The piece that follows emerged from some scribbled writing I did a few weeks back.

The original notes also provided the quarry for the pantoum At The Level of the Tiny, reminding me (again) how many layers there are in our words.

THE BALM LENS

I must walk of the earth.

Go backwards,

retrace my steps.

Oh,

but this is life.

I feed

on images,

not just flowers, but our comprehension

and our normal seeing.

This macro what I wanted,

to go slowly,

so very slowly,

insects too,

soothed,

it is a balm.

The balm lens provides a window,

a door

to a deeper noticing,

all of it,

so very tiny.

I am alone,

so seeing.

Through my own lens

I may lie in the grasses with the flowers.

The macro lens lets me see things like this.

Oh, I know.

It’s just a common or garden flower of the wayside, of the fields, of the hedgerows.

Some might say it’s a weed.

It’s just a ribwort plantain – you’ll have seen them too, a hundred times, a thousand times, mooching along by the roadside, by the wayside.

But this is the first year I have really seen them, really noticed them.

Only the blackness at first, the shape emerging.

Then this burst into flower.

This starburst.

The macro lens lets me see the world differently, lets me see, lets me notice.

Technology lets me edit and sift the images, lets me crop and chose the best, lets me play with the image (with programmes that are simple, and easy, and free) so I can express at least something of the dreamy wonder I feel as I wander in the waysides, in the roadsides, in the hedgerows.

As I wander, as I wonder, just noticing, just watching the most common or garden plant, as it turns into a starburst.

Not the act of taking the photographs, no that is still full of delight, the chance to lose yourself in noticing, the opportunity to connect and communicate with the natural world.

Rather it is the bit about what next that’s been bugging me, a feeling I’ve found it hard to shake off that a photograph can never be good enough (compared to the beautiful things you see that prompted and invited you to take the photos in the first place).

I realise this is a form of the (dead hand of) perfectionism.

I think there’s also something particular to photography about this – the language of ‘taking’ a photograph or ‘capturing’ a moment reinforces the feeling that you’re trying to perfect the act of catching, rather than creating.

There’s a photo I took last year that helped me with this. It’s a reflection of the oaks outside the house, waving in the late evening sun.

Thinking about that picture made me realise that, perhaps even just subconsciously, I was trying to make myself like the window: passive, catching, still. Reflecting the world as it danced in front of me, passive, catching, still.

(Okay, lets be honest: passive, catching, still. Soulful, and good.)

I think my love affair with the macro lens might have increased this feeling.

I invested in an adapter lens recently, to increase the power of the macro function.

It means I can get even more up close and personal with the flowers, and get enough detail of the really tiny hedgerow flowers that I can learn more about them when I get home, and enjoy the pleasure of seeing them for the second time, and learning about their names, history and symbolism.

But there are some things it makes worse: the desire to capture, to get the details just right, to make the image crisp, to keep very still, to do justice to the gorgeousness of your subject, to re-present the beauty that you find.

I absolutely love this form of photographic practice (more on this later in the week), but I realised I needed to find a way to shake off the quest for perfectionism that was threatening to to get in the way of the enjoyment.

I’m experimenting with different approaches to getting past this.

One is the purchase of a cheap Holga camera, to play around with different styles, images and techniques.

Holga photographs are less sharp, more atmospheric, less perfect, more intriguing.

Holga photography is non-digital (yes, it is still possible) which means you can’t immediately see what you’ve taken. You don’t get the chance to take a picture again and again, in the quest to make it perfect.

This has been seriously liberating – but too much to cover in this one post. More on Holga discoveries next week!

Then I started thinking: if you can change the way the process and practice feels by changing one filter, how about changing some others.

I thought about applying a filter of Hafiz, my favourite poet.

Immediately a different set of photographs came into view.

I knew that Hafiz would go for a photograph of the hedgerow flowers bursting out like an unruly chorus line

or that image I so love of the yellow dead nettle, cheekily sticking out its tongue.

Oh I see.

Aha aha aha.

There are choices that you’re making, over and over and over again, about what you look at, what you notice, what you take, and what you see.

There are choices that you’re making about what you share.

About the stories that you’re telling through the photographs you ‘take’.

Including, of course, the stories that you’re telling to yourself.

About a world that needs to be still, and peaceful, and balanced (still, and soulful and good.)

