective of inside the building.

This time it’s a round window. Now, before I say anything more what do you feel as you look at this image? Isn’t there something particularly attractive about the round frame, instead of the rectangular one? Isn’t it somehow less aggressive, less harsh? Even if you didn’t think the other window frame really had those qualities before you looked at this one.

But there’s something else about this frame…..the circle is not complete. There is a section missing at the floor level. This is, as I understand it, another characteristic of Japanese design aesthetics. The idea is that if you leave something “less than perfect” or “incomplete” then it does two things – it stimulates the observer to use their imagination to “complete” the shape, and it contains a kind of latent dynamic quality – it is in the process of “becoming”. It isn’t “fixed” or “dead”.

All that makes me wonder about the kinds of frames we use to engage with everyday life. Because there is no doubt that our values, beliefs, memories and habits all exert powerful effects on what we notice, what impact those observations and experiences have upon us, and what sense we make of them.

Do you agree?

If so, I think that’s why it’s good to stop now and again, to reflect and to try to become more aware of just what values, beliefs, memories and habits we access most frequently. One simple way to do that is Julia Cameron’s “Morning Pages” exercise. It’s just writing non-stop, stream of consciousness writing to fill three pages of a notebook every morning. My experience of this is that it works best when you don’t re-read what you’ve written until some time later – say at least a month or so – so, here’s my proposal – are you up for doing “Morning Pages” every day of January? Then reading over what you’ve written once we reach February?