i find it quite fascinating that a focus
on the microcosm (your fotos) produces almost
the same dissolution of the ego boundaries as
a focus on the macrocosm
I'm often told by people who come walking with me,
or who see these photos on the net or on exhibit somewhere,
that the world suddenly appears different to them,
after being shown how to "see".
For me, the world always seems this way....
layer upon layer of living organisms,
and all related to each other -- and with me being a part of all.
The universe is everywhere we look -- even in the eye of a toad...
www4.pbase.com
The structure of living organisms is revealed when we
stoop down to gaze into the water at a pond's edge.
www4.pbase.com
We humans tend to move through the world thinking
that we are at the center of everything....
much like some notion from the dark ages
that the earth was the center of the universe.
Once we learn to see that we are like... hmmmm...
Godzillas or King Kongs to many other organisms...
big, stupid creatures lumbering along,
stomping on homes and other creatures
because we're too big and dumb to know any better,
then, we learn to try a little harder to see
the life that is all around us.
Once we begin, then we find ourselves in a place
that is rich with other beings who have their own
thoughts, feelings, fears, desires.
We find we can interact with beings that we weren't
even aware of before.....
For instance, this little fruit fly -- no more than 1/4 inch long --
www4.pbase.com
it is marked like a Zebra Jumping Spider.
Much like your teapot, it exists as both fruit fly and spider
depending upon how we look at it, and how it looks at us.
If it thinks we're being non-threatening, it walks forward
and is a fruit fly.
If it thinks we itend to harm it, it hops backwards,
curling and uncurling its wings to imitate the jumping spider's
raised forelegs, and we see a spider....
The performance so real that we struggle as the identity
flips back and forth between what we think we know
and what we believe we see.
To me, understanding comes through learning to see.
I don't think we do nearly enough of that in our time.
Life is too frenzied.
We are shown what to see and think.
We don't explore very much anymore...
We go through life like a bunch of ignorant tourists
being herded through the world by tour bus operators.
We have to learn to reject that way of seeing life.
And begin to see that when a bulldozer comes in
and, in a couple of hours on a weekday afternoon,
covers a small wetland marsh to make way for a new house...
we have covered over a whole living "society"
of plants and creatures that were co-existing in that place.
Every day, in many places, this scene is repeated.
We do these things with little or no thought.
Is it too late for people to learn to see?
~croc |