Or.

And.

A world that is energised and energising, dancing, mischievous, and unruly.

About a world where you have a part as a co-creator, helping to make it and shape it, helping to stir the universe’s still-cooking stew.

The stew is an idea I learned from The Sufi Book of Life (reviewed here):

If we look at the world this way, then the reason we exist – and the reason to begin any journey – is to to bring out our full humanity, the unique flavour that we alone can offer to the universe’s still-cooking stew.

And that is of course the most important lens of all, the most important filter change to make.

Realising, and then remembering (for I have realised this before, but oftentimes forgot) that

we too,

even as photographers,

just opening the aperture,

we too have a role in making,

and shaping,

and stirring the still-cooking stew.

That kind of thing.

I’ve no energy left for believing, I said.

Okay, said the universe, without protest.

Later that evening, driving home from choir, oh it’s a day that can only be described as heaven sent.

Warm, sunny, with a fresh breeze, and everyone is moving with the scent of summer, with the scent of love, with the scent of freedom and the hills have been glowing green, and gorgeous, now dropping into blue, and purple, as the sun is setting down, and as I’m driving home I can tell, I can just tell that the sun is going to set on the hills behind home, and I whisper:

Please don’t do this to me. I don’t want it, I don’t need it, please don’t do this to me, I don’t *want* to believe.

I know, said the universe.

And showed me anyway:

Sun dropping gold, a circle of molten fire, kissing, blessing, silver clouds burning at the edges, hills turning purple with the touch of the heavens, the day illuminated, the night made sacred by the final kiss of the sun.

It was a lot cooler when I did this (10 days ago), and the morning started off decidedly chilly.

This is what happened next.

DAY 6

I went outside, to breathe for 60. It was cold, really cold, a cold biting wind and all I could think of was that my feet were cold.

No, that is not all that I thought about – I thought about the place I wanted to go and walk. I knew just the place I wanted to go, to the moorland landscape that makes me feel most at home.

I had an idea to climb to the top of the hill, by the Moore cross, and then take my shoes off, and wander.

I wanted to walk up the hill, to the cross, and look out, and walk barefoot.

I set off, following what I thought was the path, and walked towards the hill. Before I knew it I’d gone too far: the hill was behind me. I went back on myself, heading towards it but the cross still seemed a long way away and I was starting to get frustrated, itching to get off the path, itching to get barefoot.

So I just started walking, without direction, without an end goal in view.

I heard a bird singing, to the right.

I followed the song.

A blackbird flew over the fence, tempting me further that way, so up and over a gate, then to the right again, following the birds, then suddenly I could see a stream, with trees.

I squeezed past barbed wire and over a wall, feeling wild, and rebellious, and more like myself than I have done for ages, and there it was, stretched down below me.

A stream, and ancient trees, and primroses, lining the sides of the water with the softest of yellow.

I took off my boots and walked barefoot, down to the stream, lined with primroses, with hawthorns and rowan.

I put my feet into the water, and felt young, like a child.

I remembered how I used to walk barefoot when I was young, and it felt familiar to be there, like a scene from Skye, or a world painted by the words of a Celtic poet, or maybe it was the wood on the path to Hallaig, and I loved it there, safe, secure, wild, and free.

I had no phone, and no-one knew where I was, except me.

I crossed the stream and walked down the path, to a hawthorn, strong, wild, strong, gorgeous.

This went so far beyond what I was expecting when I followed the invitation to wander, to take off my shoes, re-connect, and just wander.

It was a place I would never have found without so doing, without wandering, without following the birds, without taking off my shoes and following the soles of my feet.

It was way beyond anything I could have imagined.

I reached out to touch the hawthorn, and said thank you.

And then, just at that moment, at that very moment, I heard a cuckoo.

I heard a cuckoo, the first cuckoo I’d heard in two years, the first since I’d moved to Galloway two years ago, a symbol, a sign, I knew.

Cuckoo.

And then I wondered: did I imagine it?

Then again, cuckoo cuckoo.

No mistaking it, no imagining it, cuckoo cuckoo cuckoo.

I put my boots back on, and walked back to the car. All the way back I could hear it, cuckoo cuckoo it called, louder and louder and louder, like a cuckoo on steroids I thought, like someone is having a laugh.

