I bought this novel by the French/Sengalese author, David Diop, because I thought it was the story of a plant hunter, but really it’s a tale about colonialism and slavery in Senegal.
I loved it.
You know how some books are a real delight to hold in your hands? Well this is one of them. The publisher is Pushkin Press. I don’t know if all their books are printed on such lovely paper and with such delightful covers but I’ll be keeping an eye out for them now.
I lost myself in this story. It was completely engaging. An 18th century tale of discovery, encounter with another culture and language, as well as a challenging, powerful narrative about the inhumanity of slavery.
There are people we encounter in this life, who stay in our hearts forever even if we don’t pass all that many days with them. The actual door of no return hits hard even though you know it’s going to come at some point.
One of my favourite French words is “Emerveillement” – it’s one of those words where you can’t just give a single English word equivalent when you try to translate it. It’s a bit like “wonder”, but also “amazement”, and “awe”. It’s not just a word for me, but, as it is in a French phrase “l’emerveillement du quotidien”, it’s a kind of life philosophy. That phrase means something like “the wonder of the everyday”. It’s about finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. It’s about noticing. It’s about paying attention with an open mind, a non-judging mind.
I find that the more I practice this the more it becomes an everyday way of living. I expect to encounter sights, sounds, smells, textures, sensations which make me stop, delight in them, and be amazed. I expect to have experiences where I find myself wondering….asking questions, becoming more curious.
I highly recommend it as a life practice – allow yourself to encounter the amazing everyday, to relish it, to be curious about it and to wonder……
We are stars wrapped in skin. The light you are seeking has always been within.
Rumi
I read these lines by Rumi this morning, and I thought of the many photographs I’ve taken of plants backlit by the Sun. I know, of course, that the light you see in these photos is coming from the Sun, but it’s infusing these leaves with its brightness making them appear to glow. It looks as if the light is coming from the leaves themselves.
Everything we encounter is an instance of complex interactions….in this moment, the Sun is illuminating the leaves which I’ve noticed as I wander through the garden. This light has caught my attention and stirred my senses of beauty and wonder. It’s taken the Sun, the plant, and me, my consciousness, to have this experience. And now, there’s you, too. As you look at this photo, read these words, you bring your own memories, your own experiences, your own preferences and values to bear.
Enjoy this moment. Savour the beauty. Allow yourself to bathe in the river of wonder.
Have you ever come across a sphere balanced on a cube? If I understand it correctly, Goethe had a sculpture like this in his garden. It was known as the “Stone of Good Fortune” which Goethe named “Agathe Tyche”. The cube represents stability and structure, whilst the sphere represents dynamism, movement and change.
So simple, but so attractive and powerful. I love this combination. It captures two of the great forces of the universe which work together to create the reality which we experience…….regularity, laws and order combined with constant movement and change. We need both, although some of us have a greater preference for one over the other. Some of us like a life of habits, routines and rituals, where others are always looking for something different. I don’t think we need to choose. And I don’t think one of these forces is “better” than the other. The point is, my preferred, “and not or”. We really couldn’t have the lives we have without a constant interplay between these two apparent opposites.
First non-fiction read of the year. The Internet of Animals by Martin Wikelski. I loved this book. It opened my eyes to a whole world of scientific research I had no idea existed, and it’s expanded my vision of what’s possible into areas I hadn’t dreamed of.
There are three main themes to this book, and each of them is a total revelation. The first is the development of the methodologies and technologies to enable live tracking of all kinds of creatures, from giraffes to dragonflies wherever they are on the planet. Martin tells this story from the perspective of his personal experience which makes it both an engaging read, and, at times, even gives it the flavour of a thriller…hooking you in to wanting to know what they are going to do next. The second, is the way individual animals change their behaviour in relation to individual human beings. I already knew that certain birds, and even, bees, could recognise particular faces, and I had an experience here with a Redstart which got very agitated around me to let me know its chick had fallen down our chimney, and came down beside me, as if to say thank you, once I’d rescued the chick. But I had no idea that so many different species behaved differently according to the attitudes of the humans around them. The third, is about tapping in to the “wisdom of the crowds” in the animal world, and this third theme is really the core of the entire project. He gives many examples, from tagged giraffes and zebras, alerting wardens to the presence and exact location of poachers, to a better understanding of how various animals can predict earthquakes, tsunamis, and even the coming seasonal rainfall. He also describes much inter-species communication, which we haven’t really been aware of until now.
Martin gives a couple of imaginary “animal reports” in the future, where we humans can be alerted to changes in ecosystems and environments by the creatures which live there. In fact, he makes the excellent point that maybe instead of focusing on trying to find communications from potential extra-terrestrial beings, we’d be better served by learning how to interpret the communications from the other actual beings with whom we share this planet.
There’s a lot more to this book than I can summarise here. I highly recommend it. It’s really expanded my consciousness.
I’m a big fan of Nature’s curves and irregularities, but, sometimes it’s a human-created design based on straight lines that catches my attention……as is the case with this building. This, to me, is very European, but maybe you can find this emphasis on straight lines and geometric designs elsewhere too (you tell me).
It makes me think about the differences in aesthetic between, say the Greco-Roman civilisations and the Asian ones. I’m very familiar with the bold straight lines of “Classical” architecture, including a preference for symmetry. But I’m also very familiar with the Japanese aesthetic of wabi sabi, where asymmetry is preferred, along with curves, circles, and designs which can seem, to Western eyes, “incomplete”.
