You could argue that these little “commas” cut out of the shutters covering this window are to let some light in. But if you wanted to let light into the room, you’d open the shutters, wouldn’t you? But maybe you just want some light in, not much. So why cut the holes into these carefully crafted shapes? Or maybe we need to think of this from the other side. Maybe these are holes to look out through….viewing points to see a bit of the world outside. But there again, why make them this shape? You know what? Maybe they aren’t carved for a utilitarian function. Maybe they are neither for letting in light, nor for facilitating observations of the street outside.
Maybe the creator just wanted to make something beautiful. Because they are beautiful, aren’t they? And without them, the shutters would look pretty, well, uninteresting. It’s the comma-shaped holes which have caught my attention, made me pause, take a photo, and return to it again to wonder……what are these all about? Who made them? Questions to which I’ll never find the answers. But, this much is sure…..they bring me a moment of delight and wonder…..”l’emerveillement du quotidien“.
I’ve looked at these shutters several times now, spent some time with them, reflecting, and wondering. But this morning, something else comes up – don’t they suggest a word? If you look at them, there is one on the left, a space, then another on the right, and if you saw them on a page like that, you’d assume that in that space there should be a word. Wouldn’t you? A word. Or a quotation.
So, here’s something to play with today…….what word, or what words, would write in this particular space?
This is one of my favourite photos. It shows two things which always fascinate me. Firstly, the duck, which is apparently just sitting on the water is sending out ripples across the surface in the most beautiful pattern of concentric circles. Secondly, the fish appear to swimming around the duck, some even following the actual ripples.
This is a great example of how just by living we change the world around us and influence the lives of others.
D H Lawrence said –
As we live, we are transmitters of life.
When I’ve looked at this photo in the past, I’ve been struck by how we “influencers”, but, after reading this sentence by Lawrence, I think “transmitters” is a better word to use. Besides, “influencers” has become synonymous with marketers, and, in so doing, has lost some of its beauty for me.
We transmit life just by living. As I breathe, as I consume food and drink, as I digest, as move around this little planet, I change the air, the water, the soil, as I go. As I think, and feel, and imagine, and communicate, I change the lives of others. This blog, which really started just as a personal space to gather things that interest me, has, over the years, become a transmitter. I know that from the feedback I receive from people all over the world. That’s become an explicit part of my writing here. I want to share my life experiences. I want to share my photos, my words, in the hope that you, and maybe others you know, will be touched by them, inspired by them. I hope what I create here brings you some joy, evokes some wonder and reflection, and brightens your everyday. Because, creating these posts, does that for me!
We are transmitters of life, and each of us leads a unique, special, life. We are transmitters of life through our personal stories, none of us telling an identical story to another person. We are transmitters of life through our actions and our thoughts. Collectively, we humans shape and sculpt the Earth. We should stay conscious of that. It’ll help us make better choices.
We made a visit to a sequoia forest in Catalonia recently and this is one of the many photographs I took. When I look at it now a passage from C S Lewis comes to mind. It’s many, many years since I read his little essay, “Meditation in a Toolshed”, but I’ve never forgotten it. It’s pretty easy to find online if you search for it. It starts like this –
I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch-black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it. Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.
He goes on to describe several examples of the difference between “looking at” and “looking along”, where he juxtaposes the “objective” vs the “subjective” (although he doesn’t use those terms), the “quantitative” vs the “qualitative”….and issue which has been at the heart of my career and my life. He summarises his idea with this –
We must, on pain of idiocy, deny from the very outset the idea that looking at is, by its own nature, intrinsically truer or better than looking along. One must look both along and at everything. In particular cases we shall find reason for regarding the one or the other vision as inferior.
Most of the essay is about how we seem to have developed a habit of favouring the objective over the subjective to the point where the latter is dismissed as irrelevant, or even, unreal. I’ve heard a junior doctor say that his mentor told him “You can never believe patients. They lie all the time. You can only believe the results (the laboratory findings)”, and time and again, in neuroscience, our inner thoughts, sensations and feelings are reduced to biochemical reactions and neural pathways….as if the MRI scans and biochemistry reveals “the truth”, whereas the patient’s reported experience is dismissed as “anecdote”, or, worse, “illusion”.
As I look at this photo I see my wife, Hilary, standing in a sunbeam in the middle of the forest. I am “looking at” her in the forest. She is “looking along” the sunbeam and photographing the illuminated trees. And I know in that moment that these are two different representations of reality. Both are true. But there’s more – because as I am “looking at” this scene in the forest, I recall, and re-create, the experience I had of standing in the forest surrounded by the massive trees. I feel again the awe which I felt as the sunbeams shone through to the forest floor. I feel again the wonder I had standing amidst this community of trees (which, by the way, were planted only about seven years before I was born!)
