One.
I’m at a picnic table next to an overgrown patch filled with at least 10 kinds of plants. There are stinging nettles, summer vines with a few flowers left. Some poppy-ish yellow flowers on tall weedy stalks. A dozen balls of dew balance on a fat blade of grass. Bees and other insects fly over and among it all. It’s a mass of weeds like you can see anywhere in Britain. At the next table a retired couple talk about weather and food. Beyond them a few friends chat about their lives and tell their children to eat the cheese pasties they said they wanted. It’s all so ordinary. It’s all intensely beautiful. There are stories waiting to spring from every detail.
What do the couple really think of each other?
Are the veins on the that leaf actually a map of a lost city? What crucial information did the caterpillar eat?
How many shades of green am I seeing?
How many days does that vine have left to live?
What does the bee sense while it is disconnected from the hive mind?
How will the cheese pasty shape that child’s future?
Today,
STOP
AND
LOOK.
Keep looking until you see.
Two.
Wear the right boots and a top night out is practically guaranteed.
Three.
Try to get outside for some seeing today.
One of the great ands of life is there is a whole load of awful and a universe of transcendent beauty happening at the same time. It’s never a sin to enjoy the beauty.
Grow slowly
Jeff
"Ordinary and intensely beautiful." <3
"One of the great ands of life." I am stealing this immediately.
Yes to all of this!
I once told I friend I wanted to get out into nature more. We were on a walk. He said, "Pro tip: you are in nature." Then he said, "Super pro tip: you are nature." <3