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Archive for the ‘life’ Category

Hyacinths

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, from the reading room, life, perception, personal growth, psychology on March 13, 2017| 1 Comment »

Oh, I wish I could share the scent of these astonishing flowers with you. How the sense of smell conjures up such vivid memories and experiences. Hyacinths are the only flowers which provoke my mind to recall poetry. I’m not saying I don’t think of lines from poems in other circumstances. It’s just that hyacinths, specifically, start a passage of poetry in my mind every single time….in much the same way as a few notes of music will transport me back to a particular time and place.

Here’s what I hear in my head when I smell the hyacinths –

‘You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;

“They called me the hyacinth girl.’

_ Yet when we came back, late, from the hyacinth garden,

Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not

Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither

Living not dead, and I knew nothing,

Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

Do you know that poem?

I’ve never seen her, the hyacinth girl, her arms full and her hair wet, but I swear I have. Yet I couldn’t describe her to you. I’ve never seen her physically…and that’s what’s most interesting about this for me. I have a deep knowledge of seeing her, but I’ve never seen her. I have the feeling of the experience of seeing her, but I’ve never seen her.

But I have seen the hyacinths….and every time, they still my soul and I’m “looking into the heart of light, the silence.”

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The colours of the world

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography on March 9, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Here are two photos I’ve taken recently. Both have wonderful reflections in water but each of them has an utterly distinct and particular character which is, I think, captured in the wholeness of each shot, rather in their detailed elements.

The first one is taken in South Africa, and the second one in Scotland.

How different is Africa from Europe?

What different colours, different tones, different atmospheres. It’s not just that the seasons in the two hemispheres are opposite with South Africa slipping from summer into autumn, whilst Scotland awakens from winter into Spring.

I find both of these images beautiful and delightful. I couldn’t rank them and say one is “better” than the other.

Rather, I’m just deeply grateful to be able to experience such diversity in this astonishing planet which we inhabit together.

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The loch’s edge

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, neuroscience, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography on March 6, 2017| 7 Comments »

Yesterday whilst out in the Trossachs just north of Stirling in Scotland, the clouds opened up to reveal some patches of blue sky and allow the sun to reveal itself. Loch Venachar was as still as I’ve ever seen it. The reflections were simply stunning. I took a number of photos. Here’s one I’m particularly pleased with.

What you’re looking at here is the edge of the loch at the bottom of the image. The rocks are at the water’s edge. The branches stretch out from a few leafless trees which grow amongst the rocks and the rest of the image is the still water reflecting the sky.

I love how this image catches my attention straight away. My first thought is just how beautiful it looks. Then as I start to look more closely I feel a bit disorientated. What’s that rock doing up in the sky? Is it just hanging there, or is it impossibly supported by the tree’s spindly branches? Then the image resolves itself as I become more aware of the reflection.

I think it’s like this in life sometimes. We engage at an intuitive, emotional, even aesthetic level, taking in the whole as it is, then we start to focus on elements, or parts, and become a bit thrown off course, until we put what we are focusing on back into the contexts where they exist. Then the whole experience of standing at the edge of the water comes together again, but now intensified by our way of engaging with it.

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Living together

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, philosophy, photography on March 4, 2017| 2 Comments »

The range and intensity of colours in these recent photos takes my breath away. Here are rocks, shells and petals, representing the kingdoms of the minerals, the animals and the plants. These three kingdoms are part of a whole. In my mind’s eye I see an image of the blue planet, the Earth seen from the surface of the Moon

and I recall the story of Edgar Mitchell’s journey back to Earth after walking on the Moon. He saw the alignment of the Moon, the Earth and the Sun appearing each time his spacecraft turned on its axis and had a profound experience of seeing the particular and the whole in the same moment. He looked at the beautiful planet he called home and wondered about human beings waging wars and killing each other over invisible lines they called borders and over beliefs in invisible gods and this new perspective gave him a deep desire to see humans live together peaceably.

When I look again at the beauty in these photos I’m motivated ever more strongly to contribute to such a change. We share this little planet, not just we humans, but we, the members of all the kingdoms of Nature.

We desperately need to find more creative, more just, more sustainable ways of living together.

