Autumn arrived while you were sleeping – it is now September 23. Everyone ‘likes’ the autumnal change, I can see it now: millions will log onto Facebook today, see something about September 23 inaugurating autumn, click on the ‘Like’ button, and spend the rest of the day as is their habit, with email, work, managing the kids, meals, shopping, etc. A few weeks later they will take an automobile trip to see autumn leaves in some special, hallowed place, then drive back home and resume their habit. It’s not over though, still few more salutes to falling leaves, not so grand as in that special place you have to drive to but still notable, and a yet a couple more autumnal musings before having to fire up the leaf blower. Then it’s over, Thanksgiving and Christmas ahead … with so very, very little really seen in those weeks of wonder and awe … so much potential visual and spiritual experience lost, once again.
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| Fall photo by David Federspiel © All rights reserved |
Autumn arrived while you were sleeping – it is now September 23. Everyone ‘likes’ the autumnal change, I can see it now: millions will log onto Facebook today, see something about September 23 inaugurating autumn, click on the ‘Like’ button, and spend the rest of the day as is their habit, with email, work, managing the kids, meals, shopping, etc. A few weeks later they will take an automobile trip to see autumn leaves in some special, hallowed place, then drive back home and resume their habit. It’s not over though, still few more salutes to falling leaves, not so grand as in that special place you have to drive to but still notable, and a yet a couple more autumnal musings before having to fire up the leaf blower. Then it’s over, Thanksgiving and Christmas ahead … with so very, very little really seen in those weeks of wonder and awe … so much potential visual and spiritual experience lost, once again.
The good news is the flip side: there is so, so much to be gained from religiously cultivating the Art of Seeing. And it is so simple to do, if you can just spare five minutes two or three times a day. The only prerequisite is to understand why we typically see so very little, and that is easy.
Generally we glance about … there is a ‘person’ approaching, a ‘car’ over there, a ‘tree’ here … and in that instant of recognition, perception is reduced to symbolic awareness, and we look no farther into the details as our gaze shifts elsewhere. It is what I called in a June 17 post, that “cursory glance as life slips by” [CGALSB] ... and yet these overlooked details have the potential to transform mundane experience into elevated awareness and being. So you need only rediscover how to really see, and it’s easy – you just need to practice for five minutes, two or three times a day.
TODAY, go out and really look at the bark of a tree. Study the details: different barks have radically different texture, color, saturation, dimension, striation, spotting, patterning, etc. Then study the additional detail embedded within and upon the higher-level detail you first noticed. If you do this experiment with three trees in the course of a day, you will discover that you have never really seen tree bark before!
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| Fall photo by Miriam Oberlin © All rights reserved |
Then tomorrow, practice your newfound awareness on other objects: shrubs, leaves, the wallpaper in your bathroom, an old photograph of your father, mother, or a stranger. Or study phenomena such as shifting clouds, the effects of wind light and shadow on trees, rain rivulets dripping down a window, frost melting in the grass. Begin looking from a distance and move closer in stages; look up and down; feel it, smell it; there is a universe of subtlety to explore. And conduct your five-minute studies in a state of total absorption: forget everything else, just look deeply and deeper, make the experience a meditation. If you do this for just five minutes two or three times a day, it will change your life!
Many will tell you that rediscovering how to really see is the first step toward artistic endeavor and appreciation, and so it is. But I say, far more fundamental and important than any conventional art form, is your own personal ‘practice’ of the Art of Seeing. Our various seasons are ever changing … don’t slumber through their passage. Be aware!
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| Fall photo by David Federspiel © All rights reserved |
And should someday you decide to take that plunge, and begin to practice some particular art form in some particular medium, you will have already mastered its most important requirement.
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Stephen Rowe currently serves as the Angola Regional Artists’ Guild publicity chairman and writes two additional blogs:
Stephen welcomes correspondence of all sort per StephenRowe.OriGraphics@yahoo.com
Stephen,
ReplyDeleteyour latest post is, again, thoughtful, full of positivism, and a delight to read. Thank you!
Charles
FWMoA