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“And not or” – writing and publishing

Posted in books, creativity, from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, life, narrative, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology, science on June 14, 2020| Leave a Comment »

At the beginning of the year I received an invite to speak at a conference in Canada. The invitation was to talk about my experience of four decades of work as a doctor who used homeopathy. I was surprised, but it was a very kind invitation and I accepted.

The way I prepare for talks is to let some ideas and questions rattle around my brain for a bit, then start making notes. The kinds of notes I make are sort of mind maps. They aren’t as formal as those you’d find in books about the mind mapping. I just put down key words and phrases on a page, then draw circles, squares or diamond shapes around them and link them up. I’ll do a few versions of that, then I open up “Keynote” and I make a slide for each element in the mind map, pull in images from my photo library, write a few words (not many) on some of the slides, then arrange them to create a sequence which enables me to tell the story I want to tell. Well, I ended up with a set of three presentations, each of which would take about an hour to tell. I’d been told I’d be allocated two 90 minute slots in the schedule.

Then before the time arrived for the conference, along came COVID-19 and the event was cancelled. Maybe it will happen some other time, but maybe not. I’d enjoyed putting the presentations together so that gave me an idea. Why not write a book covering the same ground? I’d had an idea for a long time that I should tell my own story. I didn’t want to write a textbook, or a polemic, an argument for a way to live, a way to practice Medicine, or even make the case for the use of Homeopathy. I just wanted to make a record of my own life, my own experience.

I’m sure if any of us sat down to write our own story we’d immediately come up against the question, “But which story?”, because there are many stories of our lives. I didn’t want to write an autobiography which told the story of my family, my relationships, and my personal development. I wanted to tell the story of why I became a doctor, what kind of doctor I became, and how that came about. Not least because I thought it would help me to understand my own life better. I suppose it’s my “professional story”, but really, it’s the story of my “calling”.

I wanted to publish the book too, because I wanted others to be able to read it. Not to earn money from sales, nor to try to convince anyone of anything, but more to add to my over all project of sharing my personal experience of curiosity, wonder and joy – that’s what this blog is all about – and that’s what I committed to do daily from the day of lockdown. I’ve been writing a post based on one of my photos every day since the middle of March and I don’t feel like stopping any time soon. I already know, from feedback from some of you, how much you appreciate these posts and that completely delights me. Writing them adds to my life, so I’m very, very happy if reading them adds to yours!

Now, more than ever, I want to set off some positive, loving, inspiring waves. I’ve no idea where they will go, or what effect they will have, but it feels like a way to make a positive contribution to our times.

With lockdown, with the presentations already mapping out a story, and with the daily practice of writing for the blog, it all came together and I wrote this book – “And not or” – “A calling and a listening”.

This is how I did it, the tools I used, and what I had to learn.

I wrote the text using an A4 sized notebook and a pen. I wrote and wrote and wrote, till I thought I’d written all I wanted to write. Then I used that handwritten text to write the digital version using a program called “Ulysses“. Listen, before I go any further, I’m just laying out what I did, not saying you should do exactly what I did if you want to write your own book! But, on the other hand, I’ve always found it helpful to read what other writers have done. So, you could use any software you want. I started with Ulysses. I use this program on my desktop Mac, as well as on my iPad (for which I have a proper Bluetooth connected keyboard).

When I wrote the first digital version, I didn’t just copy out all the words I’d written in my notebook. Instead, I’d read a section, then start to transcribe the words into the wordprocessor, but I found I often decided to write it differently, to leave out whole sentences or passages, and to write brand new ones instead. By the time I’d done that I had what I called “draft 2” (the written text constituting “draft 1”). The way Ulysses works is that you write “sheets” – for me, each “sheet” was a chapter. I like the simple markdown language you can use with Ulysses. If you put a # sign at the start of a line it turns that line into a heading. If you put two ## signs it turns that line into a secondary heading. I only used those two levels of headings. The first level heading were the chapter titles, the second level to navigate sections within a chapter. The other main markdown tools I used were for inserting images (hey, you know how much I love my photos!), for marking a paragraph as a quotation, and for creating lists. That’s pretty much it. Ulysses presents you with a left hand column of your sheets, each one showing just the first line or two. I used that to get an overview of the whole book. That let me see what I thought was repetitive, and what I thought was missing.

