Tag: Look closer

In Praise of Small Things

One year, my son bought me an adorable Flow calendar featuring an illustration of a tiny pleasure for every day. These tiny pleasures might be something as simple as observing a new bloom or a chat with a friend or the first coffee of the morning. Anything that brought a smile would qualify. As I tore off each page, it encouraged me to look more closely at the world and appreciate how little things are often what give us most joy.

Then lockdown arrived and my already circumscribed life became even more constricted. While shielding, I could visit medical establishments, but not much else and my world became my house and garden and the few blocks surrounding it – with occasional thrilling trips to the countryside. I had a choice: go completely bonkers within the straight-jacket of restrictions or find another way to expand my world.

Observing the world from the window. But her mug says it all. Image: Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

Look closer

Perhaps it was an early obsession with Mary Norton’s The Borrowers or residual childhood memories of fairies in the garden, but I have always been acutely aware that there is a lot more going on than what we see on the surface. If your world seems small, the trick is to change perspective and look closer. Just as a tiny drop of pond water appears as nothing interesting; put it under a microscope and it will be transformed. There will be a whole world of activity, including tiny creatures too small to detect with the human eye. From what at first seems insignificant and lifeless, emerges something very much alive.

Though I haven’t (yet) embarked on any scientific investigations, I have made greater efforts to look much more closely at the world. And my, how magnificent it is! While at the dog park, I started studying the bark on the trees. Every tree was quite different: some barks were smooth to the touch and some entirely rough. Most showed scars, and many were carbuncled with mounds of either undeveloped branches or parasitic growth. Many were covered in lawns of yellow and green lichen – but, of course, mainly on their north facing sides.

What worlds are contained here. Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

In the garden, if you are willing to sit for a while and refocus, there is endless activity in even a square metre of ground: ants scurrying on their errands; bees and butterflies making brief forays into flowers and beetles with their glorious, iridescent carapaces glinting and colour shifting in the sun.

Starting small

Spring is the perfect time to start thinking small. The season is tentative, knowing that blasts of winter can reappear at any moment with sometimes devastating consequences. So Nature has learned to keep things somewhat miniature until the dangers have passed. The earliest flowers are crocus, snow drops, wood anemones, pansies and violets huddling inconspicuous and close to the ground. Only once the promise of warmer weather seems more certain are they joined by their larger, more showy relatives: daffodils and paperwhites; camellias and hyacinths.

First flowers. The delicate beauty of snowdrops. Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

Zoom in

A good friend has recently acquired a macro lens for her phone and sends me gorgeous images almost daily of all the objects and plants she has photographed. Many are unrecognisable so close up, but all have a fascinating attraction. In them, the everyday becomes exotic, almost surreal. The components that make up the stigma and stamen of a flower with the background of vibrant petals looks like some forgotten Georgia O’Keefe painting.

My favourite is of a little piece of moss – now an abundance of green flowers. But what makes it extra special is the Green Man peeking out from the foliage centre right. I’ll let you look for it!

Close-up of moss. Image: Mary Shemza

Of course, not all of us have such a lens, but we can still look much more closely at the everyday, perhaps focusing on a particular angle or segment. Either way, the familiar will become strange; the ordinary, fantastical.

Miniature appeal

Lastly, we are programmed to love small things. We may collect tiny charms for a bracelet or have an intricate train set layout. And who doesn’t love kittens and puppies? Small, cute things awaken the nurturing side of us. They need our protection and to be handled with care. Their size and fragility make them precious. And we simply love toys!

We also prefer things which do not pose a threat. Since we are bigger than these tiny things, we feel more powerful and in control when placed in relation to them. In times such as these, a sense of both is to be welcomed.

The appeal for me, though, is in the way that they expand my horizons by proffering a whole new vista in a scaled down form. Our brains, it seems are programmed to respond in such a way. According to Mentalfloss.com, ‘Research has shown that our gaze—and likely our touch too—is drawn to the regions of a scene or object that hold the most information. Part of our attraction to miniatures may be that they provide our sensory-seeking brains with highly concentrated dosages of tantalizing stimulation.’

Miniature humour. Image: Hello I’m Nik on Unsplash

While our movements may be restricted, our minds certainly are not. With a little imagination and a willingness to look a little closer, we can make, as John Donne did with love, ‘…one little room an everywhere.’

Everyday Miracles

Everyday miracles may sound like an oxymoron. A miracle is, after all, defined as something exceptional, unexpected and brought about through supernatural intervention. Yet, this definition is too narrow. Life itself is a miracle, replete with thousands of other little miracles occurring every moment of every day. We only need to change the lens of our awareness to see that this is true.

