Dear Sam - you thank us for our attention, and I in turn thank you for yours! This is beautiful, attentive poetry of water, a pathway to understanding, and maybe also to peace. Listened to with gratitude.
“And then I start to draw, drop by drop, catching water in tiny circles, in a net of lines, each one a single drop, a moment gathered, stilled and set down.” So beautiful. Thank you for doing these.
Heavens, does it feel so? It really, really isn’t.
I wonder if sometimes, from within our own working process, we can see smallness because we are so inside the project, so aware of its boundaries, while the experience of the reader or viewer from the outside is so much bigger than ours has become.
These weekly essays and shared images are expansive, for me, and encountering them has meaning. Hence the urge to share them, as one has when one encounters something that one feels expands one's world…
I have just listened to Brimming Moments while eating my breakfast and after collecting three hens’ eggs. One a deep brown, another a light blue, the third a creamy off white. They were warm in my hand. I look out on my garden paddock here in Wensleydale North Yorkshire. A light rain has just fallen and the growing grass is Iridescent. I have no loch to wonder upon but your recording took me to Orkney. Thank you.
Thank you for bringing me to the lush greenness of North Yorkshire. Just on egg for me this morning. My second hen takes a six-month break from laying every year, and starts again at Easter weekend. I'm waiting to see if someone has told her Easter is early this year!
Sublime. Beauiful writing. Shining with light and life! Time is a great mystery, but no greater than that of our hearts which hold Time, like a fragile warm egg in windswept space, painting these canvases throughout our lives.. I can't comprehend it.
Thank you Michael, I'm so glad to know that you enjoyed it. It's still and quiet here this morning, and chilly, but a curlew is calling over the field outside my window. Spring is here.
I've been thinking a lot lately about the need for pause, to settle, to linger, and your work so beautifully reflects that, the need to wait, to allow paint to dry, ideas to come, to notice. To continue, to accumulate layers, consider the moment as it melts away.
Yes, I'm feeling the lack of this lately, taking too much on, feeling hard-pressed. I'm writing as a reminder to myself, as much as anything, not to rush through this precious life.
Sam, I'm just reading The Clearing. This post reminds me of 'the subtle ether' - how to describe it, examine it, understand it. A wonderful and beautiful book. Thank you.
Oh thank you Sophie, I'm so glad you're enjoying The Clearing. Writing it was such a labour of love. Yes, the same preoccupations indeed, just shifted from one element to another, from ether to water....
I very much enjoyed this amalgamation of words and sights today, Samantha. A sense of Spring’s fresh arrival leapt from speaker and page. A total delight.
And thank you for the gift of your time and attention Dan. In the busy and distracted lives we lead, it's not something to ever take for granted. Wishing you clear, free-flowing waters.
Yes, when your hens become older ladies they are slow to lay after their winter break. My old Light Sussex has just started to deliver an occasional egg while my Copper Blacks are going to it with vigour. I purchased two Cheshire Blues (pure white hens that lay beautiful blue eggs) just after my brother died in late November and they started laying immediately. I think my brother must have been urging them on from somewhere above. I think of him when I am collecting their eggs. Happy memories.
Your gathering of words evoked a very real sense and plasticity of the water and by doing so helped me notice past moments of shared experience. Perhaps ‘now’ moves in a series of unseeable and unknowable stops as the flight of an arrow does. By noticing maybe we catch a stop that we can return to. A ‘live’ stop that can be held as a physical sensorial memory, rather as an internal curation of noticed nows. This is a new way of thinking for me. A noticing of an inner gallery of ‘nows’ to draw upon.
The infinitesimal moment...yes. Isn't that also how the eye sees, in a series of 'saccades', like snapshots, that our brain smooths over so it seems like a flow? Lovely to see you in the Life Raft Co-Working yesterday!
In my continued sifting sorting and passing on of books, in order to let go of my 3/4 of my library, I have come across several books on Seeing, since you wrote this. So obviously I will now dip into them before they join the outward going piles. I will mix this reading with returning to a hero of mine, Carlo Ravelli (whose books are stuffed with underlinings and post-it’s and will come with me) whom you also mentioned in your writing this week. I so enjoy these exchanges and connections. Thank you Samantha.
I think I first read about it in Paul Virilio the Aesthetics of Disappearance, and his idea of 'picnolepsy' - that our experience of reality is perforated with gaps...and Rovelli, yes! How he managed to make such complex ideas accessible to us is miraculous! Downsizing your library must be quite a daunting task - and, I would imagine, a good opportunity to notice all those feelings of attachment and grasping....!
Dear Sam - you thank us for our attention, and I in turn thank you for yours! This is beautiful, attentive poetry of water, a pathway to understanding, and maybe also to peace. Listened to with gratitude.
