Hello, beautiful readers!
Are you feeling the late-spring early-summer vibes yet? Well, except for those of you hanging upside down in the southern hemisphere, heading into autumn…
This is a remarkable time of the year if you are seeking inspiration. The pulse of life is quickening everywhere, and the just-passed full Flower Moon turned out to be aptly named, as this part of the world is verdant and fizzing with flowers of all varieties.
Although I live in a rural location now, I was brought up in the centre of a small town (I was officially considered a ‘townie’ at my school), but the natural world was never far away. Down the street from my house there was a proper old graveyard with stone walls, atmospheric ruins, cracked crypts and ivy-clad headstones. It’s one of the reasons that I love cemeteries to this day and feel at home in them, because this graveyard, with its large yew tees, gravelled path and peaceful shade, was one of my regular haunts. It was a beautiful place to walk a dog or sit and listen to the birds… with a constant reminder of life’s deadline.
Yeah, I was a weirdly adult kid, but I’ve never been sorry for my early introspection as it got me to where I am today.
Nature is transgressive. It doesn’t care about your boundaries, and it will push in constantly, even in urban locations. When I lived in New York and in Dublin I always found places where these pockets of peace existed. Usually they were spaces people marched by on their way to lunch or jogging to the bus, but if you paid attention you could always discover them, even if it was the lone stoop with a view. Often, there would be a couple of other advocates who would nod in recognition to you at these locations; fellow seekers of beauty amid the bustle.
I knew all the trees on my various routes to work over the years. Some did not fare well in the fumes and struggled while others had established early enough to be hardy and street smart. Sometimes I would brush a hand over their rough bark as I passed, or let their trailing leaves sweep across my cheek. This need for contact and exchange is part of who we are as biological beings.
I favour a rational approach to living and yet I also need mystery with a dash of spiritual openness. For as clever as we all are we are totally dependant and connected to this world and when we turn down our roiling thoughts and look up from our screens there’s an entire universe of inspiration available to us every day.
Pattern recognition is a trait hard-wired into all humans. Through our senses—visual, auditory, smell, touch, taste—we are constantly scanning our environments for matches to familiar shapes, items, and of course our fellow humans. We are barely aware of this process of constant vigilance when we are in routine situations, but it becomes heightened when we are navigating different habitats.
Our Reticular Activating System (RAS) is the monitor that is rapidly assessing much of the data flowing into our brains for relevant cues. It is why we will instantly hear our name spoken in a crowded place: it was trained from childhood to pay attention to that set of sounds. I remember one of my aunts telling me years ago that it took her a long time to adjust to hearing someone calling her by her married surname. That kind of deep association comes through training and time.
I’m a light sleeper. For some reason my RAS is tweaked for unusual noises. When I wake to a weird sound I’m often on high-alert and sometimes with my heart pounding from an adrenaline boost. This can make travelling more tiring, for I have to adjust to the ecosystem of each new hotel room or couch I’m surfing. I should remember to wear ear plugs and an eye mask when I’m away from home, but I tend to forget them. I settle after a night or two, but if I’m moving about then I’m usually not sleeping properly.
Yet, my trusty RAS will kick into action after a few days of assessing information to determine when it needs to rouse me from my sleep. It’s excellent at alerting us when we need to engage quickly, but equally it is constantly tossing away input that it doesn’t think we need to notice. It will quickly automate anything habitual, because being hyper-focused is a heavy cognitive load. Most of us can only maintain it for short periods before fatigue settles in.
Remember that first time you navigated a new route to workf? You noticed every marker, tricky turn, and anything that could cause the potential for arriving late. Within a couple of tries you were assessing speed, noticing regular commuters and figuring out how to maximise efficiency. After a year you could listen to a podcast and arrive to work without making a mistake or posessing much memory of the journey itself.
It’s an incredible triumph of the human mind that can lead to better use of mental resources and render us oblivious to anything outside our habituated norm.