We can understand a lot by measuring, by being objective. But we fail to grasp reality if we dismiss both the inner experience of others, and our own subjective one.
That means we need to value personal stories. We need to be curious about them, to respect them and to listen with non-judgemental empathy. Otherwise, we are only scratching a surface. Worse than that, we are in danger of replacing an understanding of what it is to be human, with a distorted and demeaned mechanistic one.
Do you ever decide, at the start of a day, to look out for a certain colour?
It’s an easy practice and these days when most of us have cameras included in the phones we carry around with us everywhere, it’s pretty easy to take photos of whatever we notice.
I enjoy doing that. The decision to look out for a particular colour sets the intention, and heightens awareness, so, once set, I find, I see that colour everywhere.
I don’t take photos of absolutely everything that particular colour that day, because that’s too lacking in discrimination for me, and I like to select my subjects for photographs a bit more mindfully, or deliberately, than that. But once I’ve decided which colour I’m going to look out for I can then turn the practice into a three step exercise.
Step one is to be aware and to notice that colour whenever you come across it.
Step two is to choose to photograph some of what you notice. You don’t need “criteria” for that, just take the photographs intuitively. If you think, I’m going to take a picture of that, just do it.
Step three, at the end of the day, is to browse the photos you’ve taken.
I find that when I do this I live more easily in the present, and that I magnify and multiply my moments of wonder and joy.
How do I decide which colour to look out for? Usually by noticing something at the start of the day……either something in my immediate environment, or one of my photographs which has caught my attention.
This photo is one of my most favourite green photos! I mean, just look at those greens!
Why do we like reflections so much? I have many to choose from in my photo library. This is one of my favourites. I took two shots when I saw this. One in landscape format, and one in portrait. I find it hard to choose between them but the portrait one here has a little something extra which is that it reminds me of a playing card. You know how the Jack, Queen and King in a standard set of cards look the same whether they are “the right way up” or “upside down”? Well, this image reminds me of that effect.
I think reflections are something which “catch our attention”. When I see one, I’ll stop, take it in, probably take a photo. So it does two crucial things which make all the difference between drifting through life on autopilot, and living a conscious life.
When we notice something and pause to look more closely we’re activating, what Iain McGilchrist, in The Master and His Emissary, calls “the necessary distance”. This human capacity to make a space allows us to make responses, not just react. When we are on autopilot we are under the influence of our habits and reflexes. We find ourselves experiencing emotions or taking actions which we don’t understand. But when we pause, create the distance between cause and effect, between stimulus and reaction, then we open up the gates to choices, to imagination which can lead to novel solutions to problems or can stimulate us to create works of art and self-expression. This distance cuts the strings which others can deliberately pull, and allows us to re-assert our own values, our own beliefs and to tell our own, unique, individual stories.
There’s something else about this kind of reflection I’m sharing with you today. Half the image is upside down. When we look at the upside down half we are challenged to do two things – to make sense of what we are looking at, and to see the unreflected reality differently because we are engaging more actively. Is that clear? What I’m trying to say is that the reflection stops me, the upside down part of the image challenges me, and between them these two halves combine to make me pause, which gives me the opportunity to become more alert, more aware, and to enjoy the experience of the present moment more fully.
Finally, a photo like this just brings me joy because of the sheer beauty of the image. I hope it brings you some joy today, too.
I’ve posted before about the value of carrying a camera everywhere. I’ve got two cameras (well, three if you count my mobile phone), a Nikon D70 which takes wonderful high quality photos, and a Nikon Coolpix S10. The D70 is BIG. It’s a conscious decision to take it with me, and, usually, I do that when I’m heading out on a photo trip. The little S10 with it’s amazing swivelling zoom lens is in my jacket pocket all the time (just have to remember to move it when I change my jacket!). I find even having the camera in my pocket makes me look at the world differently. I’ve hardly ever taken photos with my mobile phone (probably haven’t rated it as a “real” camera!) but this site by Chase Jarvis has just changed my mind about that!
Take a look for yourself – go to this link here. I find this totally inspirational! I’m amazed that he takes between one and a thousand photos daily with his iphone and I’m even more amazed by the quality of the photography.
I welcome constructive criticism and suggestions. I will not, however, tolerate abuse, rudeness or negativity, whether it is directed at me or other people. It has no place here. ANYONE making nasty comments will be banned.
Heroes Not Zombies 