Thursday 31 May 2007
Friday 25 May 2007
Beautiful little things
Yesterday Jane wrote some beautiful words about the 'small pleasantnesses' of daily life, those little things, rituals, experiences that are so nourishing and invigourating but also familar and reassuring. If you are interested in this concept read Jane's post - she expresses the idea much more elegantly than I.
This started me thinking about my own 'small pleasantnesses', and once started, I found I couldn't stop - I have hundreds! It was a deeply pleasurable, almost sinesthetic experience, recalling and recording these moments and details. However, reading over my list it was unsettling, even a little shocking, to notice there were many things that had happened in the last few days, even today, that while so significant in the remembering, had barely registered with me in the doing or experiencing. Perhaps a tendency to take such things for granted is not surprising, because it does take a certain kind of effort to notice, to pause, reflect and say 'thank you' in the general direction of the universe, and this is the kind of effort that, for me anyway, over the last year at least, seems to have been redirected into managing the sudden distractedness and disorganisation that comes with being the parent of a young child. But really, being inattentive to beauty and those 'small pleasantnesses' (beauty's homebody cousins), taking them for granted, must be the worst kind of laziness: it severs the bond between the ordinary and the extraordinary to render everything plain, and to close down our relationship to the world outside us - if nothing gets out, nothing gets in. Elaine Scarry writes beautifully of this ethical dimension to beauty in her amazing little book, 'On Beauty and Being Just': beauty all its forms (a moth, a pebble, a work of art) causes a 'radical decentring'. We are no longer at the centre of the world, rather, “we willingly cede our ground to the thing that stands before us.” Isn't this the most beautiful idea? I will be making an effort to cultivate less rushing, and more ceding, in my life. More noticing, more attentiveness, more openess to being moved. More committed to just being in the moment, less fantasising about what could/should happen in the next hour, day, week, year.
So, today we had a beautiful day.
Sitting in freshly raked dirt with Martha while the chooks fussed and chattered around us after a futile attempt to even out their ever deeper dustbaths and hollows in the orchard, poking the earth where our carrot seeds should by now have germinated, a lovely coffee in a warm kitchen, a long walk through the shiny, new rye grass, lying on my back in the grass feeling the heat of the sun on my cold face, suddenly becoming aware of the incredible range of shapes, colours and sizes that new gum leaves come in, sanding a new homemade bookcase ready for painting, sitting in the garage with my back in the sun, slowly and inexpertly separating the locks of a thick dirty fleece in preparation for spinning tonight, receving a lovely email from an old friend, ordering a little bit of carefully chosen yarn for a new project, the rich light from the setting sun streaming into the kitchen while I sipped my red wine and cooked a simple dinner, a moment of solitude while Mark bathed Martha, carefully placing plates and glasses on a kitchen table finally cleared of clutter, sitting in the halflight reading books to Martha before bed.
Have a beautiful weekend.
This started me thinking about my own 'small pleasantnesses', and once started, I found I couldn't stop - I have hundreds! It was a deeply pleasurable, almost sinesthetic experience, recalling and recording these moments and details. However, reading over my list it was unsettling, even a little shocking, to notice there were many things that had happened in the last few days, even today, that while so significant in the remembering, had barely registered with me in the doing or experiencing. Perhaps a tendency to take such things for granted is not surprising, because it does take a certain kind of effort to notice, to pause, reflect and say 'thank you' in the general direction of the universe, and this is the kind of effort that, for me anyway, over the last year at least, seems to have been redirected into managing the sudden distractedness and disorganisation that comes with being the parent of a young child. But really, being inattentive to beauty and those 'small pleasantnesses' (beauty's homebody cousins), taking them for granted, must be the worst kind of laziness: it severs the bond between the ordinary and the extraordinary to render everything plain, and to close down our relationship to the world outside us - if nothing gets out, nothing gets in. Elaine Scarry writes beautifully of this ethical dimension to beauty in her amazing little book, 'On Beauty and Being Just': beauty all its forms (a moth, a pebble, a work of art) causes a 'radical decentring'. We are no longer at the centre of the world, rather, “we willingly cede our ground to the thing that stands before us.” Isn't this the most beautiful idea? I will be making an effort to cultivate less rushing, and more ceding, in my life. More noticing, more attentiveness, more openess to being moved. More committed to just being in the moment, less fantasising about what could/should happen in the next hour, day, week, year.
So, today we had a beautiful day.
Sitting in freshly raked dirt with Martha while the chooks fussed and chattered around us after a futile attempt to even out their ever deeper dustbaths and hollows in the orchard, poking the earth where our carrot seeds should by now have germinated, a lovely coffee in a warm kitchen, a long walk through the shiny, new rye grass, lying on my back in the grass feeling the heat of the sun on my cold face, suddenly becoming aware of the incredible range of shapes, colours and sizes that new gum leaves come in, sanding a new homemade bookcase ready for painting, sitting in the garage with my back in the sun, slowly and inexpertly separating the locks of a thick dirty fleece in preparation for spinning tonight, receving a lovely email from an old friend, ordering a little bit of carefully chosen yarn for a new project, the rich light from the setting sun streaming into the kitchen while I sipped my red wine and cooked a simple dinner, a moment of solitude while Mark bathed Martha, carefully placing plates and glasses on a kitchen table finally cleared of clutter, sitting in the halflight reading books to Martha before bed.
Have a beautiful weekend.
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