The World Is Too Much With Us

When I was out recently with my grandparents, we walked along a short woodland walkway which took us to a playpark where the kids could run off some of their excess energy. As we approached the walkway, we heard a man talking, and when we drew a little closer, we saw him pacing back & forth talking on his mobile phone. We quietened down the kids and kept walking to the park. On our way back to the car with our happy and only mildly tired out children, I noticed that the man wasn’t there anymore, and just at the spot where he had been walking back and forth engaged in his conversation, I saw this beautiful flower:

I wonder if he saw it too?

The World Is Too Much With Us

The World is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours
And are up-gather’d now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.-Great God! I’d rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn,-
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

By William Wordsworth

When was the last time that you stopped and stared and fully engaged with the beauty of the world around you? What gift did you find when you did? A flower like this one? Or maybe a beautiful view? Or maybe a stunning reflection?

 

Just When You Think You Know A Place…

…you discover something new.

I was born in Stirling and I live just outside the city now. I haven’t always lived here, but members of my family have lived in the area since long before I came into the world, so I like to think that I am very familiar with this town and its surroundings. Today, however, I was proved very, and most happily, wrong.

There’s a junction that we always turn right at, which takes us to the homes of both my aunt & uncle and my parents. Today we went left, and, oh my, it was beautiful! I took these shots from where we stopped for a picnic:

As you can see in some of the shots, we were quite close to the wind turbines, which I’ve only ever seen from a distance. Their movement is graceful and somewhat hypnotic. I know there are some that object to them on the basis that they spoil the countryside, but I think I rather like them…

When was the last time you turned left instead of right, and discovered wonder in the once familiar?

 

Reflecting on Past Times

On Saturday, Joanna Young and I took a wander along the Union Canal in Edinburgh. It’s a beautiful walk and one very close to my heart, as I used to walk along the canal every day to school. Here are a few photos I took along the way…

Joanna pointed out that, because it’s a canal, the reflections appear crystal clear, just like gazing into a mirror…  The water was still, the light was bright and the reflections created by this effect were perfect in their symmetry.

As we walked along the gravel towpath, I was reminded of all the funny, childish antics that I participated in along the banks of this waterway.  There was the time that I fell in the canal, just in front of that boathouse, in fact.  I can even remember which top I was wearing at the time of the submersion!  There were dens built in the undergrowth that accompanies the canal, where elaborate worlds were created, and the only limits were our imaginations.  There were epic games of tag played across the park, playing fields and towpath that left us all breathless, clutching our stitch-afflicted sides.  There were whole mornings spent scouring the grassy verges in search of ever-elusive four-leaf clovers.

Watching the reflections on the water and reflecting on my own past…

What environments cause you to reflect on your past, on your present, on your future?  Are there specific locations that induce the state of mind conducive for reflection, or is it more generalised, such as the beach, the lake, the mountains?  What did you reflect upon when you were there last?

 

Links Less Ordinary 3

Welcome to the weekend and to the 3rd edition of Links Less Ordinary. Why don’t you grab yourself a mug of your favourite beverage and settle down to some really great, inspirational reading?

• Seeded Earth is such a wonderful blog full of beautiful images and well-crafted words. This week, Bo wrote a great post called Nothing Spectacular:

Hey wait… nothing spectacular? Do you see that blue sky? the green grass? The air is clear; the land is litter free. There are no obnoxious odors, loud noises, traffic sounds. The trees are beginning to green a bit, the grassy path is a spongy cushion under tired feet. Not spectacular?

• Brian Clark of Copyblogger shared a more personal than usual post about The Snowboard, the Subdural Hematoma and the Secret of Life in which he writes about how he came to change his priorities in life and became a blogger:

It was three years ago today that they wheeled me in for emergency surgery, and I said goodbye to my wife, not quite three-year-old daughter, and newborn son. I knew that sometimes people don’t wake up from brain surgery, and this might be the last time I saw them.