Next step was “draft 3” – read through the whole digital text, correcting and editing as I went. Once I got to the end of that, I felt, well….dissatisfied! Something wasn’t right, and I couldn’t see what it was. So I put the whole project away for a week. Then when I came back to it I saw there were half a dozen chapters which seemed problematic. They were in two groups of three, and each group had overlap and repetition in it. I still couldn’t see the way ahead though. So, here’s the next neat thing about Ulysses, you can select whichever sheets you want to review and print them off. I printed off the six in question. Then I read through the printouts with pencil in hand, scoring out, adding in, and linking up different paragraphs. Once I’d done that I went back into the program and changed the text according to that latest “edit”. I also chopped out three other chapters that just didn’t seem to fit well at all. What do they call that? “killing your darlings” – dropping some of the sentences you love the most – because they just don’t fit. I guess I now I had gone through “draft 4”, to “draft 5”.

Time for another complete read through, correcting and editing as I went – “draft 6”. OK, this felt good now. Time to try and turn it into a published book. I decided I wanted a physical, paper version, and a digital version (and not or….get it?).

For the paper version I decided to use Blurb. This is a company I’ve used about once a year to make a photo album of my best, or most memorable photos of that year. I love their quality of print. And I’d already taught myself the basics of their software – “Bookwright“. Now, I’m sure with all the software I use that I’m no expert and there are probably easier ways to do things, but, hey, I only know what I know, so I don’t know any easy way to import all the text into “Bookwright”. Instead I created the pages, inserted either text or photo “layout boxes” onto each page, copied and pasted the text, chapter by chapter into Bookwright, imported all the photos I’d used, and dropped them into the right places, then ran the “preview” option, and the error checking, both of which identified things that needed fixed. Then I uploaded it to the Blurb site and ordered up my proof copy.

Meantime I had to think how to produce a digital version. Apple have something called “iBooks Author” which I’d used before, (I’ve since learned Apple are about to discontinue that software) and there were ebook creation tools I knew existed to produce “Kindle” or “ePub” versions.

Whoa! Too much to think about it! I then discovered that Amazon had produced new software called “Kindle Create“. I downloaded it, discovered you could import a “Word” file into it, make a cover, preview it, then upload it to Amazon. Ulysses makes it easy to export your sheets as a single “.docx” file so I did that, opened it up in “Pages”, then exported the document from there as a “Word” doc into Kindle Create. It was easy, and straightforward, just took time and care.

Now, I’m sure if you use Windows your workflow and the tools you can use will be different, and maybe some of you know a lot more about these programs and methods than I do – and if that’s true, please go ahead and share what you know in the comments here, or share links to your own articles if you’ve written them.

Well, this is where I’ve got to now – a paper version – you can get it from Blurb at https://www.blurb.co.uk/b/10155078-and-not-or

and a Kindle version – https://amzn.to/2UozjIw – if you are in the UK. If you are not in the UK, go to your local Amazon site and search for “Leckridge” – you’ll find it quickly that way (let me know if you don’t!)

Here’s my summary of the book –

Why become a doctor? This is one doctor’s response to that question. It begins with a calling, then continues through listening. Patient after patient, over four decades of Practice, tells their own unique story. Each one is an attempt to find healing. To find healing, the doctor and the patient embark on a relationship which allows them to uncover Nature’s pathways to health. 
Each pathway is a life of adaptive strategies revealed through the body, the emotions, and in patterns of behaviour, language and thought.
Two small words open different doors of understanding.
“Or” divides, separates and focuses attention on single parts.
“And” connects, integrates and focuses attention on the whole.
We need both approaches but if we are to heal, individually, together, and at the level of the planet, we need to shift the balance away from “or” to “and”. 
Through an exploration of narrative, psychoneuroimmunology, neuroscience, complexity and complementary medicine, this is one doctor’s experience of shifting the balance from “or” to “and”.

