Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on September 22, 2014| Leave a Comment »
If you look carefully two people in close conversation often end up mirroring each other’s body movements and positions. I’ve always found it fascinating and usually it means they are very much in tune with each other.
But these two trees expands that idea for me – see how they seem to have developed similar features at exactly the same places in their trunks……strange, huh? Guess they are in tune with each other!
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography, science on September 20, 2014| Leave a Comment »
As I walked along the banks of the Charente recently I saw these berries catching the sun.
As ever, I’m caught by the sheer beauty of the image, but it also sets my thoughts off on two different, related tracks.
Berries are full of potential. They contain the seeds of life itself. This is how this plant, this species, creates its future, offering these berries as gifts for other creatures to eat, to digest, to carry elsewhere. This plant can’t walk or run, but it isn’t confined to this one little space on Earth. This plant lives in a bigger world than the few square metres where it has its roots, not least by creating berries. By creating berries and offering them freely it not only adds to the Universe, but adds to the lives of other creatures too.
We’ve no way of knowing where each of these individual berries will end up. We can’t tell their story forwards, other than by using our imaginations. But we know they are full of potential.
The other track my thoughts go down when seeing this image is the one of diversity and difference. No two of these berries are identical. I love the variety of colours, shapes, and size in this little group. How that is magnified on the World scale!
Nature loves diversity……the unique expression of individual life in every organism, every circumstance and every event.
So, this little image says a lot to me – about beauty, Life, growth, potential, connections, relationships, uncertainty, unpredictability, difference, diversity, creativity, expression, and……..[add your own thoughts here]
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography on September 18, 2014| 2 Comments »
I love rainbows.
I love how a rainbow only appears when we are standing in the right place looking in the right direction.
There’s no rainbow without the viewer.
There’s no rainbow which lasts for ever. It shimmers, it deepens, it fades, you can’t find the start or the end of it (you’ll never know if there is a bucket of gold hidden there!)
It’s the symbol of hope, of promise and of diversity.
I love it’s transience, because transience heightens the present moment.
Immerse yourself in today.
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on September 17, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Look closely at this photo. The white object which you can see is a concrete post. The tree has grown around it.
The tree is about the height of a five or six storey building so I’m guessing it is many, many years old. Slowly, imperceptibly, it must have first encountered, then grown around the post.
Isn’t that amazing? A brilliant example of adaptation!
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, from the reading room, life, personal growth, philosophy on September 16, 2014| 1 Comment »
John O’Donohue used to talk about “invisible nearnesses” –
He said “…the mountains, particularly in Connemara, are huge dark mountains. There’s a lot of moisture and a lot of rain and a lot of mist. And some mornings you’d get up, and the fog would’ve come half way down the mountain, rendering the top of the mountain invisible. You’re in the presence of the mountain, and half the mountain has vanished. It’s there, but not visible to the eye. And I often think that it’s a wonderful image of the imagination, that image. In other words, that there are around every life a series of huge nearnesses, a whole invisible world that we can’t see with the eye but that is absolutely crucial to who we are. And I think that the imagination is the faculty that brings you in touch with these presences that are around your life. That’s where I think the divine, and the soul, and the magic of the world between us all, the world of betweenness – that’s where they all reside. And that’s where the imagination loves to dig its furrow and to disclose these hidden, oblique kind of presences.
Every morning for the last few years, when I’ve been at home, in Stirling, I’ve looked out at a mountain – Ben Ledi, but sometimes it’s not there.
Recently, it wasn’t just invisible, the way John O’Donohue describes it, but there was a rainbow there instead! I immediately remembered his idea of “invisible nearnesses”, so I browsed around and found the original text I remembered from his film, “Anam Cara”.
Now I read that again, I’m struck by another of his points – “the world of betweenness” – and how that is exactly what Iain McGilchrist talks about when he describes the right hemisphere of the brain’s approach to the world.
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, philosophy, photography on September 13, 2014| 1 Comment »
One of the most beautiful and mesmerising sights in the world is, I think, flowing water. This photo captures a flow of water around a post at the beginning of a weir. Flow is a very important concept to me.
Giles Deleuze‘s radical philosophy emphasised difference and change to the extent that he called on us to change our priorities from the old Greek ones which still dominate our reductionist science.
He emphasised difference instead of identity. Championing uniqueness, and the special-ness of the present moment, over categorisation, essences and identity. I am a one off, not one of a kind.
He emphasised change over objects. His philosophy is a philosophy of becoming.
As it says, in the byline to this blog……becoming not being.
These ideas have been with us for centuries. In the West, it was Heraclitus who said you can’t step in the same river twice. In the East, Taoism emphasises the Way, and Japanese culture, for example, reveres the transient (as we see magnificently in the annual cherry blossom celebrations)
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, philosophy on September 12, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Constant reflection.
Some people talk about mindfulness, others about awareness, yet others about living consciously. Whatever term you use, the practice of reflecting on what is happening now enhances Life.
“Now”, is, however elusive. It’s that moment that disappears over the edge from the future into the past, just as you look at it.
This image stimulates these thoughts in me……how a life can be lived by being aware, reflecting as it happens.
Becoming not being.
Heroes not zombies.
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on September 11, 2014| Leave a Comment »
We have two fundamental and opposite approaches to the world – noticing similarities and noticing differences.
When we notice similarities we generalise and classify. When this is used as the basis of mass marketing and consumption we end up with an awful lot of sameness – each High Street (or mall) has the same shops, the big chains squeeze out the local family businesses. In town after town in France I see abandoned “charcuteries”, “boulangeries” and so on. A Main Street in my home town of Stirling is lined with empty shops.
When we notice difference we see uniqueness and diversity. Nature thrives on diversity and abhors monocultures. These gourds in a market are stunningly beautiful for both of those reasons – their individuality and their diversity.
I read recently that one of the big supermarket chains in France has started promoting ‘misshapen fruit and vegetables’ along with leaflets encouraging shoppers to buy the ‘funny looking’ foods, they are selling them at 30% less! Woo hoo! There is hope!
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on September 10, 2014| 1 Comment »
How do we use the word, the image, the idea of heart?
Heart felt, broken hearted, heart sore, big hearted, warm hearted, hearty……
It’s about deep, significant, loving feeling.
We also talk about getting to the heart of the matter, by which we mean the nub, the core, the important essence.
A heart-focused life……a good aim, you think?
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography on September 9, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Sometimes I think it’s good to have an image to focus on for a short meditation. I especially like the kind of image which is initially beautiful and engaging, but which then draws me in to see more and more, the closer I look.
Try this one.
I see the swan. I see his reflection. I see his shadow on his reflection.
Multiple layers. Multiple perspectives.
Enjoy!
Heroes Not Zombies 