Awe and wonder can be experienced everywhere
When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.
Georgia O’Keefe
To Look At Any Thing
To look at any thing,
If you would know that thing,
You must look at it long:
To look at this green and say,
“I have seen spring in these
Woods,”
will not do – you must
Be the thing you see:
You must be the dark snakes of
Stems and ferny plumes of leaves,
You must enter in
To the small silences between
The leaves,
You must take your time
And touch the very peace
They issue from.
John Moffitt
This poem reminds me that to truly “see” is a deeply meditative act. It is essentially about transcending normal perception. Mostly we look at things casually or superficially, unless we suddenly come upon something spectacular like a perfectly arched rainbow, or even a part of a rainbow. Then we gasp in awe. This I would term “awe at the macro level” but at the micro level, just coming close to an ordinary object or a sight we think we’ve seen a million times, will reveal hitherto unknown wonders.
Mystery surrounds us, but we’re not aware just how mysterious this life is, because understandably, we have work and family, and obligations and chores to attend to all the time, and a multitude of activities and interests we enjoy pursuing. Thus our lives can become both hurried and harried.
But don’t we owe it to ourselves to take enough time out of our busy lives to look deeply and to think deeply about what we see and experience, even the familiar, even mundane objects we see often can be infused with the kind of awe that surprises us. Through attentiveness, we can see beyond the surface and delve deeper into reality.
Looking closely at azaleas backlit by the sun:
I gathered together a collection of some of my recent photographs to illustrate what ai am talking about in this essay.
I love your photos – I’ve been printing photos and making them into greeting cards which I send to my friends. They really appreciate them: they end up putting them on their desks, hanging on their refrigerators, leaving on their shelves to look at every day.
@ravdiablo Thank you! I do the exact same thing and have made photo cards for years and sent them to friends and family. It’s something you did and is special because it’s more than likely to be saved rather than tossed like standard greeting cards. And I love making them. Sometimes it’s hard to find just the right photo for a particular individual, but that makes it all more challenging and fun!
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I love taking pictures of flowers, especially back-lit. There’s not a lot of flowers around here except right now in the spring. As soon as it starts getting hot, the flowers wilt into oblivion.
@startingover_1 back-lit are some of my favorites. I took several today at Middleton Place which was filled with azaleas at Park bloom. It was like wandering in an enchanting g wonderland!
Zinnias are heat-tolerant summer flowers. Wouldn’t they do well there?
@oswego Maybe. But they also have to be drought-tolerant. I’ll look it up. Remember, I’m on the edge of the Mojave Desert.
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