If you fancy reading it, go ahead, and if you’d like to give me feedback you can find me most places by searching for “bobleckridge” – I’m here on WordPress, but I’m also easily found on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and I use gmail.com (just put “bobleckridge” before the @ sign)

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Spiralling – or its opposite

Posted in creativity, from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, narrative, perception, personal growth, photography, psychology on June 13, 2020| Leave a Comment »

One of the most beautiful shapes in the universe is the spiral. From the spirals of galaxies to the double helix spiral of DNA, and so, from the largest scale to the smallest, there are spirals.

One of the commonest places to see them around you is where ferns grow. I love those spiral shapes you see as a fern unfurls.

Spirals make me think of the kind of path that life follows.

Clearly life does not follow a straight line. It doesn’t run directly and steadily from birth to death with no curves, pauses, deviations or ramblings.

And although there are many cycles in Nature and in our lives, the life story doesn’t follow a circular path either. Although sometimes it feels that way when you have one of those “How did I end up HERE again?” moments. When we don’t learn, when we try to solve our problems using the same solutions which brought those problems about in the first place, it often doesn’t go so well, or, at least, not so differently.

It seems to me that life is more spiral in character, and that, yes, we revisit unresolved issues, unhealed traumas, and unsolved problems repeatedly until we resolve them, solve them, until we heal. But each time around when we revisit something, when life throws up what seems like the same challenge yet again, it’s different. We are different. Because we change all the time. Every experience we have changes us, contributes to our memories, influences our choices and our actions, creates new behaviours, thoughts and habits. So when we hit that “How did I end up HERE again?” we are not exactly “HERE” again!

That always gives me hope.

We have a chance to respond differently this time, to make a different choice, and maybe set off along a brand new path…..another path with its own new spirals to come.

But here’s the thing about that fern in this photo – is it spiralling or un-spiralling? Is there even a word “un-spiralling”? I think instead of “unfurling” because that’s what it seems to be doing. It’s unfolding, opening up, stretching out, expanding. But, hey, I guess that’s a kind of un-spiralling…..something to learn from that I think!

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Entwined, embedded, embodied

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, science on June 12, 2020| Leave a Comment »

This remains one of the strangest trees I ever saw in any forest. In fact, it seemed to me that there were two trees here. You could clearly see two trunks arising from the forest floor, then something odd happens, the one of the left sends out a substantial branch, so substantial I’m not even happy calling it a branch, which connects with the one on the right. They fuse. Then they continue upwards in parallel, each distinct but traveling in the same direction, until about a metre or so further up they fuse again, and from that point on, continue upwards as one.

I’m happy simply to contemplate them, to trace their separate and entwined paths as they reach up to the Sun…..but I seem unable to resist the thoughts they inspire in me.

This is such a beautiful representation of how all of Life seeks out more Life. We get close to certain others, connect with them, form relationships with them, bond with them, entwine and entangle our lives with them. We influence each other. Yeah, sure, we still know that we are individuals, that I am me and you are you, but our shared experiences change us. I am not the same since I met you.

Each of us emerges from, and lives in, a multiplicity of environments. We are embedded in certain times and places. We exist within certain cultures and societies. We become who we are becoming in vast interconnected webs of relationships which span across the face of the Earth and reach both back in history and forward into the futures we will create together.

Each of us lives, an embodied, unique, singular being, never completely separate, never completely alone, never completely independent. So let’s just embrace that shall we?

How might life be if we acknowledged our entwined, entangled, embedded, embodied nature? Could we begin to share our lives better, here and now, in this present time and place, as co-inhabitants, co-creators, and co-operators?

Wherever we are….in a particular street, town, city, region, country, hemisphere, planet…..we share our entangled, interconnected lives with everyone else who has ever lived, every other inhabitant of this time and place, and every other child we haven’t even dreamed of yet.

