NOW WHAT!! You want us to look at your boring geraniums in your boring kitchen???!!!
What caught my attention was how the afternoon light made the stems glow. On the right, see that? See how the stems are outlined in yellow?
How would my camera see that? As I framed the shot, before I zoomed in on that light effect, I noticed intimations of the Golden Section.
Not one, but two. In the green lines, the square is on the left. In the pink, the square is on the right. As a bonus, the red blooms define the corner of the next square in the Golden Section sequence.
In my peripatetic readings I recently came across a quote from Nicolas Malebranche: “Attention is the natural prayer of the soul.” He had to talk like that because he was a Catholic priest trying to stay alive in 17th century France. He’s classified as a rational philosopher, working in the shadow of Descartes: notice the word “natural” in front of “prayer.”
1600 years before that, Epictetus said: “You become what you give your attention to. If you yourself don’t choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will … and their motives may not be the highest.” Epictetus was born a slave in the Roman Empire and became the teacher of Marcus Aurelius.
So, the difference between boring and ta-dah! is not out there in those overwintering geraniums but in that switch in your brain. You can practice throwing your attention switch. You can pivot from worry about your to-do list to…attention, now.
Nicolas Malebranche, 1638-1715
Epictetus, 50-135
Marcus Aurelius, 121-180
All contents copyright (C) 2010 Katherine Hilden. All rights reserved.
artamaze by Katherine Hilden 