An impossible burst of cuckoo song, impossibly daftly cuckoo.

And the universe laughed.

Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, she sang.

Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo.

Through all grief, through the deluge of tears,
The wings of the butterfly are folded, still, in perfect poise.
The world reveals itself with beauty at its centre.
There is nothing beyond this: this act of worship, this act of communion.

The wings of the butterfly are folded, still, in perfect poise.
Gasping in wonder, laughing in astonishment, crying with delight,
There is nothing beyond this: this act of worship, this act of communion.
Things are happening at the level of the tiny.

Last Sunday we lost our beautiful cat, hit by a car. This small, gorgeous, funny, generous creature has been friend, guardian, companion, wise man, fool, and simply: cat, for fifteen years.

That’s a big chunk of my life, and it feels like a very big hole.

As I’ve moved, slowly, through the week, I’ve been aware how much comfort the practice of photography has offered me.

One morning when I couldn’t bear to sit in the house I went outside, in the early morning sun, and took pictures of the apple blossom, almost in bloom. The pictures didn’t work but the practice did: click, connect, focus.

Connect, click, focus.

Breathe.

Connect.

Photography takes me out of myself.

Photography takes me outside, and that is such a huge blessing. Outside you get distracted: there are still gates to manoeuvre, stiles to cross, brambles to untangle and nettles to avoid.

There is still the birdsong, soothing, and the smell of the wild garlic in the woodland: this moment, reeking, here, now.

And there are the images that you find, or that find you.

Symbols that offer something – a way to understand, to process, to heal, or just to keep on going.

Some of these I know I wouldn’t have seen had I not had this practice of going out, each and every day, camera in hand, to watch, to see, to notice.

Some of these images remind me of things I have seen before, and awaken old, good, feelings of wonder, and gratitude.

Some of them whisper secrets that I am finding for the first time.

This wood sorrel has just peeped out from the mossy, dark underside of an old railway embankment, at the edge of the wood. I am trying to get into the habit of looking up the flowers when I see them, to try and learn a bit more of who they are, and what they have done, or symbolised, in days gone by.

This wood sorrel (my book says) forms pockets of shining flowers in spring, on woodland floors or amongst shady rocks. It can grow in locations that only have 1% daylight, so you find it growing in the darkest part of the forest and at cave entrances.

It’s name in Gaelic is feada-coille, candle of the wood.

This practice: this looking, this noticing, this trying to learn, this saying thank you, this commitment to keeping your eyes wide open, your heart wide open, even when you don’t feel it, particularly when you don’t feel it, is really what the art of everyday wonder means to me.

I do not live my life in a state of perpetual wonder. Who of us does?

But I do have a practice that allows me to get outside, to get out of my head, and to see, over and over again, things that are beautiful, and astonishing, and communicate in a way that words couldn’t begin to.

