In Praise of the Ordinary

Mary Oliver

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Wabi Sabi

Japanese-style image

Embracing the imperfect, incomplete, impermanent…

A philosophy I can embrace whole-heartedly.

Wabi-Sabi: The Japanese Philosophy Of Embracing Imperfectionism

 

Goldfinch

A lovely poem about being aware and in the moment

Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

On a gray afternoon
(it was not supposed to rain)
after errands to the hardware store
and messing with a database
(is this how I mend the world?)
tired and mindless, at the pace of ennui,
I walk out of the basement office
into the dreary parking lot
and there flits onto a dead branch
a goldfinch—a stray bit of sun,
yellow alarm, tiny shout of glory—
and, having made its point, flies off.

All the way home I breathe,
         How can I not be grateful?
How can I not be awake?

Everything for eyes

The older you become, the louder and more colourful you need to be, otherwise you become invisible…

The Book Keeper Book Shop

There’s a lady here at the shop choosing books for her foster daughter. She is piling up a hopeful stack, a rainbow lot. Actually, the lady is all colours herself. Crimson, blue and garnet and lemon; this is her dress.

She describes the books she needs. Fantastic, romantic, historical, significant and beautiful. Not rubbish, please.

And her hair and her shoes, and her bag and she… swirl, keeps swirling from shelf to shelf. Everything offers something for the eyes, a dazzle of glass and hope and a foaming of light from the skin of the sea. She keeps adding to the pile, colour upon colour, her razzle raspberry hair warming the shop. I am drinking the colours, thinking of mandarins and deep richy hazelnuts and outside lavender, delicate, rough. Then she is standing there, ready at last. Choosing bookmarks to go with the books, and then, unapologetic for the richness…

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Sandwich

 

A few days ago I was eating a really nice salad sandwich for lunch. No, I’m not one to do “foodie” posts, so this is not “the” sandwich, just a random internet photo that fits the bill. I was also in energetic conversation with a friend (I talk with my hands!) and managed to knock my sandwich off the table. I was able  to pick it up relatively intact, and was about to bin it when my treacherous brain said to me “There are people out there in the world who have no food, and who would happily eat your reject sandwich, even though its been briefly on the floor. Why won’t you?” So, do I apply the ‘5 second rule’ rigorously and bin the sandwich, or do I go with my global conscience?

I ate the sandwich, and obviously I didn’t expire. So are we being too hygienic, too precious about what we’ll eat, too clean for our own good and the good of the planet? We throw away so much good food… #5secondrule #foodwaste

 

A Cat is Always on the Wrong Side of the Door

Min the Mog at the back door, wanting to go out…sits in the doorway, looking through to the garden, stretches forward and sniffs, looks left and right to check that there’s nothing dangerous on the back verandah, changes mind and turns as if to go back inside, changes mind again and leans forward to look out of the door… ME: “For heavens sake Min, make up your mind!!!” MIN: (looking up at me pityingly) “Meh”. Walks slowly out of the door. You just can’t get good service these days…

Communication/Community

The words “Communication” and “Community” both share the Latin base word “Communis” but the two couldn’t be further apart than when people over-use their cell phones. Conversation over the dinner table is lost when FOMO rules and attention is given to WhatsApp and not what is happening in real time around you. Enslaved by our own marvellous technology, are we out-sourcing Community? Will there come a time in the not too distant future when we simply no longer know how to talk to one another without an interface of some kind? We are already raising a generation, a large number of whom do not know how to entertain themselves without a screen of some kind.