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Touch

Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, perception, personal growth, photography, psychology, science on June 11, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Social distancing, physical distancing, isolation, “confinement”, lockdown. We’ve been going through an enormous period of physical separation from each other, and from the Earth.

Sure, there’s Zoom and WhatsApp, and FaceTime and all the rest, but we’ve been reduced, I think, by connecting through screens. These virtual meetings, avatars and asynchronous communications have got two sides, haven’t they? They open up channels for us and allow us to speak, to send messages back and forth, and so to have some sense of connection. But they add an extra layer between us, almost as if there is a mist, or a fog that we can’t quite see through.

I think part of the problem is that reality is physical and even the apparently invisible, un-measurable, Self, is embodied. Our feelings and our thoughts are embodied. Our everyday experience exists within physical reality.

Yet we’re being told that touch is dangerous. That we must keep a metre or two away from everybody else. In France you’re not supposed to kiss anyone on the cheek anymore, and in many countries you’re not supposed to shake hands…..and I don’t know about you but this knocking elbows or kicking each others ankles just doesn’t do it for me! We’re told that surfaces are dangerous. They need to be wiped, and washed, and sprayed and cleaned again and again and again. We’re told to wash our hands for longer and more frequently than most of us have ever done before…to remove all trace of whatever we might have touched.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand what this is all about. I know this virus can only spread through physical and/or close contact. But, all the same, these new habits and new rules have turned the sensation of touch into a fear of touch. And that doesn’t strike me as a good thing.

So, today, I want to remind you of that particular one of your five senses – touch.

Look at this tiny white feather. Don’t you just long to reach out, pick it up, stroke it gently, or stroke your skin gently with it? It is beautiful to look at, that’s for sure, but to touch it, to feel its almost weightless physical presence, makes it more real.

At the other end of the scale, look at this burr. What an amazing creation! What a way to spread around the world! It looks a little bit like those images we’ve seen of the coronavirus, and if you’ve ever brushed up against a burr like this you’ll know it catches onto to you pretty damn effectively. And no wonder…look carefully….every single one of those spikes has a sharply hooked arrowhead at the end of it. If you wanted to design something to easily fix onto whatever creature comes close to it, you couldn’t do much better than this. At first glance, of course, this mass of needles looks like a protection mechanism. It looks like a huge STAY AWAY signal. And if you touch it with your fingers, it really isn’t a pleasant experience. But it’s not designed to keep creatures away. It’s designed to connect, to attach, to hook on and stick.

Here’s my box of curiosities. You know the idea of a “cabinet of curiosities“? That always appealed to me. Those cabinets were, in some way, the precursor to museums, but they were more personal. I kept this box right next to my chair in my consulting room. Children, almost always less inhibited than adults, were fascinated by it, but, actually lots of the adults were too. In fact, the majority of objects in my “box of curiosities” are gifts from patients, colleagues and friends over many, many years. People who saw my box, often brought me something to add to it.

You’ll see there is a quite a variety of textures in there. There’s feather, leaf, and stone. There’s metal, shell and chestnut. There’s cord and there’s wood. Every single one of these objects begs to be picked up and handled. Yes, to be looked at, but mainly to be touched.

So why not take a little time to explore the sense of touch today? I think it connects us to reality in a completely unique way.

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Face to face

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, neuroscience, perception, photography, psychology on June 10, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Tiny photo, huh?

I do a lot of scrolling through my digital photo libraries looking for images. Sometimes I’m skipping across thumbnails not much different from this one in size. I stopped when I saw this particular image and thought “when did I take a photo of a gorilla on a wall?”

Do you see what I saw there?

One click zooms the image up to its full size…..

Ha! Where did the gorilla go??

This is a photo of a bell!

If I try hard I can just about still see the gorilla’s face in the full size image but it’s really not nearly as clear as it is in the thumbnail.