Back in 2006 I returned from seven weeks in Seattle, USA, where I had attended the Clarion West Workshop — an intensive writing residency that challenged me in many ways, and confirmed that I wanted to commit to being a writer (events like that can either seal your vocation or diminish your ambition). Yet I returned home creatively empty: I could not write any fiction.
We had been warned this could happen, and it makes sense. As much as these experiences are life-altering they are temporary. We must return to our previous routines, but not as the same person. It’s a weird fit. You are in mourning for those intense relationships you developed with creative comrades yet are also happy to return to your waiting friends and partners. Your extraordinary brain has adjusted and adapted and now you are asking it to pivot back to the prior status. The discombobulation you experience allows you to spot issues you overlooked before you left because you are viewing your previous setting as a new prospect. There are up sides and down sides to this, and of course it will settle back again —if you want it to…
I’ve always worked in various creative ways. In a sliding-doors alternative universe I would have become an artist, and I still draw, though not as frequently as I like. I was lucky to have learned to knit, to embroider, to play piano and recorder, to cook and bake. Not that I was a wunderkind or brilliant at all of these activities, but I had learned early there are many creative outlets. Over time we may settle on the ones we like the most and specialise. Those unused talents become residual stubs, waiting.
So after my intense adventure I decided to take photographs every day while out walking my dog Minnie in the woods and fields. I had always taken photographs but not in any consistent fashion. It allowed me a creative outlet that didn’t lean on the lexical part of my brain. Over time I got better at it through practice, but it came with a bonus benefit that took me a long time to even appreciate.
It trained me to pay attention. Over the past eighteen years my RAS has been habituated to looking for pleasing shapes and arrangements of patterns that trigger my desire to photograph them. This happens all the time, even when it’s impossible to take an image. Sometimes I see the world as a series of shots that I miss. Other times I remember to enjoy them and not yearn to capture them.1
Photography—even when I don’t have a camera in my hand—has taught me an appreciation of the beauty that resides in every moment, even ones that are emotionally painful. I look about, I try to see the edges of situations, and to notice the small things that are easy to overlook.
This is one of the reasons I love paying attention to the ‘understory’ (how appropriately named!) of woodlands. It is teeming with tiny starry flowers, fluffy moss, fast growing vines, slow moving bees, flitting butterflies and vast waves of vegetation in an abundance of shapes and colours. Above them all tower those great giants of the forest: the trees—and darting between them, the flight of birds and the rustling of its small animals. Within forests there are enclaves and tribes, yet even the smallest copse of trees has its attitude and its flavour.
Traversing these communities of plants and animals the mind is constantly tricking you: a jutting rock is a craggy giant sitting among a cushion of ferns; a broken branch from a mushroom-latticed tree stub is a little sprite fishing in a pool; the wind blowing through cracking icy boughs in the twilight woods is an ancient record of battles lost.
These flights of fancy are the bedrock of storytelling. You are playing with the elements, conjuring images from frond and berry, spiderweb and dew. You interact with spun creations and are inspired to design your own.
For me, adamantly areligious, nature remains the great guide of our ancient intuition. It holds many keys to unlock our padlocked thoughts, especially if we are flagging creatively. All you have to do is go out and look.
I see mystery and experience wonder every time I inhabit the world. It does not require much physical ability. Not all of us can hike mountains or slip away into forests. Plants thrive indoors and on balconies. Birds and foxes like urban spaces. Nature is everywhere and we are part of it. Our technology and our cities are made from the same stardust that built our neurons and our planet’s core.
We are part of the mystery and the wonder. No matter what we do we will all get folded back into creation’s weave and recycled into new forms.
How amazing it can be to see this in every daisy growing out of a pavement crack and the moss on a telephone pole. To consider what constitutes concrete and wire, bone and tendon.
To see mystery every day is a beautiful habit to learn.
Photography can be used to keep your distance from the world. To be an observer, not a participant. As with anything, it’s all about balance.
Beautifully written!