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Nodes and connectors

Posted in books, from the dark room, from the living room, from the reading room, life, personal growth, philosophy, photography, science on March 2, 2017| 1 Comment »

Look at the skeleton of this beautiful fish. The intricate and delicate structure of the bones is a stunning demonstration of the nature of networks. We can see the whole skeleton is made up from two simple elements, nodes and connectors. Whether we zoom in to study just one group, or out to look at the larger regions we see a variety of different patterns based on these two simple elements.

If you start at any point on this skeleton you’ll be able to trace a path to any other point without ending up down some disconnected cul de sac. In other words every single point is connected to every other one….either in simple one or two step connections, or through an almost infinite variety of pathways across the whole structure.

This is one of the most fundamental patterns at the heart of reality – networks of nodes and connectors.

You can see the same design in all forms of life, especially in multicellular organisms, all kinds of plants, animals and human beings.

Networks of nodes and connectors are the essential fabric of the universe.

Two of the best books I know about this phenomenon are Linked by Barabasi, and Connected by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler. I recommend them both. They show how this apparently simple structure builds up into the most complex of phenomena, from individual organisms, to social groups and whole ecosystems.

Once you see things this way you can’t help but see connections everywhere. It’s the science which demonstrates the limitations of reductionism and abolishes the notion of atomisation.

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Entangled

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, philosophy, photography on February 27, 2017| Leave a Comment »

starfish vines

Nature loves to be entangled.

Life seeks entanglement.

Nothing living can survive in complete isolation. We thrive when we are in active relationships with others, with other members of our own species, but especially with other forms of Life.

We need to connect, to make bonds, to entwine our energies and our destinies.

What kinds of connections can we make? What types of bonds will we form? How will we share our energies with each other?

Isn’t the most important question today – “how are we going to live together?”

 

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The blue yonder

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography on February 23, 2017| 1 Comment »

The blue yonder – I wrote about Rebecca Solnit’s observation that distance is blue a while back.

The sea caught my attention for this shot….I was entranced by the rich palette of greens and blues….but when I looked later I noticed that the far mountains were just the kind of blue which she wrote about.

I love an image like this. I can lose myself in it for ages. I find it soothing and mesmerising. I hope you do too.

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The Rock Face

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, photography on February 21, 2017| 3 Comments »

I know our brains are brilliant at spotting patterns, but have you ever noticed just how good they are at seeing faces?

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Becoming not being

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on February 20, 2017| 1 Comment »

Becoming not being……you know that tag line I’ve used on this blog since Day 1…

Well this is a great example.

What is a wave?

How do you define it, measure it, set its beginning and its end points?

All of those questions are hard enough to answer but when I look at the spray which the wind is whipping up from the advancing wave, and flinging it backwards like soft hair then I see our attempts to define and delimit disappear like the fine white spray itself.

I’ve never seen this phenomenon before. It was a particularly windy day but I’d never seen the wind do both these things at once…..drive the water towards the beach in big white crashing waves AND whip the foamy top of the wave to create this transient curtain of white water…….astonishing!

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Reaching for the moon

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on February 19, 2017| 2 Comments »

I’d noticed it earlier on my walk. The moon was hanging in the blue sky of the morning. But a little further on and around the corner I looked up and saw this. Wow! I can’t remember ever seeing the moon looking as big as this. Usually when I see the moon it’s pretty small, and if I take a photograph of it, somehow it appears even smaller, so when I pointed my camera towards it this time I was surprised to see it didn’t shrink. It sat there, almost kissing the Earth, holding its own, not diminished in the slightest by the size of the mountain beside it.

Sure, the moon wasn’t shining nearly as brightly as it does when it’s full and high in the night sky, but it was still impressive enough to stop me in my tracks.

There’s something magical about the moon for we humans, or maybe it’s better to say, there’s something magical about the relationship we humans have with the moon. It’s more than just a delight in beauty. It’s more than fascination and wonder.

She inspires us, stimulates our imagination, encourages us to dream, nurtures our feelings of love and romance.

The pull of the moon draws us up and out of our limits, or our habits, as we “reach for the moon”, aspiring to grow, develop, achieve, to become the best we can become.

I delight in my relationship with the moon.

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