Did you know that there are parts of our brain whose whole function is to spot and recognise faces? It seems to work so well it can even see faces where there aren’t any! Like in this image. I’ve shown you examples of this before with photos I have of rock formations and so on, but I’m sure you’ll have lots of experiences of your own to confirm this.

Why should we devote such a lot of brain resources and energy to spotting and recognising faces?

It turns out that we are THE most highly social creatures on the planet. It’s one of the key features which distinguishes us from other primates. Dan Siegel, of “Mindsight” fame says that the frontal cortex of our brain is our map making part – it creates, he says, a “me map, a you map and a we map”. We use more of the brain than our frontal cortex to recognise others, establish bonds and communicate our feelings, but that’s an important part. Iain McGilchrist, of “The Master and His Emissary”, describes how the two cerebral cortexes engage with the world differently, and how the right side has a predilection for the particular, for seeing the over all, contextualised big picture, and for seeking and making connections. Neuroscientists have described specialised “mirror neurones” which we use to tune into and harmonise with others….partly explaining why if I touch my chin while speaking to you, you are more likely to touch your chin (if we are face to face….doesn’t happen on WhatsApp!)

We are the world’s greatest mimics. That’s how we learn, but it’s also how we form bonds with each other. At a trivial level, think of the “ganga style” dance moves. At a far from trivial level, see how the same slogans, gestures, and behaviours are spreading around the world just now as people in many countries respond to the horror of the killing of George Floyd.

We have an astonishingly large number of facial expressions which communicate our emotions. Are you familiar with the work of Paul Ekman on facial expressions? He has shown how certain facial expressions are universal across cultures, and has studied and documented many “micro expressions” which are used in social interaction.

I know there is a lot of talk just now about communication technologies during this time of social distancing, but we humans need the opportunity to connect literally face to face. Does video conferencing, Zoom, Google Meet, FaceTime etc do that? Well, what’s your experience?

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When the wind blows

Posted in art, from the dark room, from the living room, life, narrative, perception, personal growth, photography on June 9, 2020| Leave a Comment »

This always makes me smile, and wonder. It’s a sculpture of a human head and it’s built into the wall of a house, just above the door. I came across it in a beautiful, old village in the South of France.

I don’t know anything of the history of this but it sure gets me wondering…..who is this supposed to represent? Was it the person who lived here when the house was built? Was it someone famous or important from the village? Or was it created as a representation of a mythical person….a god, an angel, or….well, I’m never going to know.

The fact that I’m never going to know partly bugs me. I have had insatiable curiosity as a major personality characteristic since I was a young boy. So there is a frustration there. But, on the other hand, it doesn’t bother me, because it means I can engage with it, as I find it, clear of any complications from its past.

We do that all the time. There are works of art, buildings, geographical features which make an impact on us every time we encounter them. Some of those impacts are layered with story, personal stories as well as those from history. But there are others where we come upon them with a “beginners mind” – where we can open our hearts and our attention and just note what arises.

Taking this second approach, I start with the expression on this face. At first glance this person looks sad. Their eyes seem somewhat downcast, gazing to the side and down towards some point on the ground a few metres away perhaps. Along with the gaze, the mouth seems a touch downturned too, the lips just slightly parted, conveying a kind of displeasure or even disgust to me. They don’t seem very happy. And I think, well, no wonder, really, look how this vine has grown up over their face. They seem somewhat neglected.

But the next thing I notice is their fine features. This is quite a beautiful face. Maybe that curl of the lips is more the beginning of a smile, than an expression of weary displeasure? Then I notice the string of pearls on the person’s forehead and I realise this is a more sophisticated, perhaps more noble a person than I had first thought. Look at their hair, and what’s that on their head? A hat? Is there a bird on their hat?? I think I’ve convinced myself now that there is a small bird sitting amongst the person’s curls, right at the edge of their hat.

So, now I return to the vine, which has been allowed to grow naturally I think, to find its own way….or did someone train it up around the head? It looks natural to me. And so when I bring the bird into the picture with the vine, this face takes on an appearance of an Earth Goddess now. Is that a step too far?