Travel is a great device for expanding your personal aesthetics!
You’ll know I’m a great believer in “and not or”, so it’ll come as no surprise to you to learn that I can delight in both styles.
How about you? Do you have a preference for any particular aesthetic style? And how much is that connected to the culture you grew up in? Have your preferences changed due to encounters with any completely different cultures?
OK, so I don’t know if these birds are wave watching, (same as I was), or whether they are on the lookout for fish (could you spot a fish in the water from there?), but, waves are pretty mesmerising, aren’t they?
I love to gaze at them, to listen to the sound of them breaking on the shore. I love watching the blue turn to white, the surface water break into foam. And I love to spot a rock or two where the waves burst up into the sky like explosions of surf.
How about you? Do you like wave watching?
When I’m wave watching I always think of the fact that we are like the waves on the surface of the sea….that we appear for a short time, then disappear back into the rest of the universe from which we emerged. I think of how we, as individuals, are never completely separate, and how we are densely interconnected….how our separateness is actually a kind of illusion…..or, at least, an invention….something we make up.
But mostly, wave watching isn’t about thinking for me. It’s about kind of meditation, an exercise in connecting to what is greater than me.
The first book I’ve read in 2025 is “Tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin. I didn’t know anything about this book when I bought it. I found it on the English language table in the fabulous Tranquebar bookshop in Copenhagen, and what convinced me to buy it was the blurb on the back, particularly the claim that it was a tale about “our need to connect; to be loved and to love”. However, as clearly displayed on the front cover, several million people had already bought a copy before I did, so, I guess I was a little late to the party. That doesn’t bother me, though.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was well written, engaged me from the very beginning, held my attention and pulled me in. Set in the US, focussed on three characters who create computer games and build a highly successful company, this isn’t a world that I know anything about. I’ve never been a computer game fan, and apart from some very, very early games, haven’t played any, but I didn’t feel out of my depth here at all. I think that’s mainly because there is no focus on detailed tech issues, but, rather on the ideas behind these games. It made me think about computer games more positively than I have done until now (although it hasn’t tempted me to go and play any!). I could see from the story how the experience of game worlds can actually help people to deal with reality, not simply, as I’d believed until now, just escape from it. There can be a power in distraction and escape, especially when someone is trying to recover from significant physical trauma. That’s something I haven’t really explored much even though I worked as a doctor for my whole career. I wonder what part such technology might play therapeutically in the future – and I don’t mean the current wave of data collection and emphasis on numbers and what can be measured. I mean more in the way of stimulating imagination, creativity and relationships.
There’s a particularly believable section of the book which involves a shooting. That felt spot on. It’s easy to see, in the increasingly polarised, judgemental world of America, in particular, that someone could become so enraged by something occurring in a computer game that they’d set off with guns to kill the creators.
The main characters are also very credible, and as the story follows them over many years, we get to experience intensely different phases of their relationships, from the times where all goes well between them, through the times where they drift apart, or even divided. And, as suggested, in that little blurb which caught my attention, it really is a story about the importance of loving and being loved.
Whether I have my camera in my pocket, or I’m just out and about with my phone, I’m always hoping that something will catch my eye. I love to notice what is beautiful, amazing or makes me wonder. I’m especially happy when something stops me in my tracks. It might be a flower, a butterfly, a view over a lake, or towards mountains. It might be a patch of sunlight, a reflection in a puddle or a fountain, or a splash of colour. But sometimes I notice something that makes me think – what am I looking at here?
This was one such occasion. I was walking through the streets of Copenhagen and this bicycle resting on a poster of a model caught my eye. It was one of those occasions where you do a sort of double take…..wait, what exactly am I looking at here? I could have walked on by once I’d realised exactly what it was, but instead, I stopped, moved to get a good angle, and took this photo. It’s one of my most favourite photos of the year.
These moments of serendipity, when the world grabs my attention, are, I believe, a key to my happiness. I am convinced that having daily experiences of everyday wonder (l’emerveillement du quotidien) make life more beautiful more interesting. Taking a photo on occasions like this gives me the opportunity to return to it and re-experience it, time and time again.
I like to see things clearly. I like to understand. I’m insatiably curious. I know, as I’ve learned from experience, that curiosity never ends, that there is no end point where knowledge or understanding are complete. Not least because all that exists is not fixed. Even if I could fully understand something today, by tomorrow, other factors may have come into play, the situation will have evolved, there will be more to discover. But, in fact, the fantasy of knowing all I need to know, or understanding all that can be understood, is just that – a fantasy…..even if I were to limit my attention to a single moment in time. All that exists does so within an infinite web of connections and relationships.
But even knowing those limitations, my curiosity never dries up. I never cease to attempt a better understanding.
I brought those very ideas and values into my daily work with patients, always trying to understand them today, as best I could, whilst knowing that I could never completely understand them….even over a lifetime of consultations. Every day I’d need to stay open to discovering something new, something unexpected.
In this photo, which I took in the hills just outside Comillas, in northern Spain, I can’t see the landscape very clearly. There are valleys and dips in the countryside filled with mists, and the mountain ranges disappear into the blue distance before my eyes. This photo stirs another delight in me – the delight I have in mystery. I enjoy mystery. It inspires me. It stimulates my curiosity. It delights me.
What kind of life would we have if there was no mystery?
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Heroes Not Zombies 