• Every time I head over to David Masters’ blog, Be Playful, I find something that makes me think in a new way and it is always so exquisitely written. Believe me, you’re going to want to add this blog to your feed reader!  Just check out this great post, How To Be An Everyday Clown:

Clowns are brilliant. They bring joy and laughter to the world. They’re larger than life, clumsy, confused, very silly, and full of nonsense. I’ve been reading a lot about clowns and jesters recently, working out how to be a clown in my everyday life

• A longtime friend of Lives Less Ordinary, Damien Riley, has recently refocussed his blog, Postcards From the Funny Farm, to concentrate on the topic of psychology and inspiration. It’s a topic Damien writes really well on as this post, Free Your Brain, illustrates:

I’ve become inescapably fascinated with the brain in the past decade. I’ve begun to see our thoughts in a new way: organic. Just like fertilizer helps a tomato to grow ripe and delicious, so our brains are in a cyclical process of bloom and wilt all the time.

• Last, but by no means least, Wendikelly from Life’s Little Inspirations has a great post up for Mothers Day (US), A Mother’s Gratitude,  in which she shares a beautifully moving poem written by her then-16 year old daughter.  Why don’t you head on over and read what she has to say about motherhood:

I learned about unconditional love. I learned about commitment. I learned about priorities. (You learn about that sort of thing in the middle of the night with an asthmatic child who can’t breathe and you haven’t slept in three days.) I learned about money. I learned about not having any.

Well, those are just some of the posts I enjoyed reading over the last 7 days.  What posts gave you inspiration this week?  Or maybe you wrote a post that you’re particularly proud of and would like to share it with the rest of us here?

 

Climatic Celebrations

I don’t know about the rest of the world, but Scotland has been getting the most fabulous weather recently! Today I celebrated the warmth, the sunshine, the acres and acres of blue sky, by taking my kids and my niece to Braidburn Park in Edinburgh. It’s one of those places that I often notice as we go passed it on the bus, but I haven’t actually set foot in the place since I was 12 years old. On my last visit, it was covered in a thick blanket of snow, and my friends and I made the most of its steep inclines, as we sped faster and faster on our sledges till we reached the bottom, cold but exhilerated.

Today, it wasn’t snow that dominated the landscape, but blossom.

There was something quite magical about walking beneath those archways of blossoming branches. Really quite enchanting…

So how are you celebrating the weather in your corner of the world? Are you barbecuing in shorts and shades or are you snuggled up indoors with a steaming mug of hot chocolate? Are you jumping in the puddles or are you imagining shapes in the clouds above?

 

If You Go Down To The Woods Today…

…you’re sure of a big surprise.

OK, well maybe you won’t be that surprised by what you find there, but you will most certainly be taken aback by the simple beauty that you find there.

On May 9th 1871, Gerald Manley Hopkins wrote the following in his journal, regarding his experience of a bluebell wood:

It was a lovely sight. - The bluebells in your hand baffle you with their inscape, made to every sense. If you draw your fingers through them they are lodged and struggle with a shock of wet heads; the long stalks rub and click and flatten to a fan on one another like your fingers themselves would when you passed the palms hard across one another, making a brittle rub and jostle like the noise of a hurdle strained by leaning against; then there is the faint honey smell and in the mouth the sweet gum when you bite them.

What I love about this description is that it is so mindful of the sensory experience. The feel of the flowers between the fingers, their ‘faint honey smell’, their ’sweet gum’ taste, their ‘brittle rub and jostle’ sound - just bliss.

Two of my favourite bloggers are writing about two different themes over at their blogs at the moment. Joanna Young from Confident Writing is writing about Powerful Writing and Rosa Say from Managing With Aloha Coaching is writing about Humility. I thought about both of these themes and how they connect as I looked at the photos that I took today of the bluebell wood and read Hopkins’ journal entry. It seems to me that by remaining humble, by retaining our focus on the seemingly small and modest, we can tap into a powerful source of truth which does not simply resonate with the individual writing-self, but also with all those who read their words. When I read the word Hopkins wrote over 130 years ago, I feel the dew he felt, I smell the honey scents he smelled, I hear the rub and jostle he heard, I taste the sweetness he tasted. His words describing a simple trip into the woods ring with truth. They transcend time. They are powerful and yet they are simultaneously humble. As is all truly great writing.

When was the last time you took a trip into the woods, or indeed any natural setting, such as the beach, the lake, the waterfall, the desert? What did you find there? Could you describe and share with us the sensory experience of being there?