Well, what would it be like to see the almost smiling (I’m pretty much convinced now that this is an incipient smile on their lips, not an expression of displeasure after all), face of an Earth goddess, welcoming you home every time you walked up to your front door?

Here’s my final thought on this……whoever carved this face literally set an expression in stone. It doesn’t change any more…even if my impression of it changes. My granny used to say “Be careful the wind doesn’t change!” if I ever showed an unhappy, grumpy or fed up face. She said that if the wind changes then your expression would be fixed forever. Strange old saying that…..because the wind changes a lot! But behind it was some teaching that your habits of expression could come to shape the way the world sees you, and the way you see the world.

I don’t really see anything in a fixed way any more. I think everything constantly changes. And I think that, every one of us brings our memories and our imaginations to engage with the present moment, whatever it holds, making each and every day unique….unique for me, and unique for you.

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The human layer

Posted in art, creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, narrative, perception, philosophy, photography, psychology on June 8, 2020| 1 Comment »

In one of my most favourite villages in France, Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert, there are two natural objects hanging on doors, above doors, and on walls, throughout the whole village. This is one of them. It’s a “cardabelle”.

A cardabelle is a kind of thistle which grows abundantly in this area.

Mostly you see dried specimens pinned to doors, but in some places there are copies sculpted in stone.

The other natural object you find is…..

….the scallop shell.

Why these two objects?

Well, the cardabelle is thought to be a good luck token. I suppose in a similar way to the horseshoe you see in some other cultures. It’s also been used traditionally to make predictions……about the weather! That’s partly because it changes shape according to the humidity levels and atmospheric pressure, so it acts a bit like a natural barometer. I’m told it’s also eaten and tastes a bit like an artichoke (not my favourite vegetable!). But I think its utility is a lot less significant than its power to give meaning. It changes life through the power of symbol.

The scallop shell is the symbol of the pilgrim. Specifically, the pilgrim making his or her way along the “Camino de Santiago”, or, in French, “Chemin de Compostelle”. It is used along these paths to indicate some support for, or welcome to, any passing pilgrims. The photo above indicates drinking water (“eau potable” in French, which is worth remembering if you are thirsty while walking in France!). It is also hung outside certain inns and hostels for the pilgrims to find something to eat or somewhere to rest for the night. I hadn’t realised just what an extensive network of paths make up the “Camino de Santiago”.

What really interests me about the cardabelle and the scallop shell is that both are transformed from their original, natural purpose in the world by this distinctly human capacity to make one thing represent another.

They both become powerful symbols. Symbols of place, of belonging, of tradition, of belief, and of purpose. There are a million stories connected to them.

How are we to understand this? I think symbolic thought, metaphoric thought, represented by objects, artistic creations, words and stories, are a kind of invisible, global network connecting us all. They are part of Jung’s “collective unconscious” drawing from our archetypes and myths. They are part of Teilhard de Chardin’s “no-osphere”, that extra layer of atmosphere encompassing the Earth, composed of human reason and thought. They are a world wide web of deep, complex, living and growing sense-making and meaning-giving phenomena which we can draw on to make more sense of our individual lives.

I love this power we humans have – the power to create this vast uniquely “human layer” of existence which is embedded in, and emerges from, the natural world, deepening and widening our experiences and understanding. It’s a shared phenomenon, a collective effort stretching back over centuries and we are adding to it every day, drawing from it every day, living it every day.

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We need more bridges

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography, psychology on June 7, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Ok, I’ll be honest, this is NOT a bonny bridge! In fact, it’s pretty much devoid of any appealing aesthetic, in my humble opinion! I know some people think concrete is fab, but I’m not one of them! However, what I love about this image is…….

…..look at this divide!

Look at this craggy, rocky, deep, divide. How on earth would you cross from one side to the other? Without a bridge, you just wouldn’t really try. Well, probably hardly anyone would. But build a bridge, even a concrete, not pretty bridge, and you make connections possible. You make it easy for people to cross from one side to the other. You set up the possibility that new relationships will be formed, new bonds forged, different terrains and different ways of living can be discovered.