And for that I am deeply grateful.

~~~

First published at The Art of Everyday Wonder

Flowers jump out at me.

Good morning! Good morning! they cry.

I’m pretty sure this is code for ‘take my photo, pretty please’, so I stop, and oblige.

As I stop to take a photograph I try not to stop at taking a photograph.

I also admire them, encourage them, compliment them.

The flowers smile, broadly, in response.

I walk along the road, by the hedgerows of all delight.

The road sides are dotted with splashes of white, and it makes me glad to be seeing these flowers for the second time.

It makes me glad that I’ve got to know their name, and something about them, and to have written of how proud you’d be to walk with this flower in your buttonhole.

I bend down, pay attention, take some photographs.

It’s not so easy with these tiny flowers.  They move, bend, flutter and dance in the wind. It’s delightful, but hard to get the focus.

They shine, bright, white, in the sunshine, and the sunshine makes it hard to get the contrast right. (Cloudy days and rainy days are often better. But then, the flowers do so love to sunbathe.)

Later, I look at the photographs on my laptop, and start to edit.

This part too is full of delight, noticing a pattern I hadn’t seen before, discovering a point of detail that is simply: astonishing, and wonderful.

Still, this is also the time where the difficult and more challenging parts of the creative process come into play.

Doubts and frustrations swing by. A whole series of  impossible I wish desires run through my head.

I wish I knew how to create other-worldly flower portraits.

I wish I knew how to create an impressionistic effect.

I wish I had a better camera.

I wish I could paint.

I wish I knew more about the flowers, their names, their mythology, their symbolism.

I wish I could find a way to take a flower photograph that was good enough, match enough, representation enough of the flowers that dance with me, and delight me in the hedgerows.

And of course, I cannot.

Accepting this is part of the creative process.

(Yes, I know, it’s part of life.)

Accepting this requires me to think about why I take, and share, flower photographs.

I share them not to appear, to be thought of, to be spoken of, or to be: an artist, a photographer, or an ‘authority’ on flowers.

I simply want to try and share something of their gorgeousness, the way they dance and move in the wind, how they jump out from the hedgerows and show off in the sunshine.

I want to share this simple, everyday reminder that the earth is beautiful, and you are loved.

(I am not sure if this ambition is smaller, or bigger, than the others ;-) )

And I want to take photographs, myself, just for me, over and over again: because it’s the best way I’ve yet found to get to know the flowers, to communicate with the natural world, to feel close to home, connected, co-creating, delighting, loving, laughing.

The wishes I wish for are only about the way you might (if you wanted, and I’m not sure I do) create ‘products’ from the photographs.

They have nothing to do with the wishes I have for my relationship with the flowers, which is within my own hands, own heart, own eyes each and every time I step out of the door.

Creative doubt has never, ever, come close to diminishing my delight in the taking of the photographs, the moments of absorption, of noticing, of talking and connecting, of watching and laughing, of falling over, of getting stung, of getting mud soaked, and I trust it never will.

That relationship, that connection, that admiration and honouring are the only things that matter. 

Whether or not the picture’s any ‘good’ is really neither here nor there. This is what I need to keep on learning as I learn to take imperfect photographs.

I step back outside the door.

The sun is shining.

The flowers jump out at me, all smiles, all delight, and ready to pose once more.

Article first published at The Art of Everyday Wonder.

It’s that crazy April time of year when it’s sunshine one minute, raining the next, heat of the summer one week, wildly followed on by snow falls and hail the next, and the earth is growing fiercely in response, fast, subversive, throwing up plants in the hedgerows, and I didn’t want to miss a trick.

Still, I didn’t see it the first time.

It was only on the way back home that the pattern caught my eye, something of the purple, something of the arching, drooping flower, something of the graceful hint of flowering to come that made me bend down, hunker down, okay, lie down by the roadside, watch and notice.

(Don’t worry, it is a very quiet road, with almost no passers by to watch my antics. Cars are few and far between, and so I can hear them a long way off, and shuffle into the undergrowth if needs be.)

I looked and thought: oh! I know you! I have surely, somewhere, seen you before.

And even though there is still doubt mixed in and muttering (what do you know about plants, you don’t know the names of the flowers, who are you to talk of flower love) there is another, stronger voice that is saying yes, yes, yes, I remember you, you plant of drooping, arching purple, still so low down by the ground at this early point in the year that it’s only by lying down I can see you, but yes, I am sure, I know you.

I have seen you before.

And my heart leaps in response to a different kind of gratitude and a different kind of seeing.

Not just the delight of that seeing for the first time, but the joy of seeing in the second year, of walking down these same quiet roads, these same paths by the river, these same shady places in the wood and remembering what came before, what emerged in April, May, June, a festival of flowers that ran throughout the year, and my delight is mixed with anticipation, of the festival that’s coming, and remembrance, at what has gone before.

It is a heady mix.

It is taken me a long time, and a lot of meandering and moving, to get to this point in my life when I can step out from the door and walk, just walk, when I can walk along by the hedgerows and start to know them, to recognise them, to see flowers and plants emerging and feel the delight at seeing an old friend, to feel the pleasure of seeing the wheel turning, slowly, inexorably, through the days of the second year.

Yes, it is a heady mix, and I am deeply grateful, and I will do all I can to keep sharing what I see, and hear, and feel, as I walk, and look, in the wonder of the second year.

~~~

Article first published at The Art of Everyday Wonder.

Tiny, inconspicuous flower by the road edge.

Bend down and notice, I mean bend right down and notice,

Pay attention, take a photograph:

You never know what you might find.

~~~

More words in celebration of this beautiful, tiny barren strawberry here:

You Are Not Barren.

~~~

Article first published at The Art of Everyday Wonder.