A very late visitor. A red admiral butterfly swooped past me in the garden this week! Image: Jeffrey Hamilton on Unsplash

Live deeply

As I move into the eighth month of self-isolation, my world has become very small. Except it hasn’t. If anything, it has expanded beyond what I can actually contemplate. Paradoxically, this enforced enclosure has led to my greater understanding of how space, as we normally perceive it, is only one plane of experience. It was as a teenager studying Thoreau’s Walden that I was introduced to this idea. He argues that through subsisting on a small plot of land in Walden woods he is really living. He also argued that journeying beyond the distance you can walk is unnecessary. I was charmed and intrigued and thought he probably had a good point. Then I went off and travelled the world.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms…”

― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

And now, I’m home. All the time.

I realised when lock-down started that I could look outward at everything that I could not do and go quietly mad, or I could try Thoreau’s experiment in my little plot of land. Unlike Thoreau, who was living in a basic cabin and largely growing his own food, I had the advantage of a comfortable home and regular grocery deliveries, but I could still see if I could ‘live deep and suck out all the marrow of life’. So that is what I’ve tried to do. I have wobbles like everyone; I have days I want to have a major tantrum (and often go ahead and have one), but what keeps me going (and sane) is spending a part of each day outside looking for miracles. And I am never disappointed.

Look closer

If you are existing in a relatively small, enclosed space, the trick to making it feel bigger is to turn your eye upon it as you would under the lens of a microscope. A drop of pond water looks intriguing and alive when magnified – so too a garden.

What spurred this post was studying the very tiny cone of our Laylandii – and of course, it was a pine cone despite being the size of a berry. I split it open, mainly to enjoy its scent, when out fell dozens of tiny seeds. So that’s how you propagate, I thought to myself. I was delighted. What other secrets were hiding in plain sight? I made it my quest to find out.

Common Laylandii with its tiny pine cones Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

When walking my previous dog in the same park daily, many years ago, I’d given myself the task of finding something new everyday. Discovering 365 new things was going to be a challenge in a small park – even with the advantage of a duck pond – but would certainly make the outings more interesting. The first hundred days were easy – seasonal changes saw to that, but after, I had to look increasingly closer. And the closer I looked, the more I saw. All the things I thought I knew intimately became unfamiliar. At the year’s end, I realised that I was just getting to know the place.

The dazzling and the humble

Very late in the summer, I planted some giant sunflower seeds and eagerly watched them grow. From the original ten, only three survived having been assaulted by high winds, snails and a rambunctious dog. At last, one bloomed – a glorious crown of gold that positively glowed in the late autumn light. Van Gogh would be proud. Amidst a sea of greens and faded brown was this magnificent splash of colour.

Not so giant Mongolian sunflower Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

These are nature’s show stoppers and are sure to make us smile, but not everything can be so dazzling. When we make a conscious effort to look for beauty, though, it turns up in the most unexpected places.

Despite being a little overwhelming and often viewed as a pest, I am a great fan of ivy. We have to hack it back regularly or it would overwhelm the garden, but this deep green gem has more to offer than its gorgeous, evergreen leaves. It too flowers and it too has fruits: orb-like bunches of deep purple berries that rather resemble grapes. And just when these berries reach their perfection of ripeness, our ivy-clad fence is literally covered with pigeons gorging themselves on the fruits.

A feast for the birds. Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

Common sense(s)

So much of what we experience is purely through our vision, yet our four other senses are working hard too in order to interpret our world. I was reminded of this whilst sitting in the story shed watching Hermione chase around the garden in the rain. The air was close and filled with a delightful perfume. It took me a moment to identify it as bay. The damp and the still evening was the perfect conduit for this gorgeous scent.

Which made me make the next round of the garden a little more multi-sensory. I picked some sprigs of herbs and ate them. I concentrated on the rain/cold/wind upon my skin and the contrasting warmth of my cosy raincoat. I listened to the birds and tried to identify the different songs: the unlovely screech of gulls and the noisy chattering of the magpies; the staccato soprano of the blue tits and the tremulous high pitch trill of the robin. There are so many birds in the garden and though I recognise their songs, I seldom know who sings what. The RSPB has a wonderful tool to learn bird songs, but I suspect I shall just enjoy the music.

What are your miracles?

The readers of this blog cover many countries and I would love for you to comment on the miracles that you experience in your own environs. Our lives may be bound with restrictions at the moment, but if we bear witness to the beauty that surrounds us, I believe that our enclosure will feel significantly less irksome. Perhaps, we will even find sufficient there to make us truly content.