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noticing

The picture not taken

This morning on my run I often take pictures and post them (here), but sometimes I see something and want to take a picture, but just cannot bring myslef to do it. This morning there was another of those – the picture not taken. It wasn’t because I didn’t have a picture taking device; I had my phone (aka personal camera & computer) in my hand. It was because I just couldn’t bring myself to break the perfect scene and interrupt someone else’s moment by invading with my gaze.

It doesn’t mean I didn’t notice. I did. The pictures not taken have burned their images into my mind and made a memory. I’d like to describe a few of them and maybe you will be able to see a shadow of the moment in your mind too. -they are all scenes of the summer, and that means they are endowed with a little bit of magic.

 

1. The woman reading in the van, and her dog.

As I run, I go around the water’s edge for a mile in one direction and then I stop and look at my favourite tree – a big cedar, and I imagine it tells me of all the things it has seen, knows, the long view, and then I run back along the water’s edge. Read More »The picture not taken

The mountain before the tree

A morning thought. It’s about this picture, Le Lac d’Annecy and the apprehension of reality. (I mean apprehension in its apparent 14th C meaning of ‘grasp with the senses or mind’.)  <– and that’s in parenthesis because I cannot convey the meaning in my voice in a simply font.

With reality, I don’t mean the stuff around us, but truths, and specifically the passions that drive us – whethere that is music, that sense of being in nature, there will be something. There will be something that you relish breathing in. That’s it, even if it is not a thing. It won’t be a thing, but I won’t attempt to name it or even suggest what it could be for you. The interesting thing here is not the actual thing, but how you see it.

That’s where the picture comes in. and warning, there’s some cerebral stuff ahead, but it’s worth swimming in the concepts – you will feel refreshed, revitalised, and maybe just see a bit more clearly when you blink after coming out of the water. There’s a paragraph and then a phrase. The paragraph describes how one needs to not only view, but be emmersed, as I suggested – swim, and ‘participate’ with the stuff of our reality to take it in. Here’s the paragraph and then I’ll go on:Read More »The mountain before the tree