 

The Ground Beneath Our Feet

Mud. Squelchy, slippy, gritty black mud. It covers the road surface, dragged over by the heavy lifting equipment used by forestry workers to harvest the swift-growing, tightly-packed pines. Tracks of vehicles, bicycles and hiking boots are impressed into the malleable muck. We pick our way gingerly through, trying to avoid the worst of it and walking through it anyway. The soles of our boots caked with it.

Striding uphill and off the path, the mud has given way to lush green grass and a luxuriant selection of mosses. Steep inclines forces us to walk with our feet turned sideways. Helping hands and friendly shoves keep us all moving in the right direction: upward. The sun beats down through the dewdrenched canopy warming the undergrowth until the atmosphere turns heavy and humid. Breath becomes laboured, sweat begins to pool in the small of the back and the lactic acid builds up in the muscles.

Heading down now, and our feet walk a different surface once again. This time, last year’s bracken. Rust red and brittle, it crunches, disintegrates, crackles beneath the weight of our tread. Beneath the bone dry leaf matter, however, rest the logs of previous forestry exploits. Wet, slippery and rotten, they lie in wait for the oblivious walker to place their weight upon them, expecting the solid ground but finding nothing. We all fall over at some point on the way down.

The ground evens out. The body and mind unite in the relief of some flat surface. The moss feels spongy and soft, springy underfoot. Great hummocks of grass and heather lie strewn across the landscape, and pretty soon we’re hopping from one to another trying to avoid the bog that the moss has given way to. Everyone stands in awe and fascination as a small brown frog, no bigger than an inch, is spotted jumping nimbly across the boggy earth. We continue our leaping, inelegant and ungainly, from hummock to hummock.

Back to forest road, except this time it is surfaced with blue slate shingle quarried from the local hillsides. Smooth and unstable, it shifts beneath our soles. The deep bluegrey of its grain magnifies the blue of the sky and the loch, melding water, air and stone into one. It glints in the light of the sunbeams that have penetrated those thick pine branches which exude the sharpsweet sap fragrance that delights our noses and reminds of Christmas. The clatter of slate against slate accompanies us back to the bemudded road that leads back to the car park.

The terrain we traverse is the challenge: the sights we see, the reward.

What challenges have you recently engaged in and what has been your reward?

 

A Powerful Combination

I just love going to garden centres.

I love to walk along the aisles of ordered plants: a shelf of petunias, a bed of pansies, a row of ornamental cherry saplings.

I love how the fragrance subtly changes as you move from one display to another.

I love how my eye is first attract by the mass of colour, but then becomes entranced by the individual detail of the petal, the stamen, the leaf shape that truly delights.

I love to be surrounded by well-cared for plants; clematis, magnolias, ranunculi and azaleas draped with an aura of nurture, love and consideration.

It’s this heady mixture of sensual delight with the awareness of the loving attention lavished upon each individual plant that inspires my love for the garden centre.  Although the garden centre is certainly not the only place that I find this intoxicating combination. I experience similar delight when I visit the farmers’ market, where the products on sale are presented with the justifiable pride of a producer who has had hands-on involvement in bringing the product to the eager customer. I find it in craft fairs where knitters, beaders, binders, and painters all ply their trade while simultaneously practicing their craft for all to see: a community demonstration of the time, intention and creativity which goes into each individual item. Lastly, I find it in blogs which display well-crafted writing, provide food for thought, and give me information, entertainment, and aesthetic pleasure. The time and effort which has gone into each to provide sensual pleasure translates as a powerful positive intention to connect, to communicate, to create.

Where do you find this powerful combination of a treat for the senses with evidence of positive intention?

 

Links Less Ordinary 2

After the success of last week’s edition of Links Less Ordinary, I’ve brought it back for another run. This week has been a fabulous week for blog writing. Why don’t you spend some of your weekend following up some of these links? I promise you, it’ll be time well spent!

• Daz Cox is a wonderful artist and a really thoughtful blogger who often makes me think about my own views on art and its place in my life.  This week’s post was no different:

What is essential, especially to bloggers is to have your own opinion on what is art. What kind of “as art” have you made?

• One of my favourite singers at the moment is Donna Maciocia who sings with the band Amplifico.  She has a relatively new blog of her own where she is very generously sharing her new songs.  She put a new one up just this week which makes me smile every time I hear it!  Here’s the lyrics from the chorus:

Just want you to feel beautiful
I wanna fill you up with feeling good about yourself
And to be unstoppable!
If you can’t love yourself
Then how can you love me at all?
Just want you to feel beautiful
I wanna fill you up with feeling good about yourself
And to be unstoppable!