I have this strong, core belief – making connections matters.

We have two brains, or, more properly, two cerebral hemispheres. The left hemisphere is great for separating things out, for spotting differences, for finding what’s familiar, and sticking with it. But the right is great for seeing connections, contexts and patterns which let us see the bigger picture, let us see what is particular and unique in every case, rather than what is generic and general.

Bridges are a practical and symbolic form of connection.

Don’t you think we need that more, in our seemingly more polarised, more divided time? Don’t you think we need to offer a hand over to the other side now to heal our deep divisions?

Here are some of my favourite bridges….

This is a bridge in a park in Nara, Japan. I love its shape and colour. And, of course, the reflected image in the water makes it even more appealing.

This is the “new” bridge over the Bracklinn Falls, near Callander, Scotland, the “old” one having been swept away in a storm.

Part of the incredible bridge connecting Denmark and Sweden.

The three “Forth” bridges – the old railway one on the right, the more modern road bridge to its left, and the newest, spectacular one to the left of the other two.

Do you have any favourite bridges?

I think it’s good to contemplate them – maybe they are beautiful in their own right – but, always, they help us to remember we need to make connections, heal our divisions.

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Seeing with the heart

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography, psychology on June 6, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Isn’t this a great door?

Rather than having a tiny peephole to secretly look out through, this person has carved a heart. Sure, some peepholes have lenses in them which give you a wider angle range of view, but the clue to their limitation is in their name – they are just a little hole which allows you to have a “peep”. The view is limited, partial, incomplete. Instead of that, this person has a larger, big-hearted view of the world.

I don’t know how this works in practice, and it may be that there was a secondary door behind this one (otherwise it’d let in quite a draft!) but it’s interesting to me that a peephole is normally known as a security device, something put there because of fear, but this open heart says something entirely different.

This is one of my favourite passages from “The Little Prince” –

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

What can we do to create a world where more people can engage with an open heart, rather than through the debilitating lens of fear?

What would the world look like if we looked at it with the heart more than with the eye? If we gave more weight to the invisible? After all, the invisible includes the Self, subjectivity, consciousness, feelings, love, care, relationships and attention. None of those can be seen with the eye, or measured and presented statistically. None of those have easily defined borders or limits.

What would life feel like when lived with a more open heart?

Can love flow through a closed heart and a hardened mind?

I reckon it’s worth some consideration.

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Nature’s transient jewels

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, perception, photography, science on June 5, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Something which always catches my eye and makes me stop to lean in and look closer is the sparkle of light on water.

Look at these little water droplets on this leaf on the forest floor. They are absolutely like little jewels. Each one lying perfectly on this fallen oak leaf, presented to me as if on a platter. Each one looks like one of those glass paperweights which draw you in so that you can look closely and see if you can see a whole world inside.

How do they form?

I don’t really know. I suspect these particular ones may have come from the rain, but they could have appeared with the morning dew. How does each one make such a beautiful shape, yet every one unique in size and place? How do they form exactly where they form? What is it about the ground, or the leaf, or that part of a leaf, which lets the water molecules coalesce like this, to make these shining beads?

I remember learning about water tension and how water molecules hold together to form these perfect surfaces, but what determines the size? Why are some so much bigger than the others?

The other thing I immediately think of when I look at these images is how it takes the water, the sun, and the forest to create them. I might be drawn to the sparkling droplets on the leaf, but it takes all three of these forces, or presences, to make them. Nothing exists in isolation.

The one closest to you in this photo (I mean the one which is lowest down in the image), hints at a whole world. Click on it and look as closely as you can. There is a forest in there.

No wonder people have long since been intrigued by crystal balls.

But, for me, is the added quality of transience which makes these jewels so beautiful. You can’t pick them up and put them in a bag. You can’t sell them or horde them.

You can only enjoy them exactly where they are in this short but present moment.

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