• The Writing Journey is a great blog that I really recommend you check out and subscribe to.  Bob has such a way with words which he demonstrated beautifully with his post, When Your Best Just Isn’t Good Enough:

Life has its ups and its downs. As human beings, we feel love and hatred and we even feel apathy at times. Pain and suffering and pleasure and ecstasy are all a part of it. Shakespeare was only half right; it is better to have loved and lost, but it is best to have loved, lost, and then loved again. It’s only more intense when it happens again.

• I love Wendi Kelly’s blog. She had a great post up this week called My Attitude, My Choice, which I think you’ll really like, all about how our attitude affects our experience of life.

What I realized as I went from one trial and tribulation to the next in the exciting adventure that became the LIFE OF WENDI is that no matter how hard things got to be, I was -in fact- in charge of how I felt about it and what I was going to do about it. I learned that I had choices. I could choose how I wanted to react and that the choices I made directly affected the outcome and other people’s reactions.

• Ellen Wilson’s post, The Butterfly Effect, really struck a chord with me this week.  It’s all about interconnections and how our words have the potential to effect change in the lives of countless unknown others.

You are the butterfly that makes the change of all our interconnections.  Spread your wings and see where they take you.

• Cynthia from Original Impulse has started a new blog to chart the progress of her next big adventure as she begins her travels through Italy.  It’s called Journey Juju, where this week she has a great post urging  us to follow her example and to live The Wacky Life:

By wacky I mean adventurous, creative, right-brained. Not being bogged down by details or reined in by fears. Willing to do new things in new ways.

• Over in Hawaii, Rosa Say has written about Calvin’s Mamaki Tree: a tree which she received at a ceremony to celebrate the life of a friend and work colleague who has recently passed on.  As always, her post is thoughtful and inspiring.

It would be a legacy that Calvin would have wanted, to simply have trees that will continue to grow with his belief that they are good for us. I was awestruck in that moment.

• One of my new friends this week (well-met through Twitter) is Brett who blogs over at 6Weeks.  He wrote such a moving tribute to his wife, who sounds like such a special lady, that moved me to tears.

The wedding bands, I designed myself, the stone, the most beautiful my eye had ever seen.  Perfect in every way, like my bride-to-be.  I paid cash, of course… and Saturday morning proposed to my lover, as she lounged in her pyjamas.  Her answer was not yes, but a shriek of joy!

• Last week I included in Links Less Ordinary a post by Diane Cordell.  This week I’d like to share a post written by her daughter who wrote a guest post for Journeys.  It’s all about bike riding, except it’s not: it’s about community, it’s about freedom, it’s about embracing life:

Most everyone I know had a bicycle at some point in their childhood. Your bike summed up freedom and adventure. Once you had learned to ride it- an accomplishment in and of itself- it was you and you alone who made it move, and you who chose where to go.

If you do nothing else this weekend (other than visit this great selection of posts, that is!) get out and explore the world outside your door.  As Audrey sang in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, there’s such a lot of world to see.

What were your best reads this week?

 

Meanwhile, Over At The Breathing Space…

I’ve been talking for a while about doing ’something’ with my photographs that I share with you all here. The feedback that I get from you always blows me away and my confidence with the medium has gradually increased over time. So, today marks a significant step for me, and I’d like to share it with you all as it’s the accumulation of your words that have got me to this point. Karen Wallace, who blogs at The Clearing Space and also produces the online magazine The Calm Space, got in touch with me recently asking if I would like to contribute an image to The Calm Space to illustrate this month’s theme of ‘Balance’. I was, of course, thrilled and, after careful consideration, submitted a photograph that best captured ‘Balance’ for me. I tried to think where it was that I found balance in my life, where I felt centred, where I regained my sense of self. Anyway, you can check the result out for yourself: it’s over at the section of the site called The Breathing Space. The lovely Leah Maclean has created a desktop wallpaper from the image which you can also download from site. It includes a calender for the month of May, and it looks just lovely. I’ve downloaded it as my desktop already, and I’m really pleased with it!

Why don’t you pop over and have a look, download the desktop wallpaper, leave a comment and then check out the wonderful articles there.

After all, I think we could all benefit from a little more balance in our lives…