Thank you Kirstie, that's lovely to hear. Water is a good teacher. And thank you for the restack too.
“And then I start to draw, drop by drop, catching water in tiny circles, in a net of lines, each one a single drop, a moment gathered, stilled and set down.” So beautiful. Thank you for doing these.
And thank you for the encouragement to keep doing something so small, so quiet, so seemingly...pointless.
Heavens, does it feel so? It really, really isn’t.
I wonder if sometimes, from within our own working process, we can see smallness because we are so inside the project, so aware of its boundaries, while the experience of the reader or viewer from the outside is so much bigger than ours has become.
These weekly essays and shared images are expansive, for me, and encountering them has meaning. Hence the urge to share them, as one has when one encounters something that one feels expands one's world…
Thank you, thank you, thank you. This means so much to hear.
I'm glad. An external voice is essential sometimes, I think.
Dear Samantha
I have just listened to Brimming Moments while eating my breakfast and after collecting three hens’ eggs. One a deep brown, another a light blue, the third a creamy off white. They were warm in my hand. I look out on my garden paddock here in Wensleydale North Yorkshire. A light rain has just fallen and the growing grass is Iridescent. I have no loch to wonder upon but your recording took me to Orkney. Thank you.
Doug
Thank you for bringing me to the lush greenness of North Yorkshire. Just on egg for me this morning. My second hen takes a six-month break from laying every year, and starts again at Easter weekend. I'm waiting to see if someone has told her Easter is early this year!
Sublime. Beauiful writing. Shining with light and life! Time is a great mystery, but no greater than that of our hearts which hold Time, like a fragile warm egg in windswept space, painting these canvases throughout our lives.. I can't comprehend it.
Thanks so much for this lovely start to the day.
Thank you Michael, I'm so glad to know that you enjoyed it. It's still and quiet here this morning, and chilly, but a curlew is calling over the field outside my window. Spring is here.
I've been thinking a lot lately about the need for pause, to settle, to linger, and your work so beautifully reflects that, the need to wait, to allow paint to dry, ideas to come, to notice. To continue, to accumulate layers, consider the moment as it melts away.
Yes, I'm feeling the lack of this lately, taking too much on, feeling hard-pressed. I'm writing as a reminder to myself, as much as anything, not to rush through this precious life.
I love the imagery of a landscape being enfolded in a raindrop. Your words are so beautiful.
Sam, I'm just reading The Clearing. This post reminds me of 'the subtle ether' - how to describe it, examine it, understand it. A wonderful and beautiful book. Thank you.
Oh thank you Sophie, I'm so glad you're enjoying The Clearing. Writing it was such a labour of love. Yes, the same preoccupations indeed, just shifted from one element to another, from ether to water....
It's an exquisite labour and brimming with love.
Such beautiful writing and reminders. Thank you Sam.
I'm so glad you enjoyed reading, @cathie cummins
I very much enjoyed this amalgamation of words and sights today, Samantha. A sense of Spring’s fresh arrival leapt from speaker and page. A total delight.
Thank you, Gary.
Thank you for this Samantha.
And thank you for the gift of your time and attention Dan. In the busy and distracted lives we lead, it's not something to ever take for granted. Wishing you clear, free-flowing waters.
Awe, thank you!!!
Thank YOU Samantha for these quiet moments, bringing us all inward; quieting, attending.
Yes, when your hens become older ladies they are slow to lay after their winter break. My old Light Sussex has just started to deliver an occasional egg while my Copper Blacks are going to it with vigour. I purchased two Cheshire Blues (pure white hens that lay beautiful blue eggs) just after my brother died in late November and they started laying immediately. I think my brother must have been urging them on from somewhere above. I think of him when I am collecting their eggs. Happy memories.
What a beautiful memorial, perfect blue eggs each morning.
Hi Samantha
Your gathering of words evoked a very real sense and plasticity of the water and by doing so helped me notice past moments of shared experience. Perhaps ‘now’ moves in a series of unseeable and unknowable stops as the flight of an arrow does. By noticing maybe we catch a stop that we can return to. A ‘live’ stop that can be held as a physical sensorial memory, rather as an internal curation of noticed nows. This is a new way of thinking for me. A noticing of an inner gallery of ‘nows’ to draw upon.
Thank you so much for this Samantha.
The infinitesimal moment...yes. Isn't that also how the eye sees, in a series of 'saccades', like snapshots, that our brain smooths over so it seems like a flow? Lovely to see you in the Life Raft Co-Working yesterday!
I had not know this about seeing.
In my continued sifting sorting and passing on of books, in order to let go of my 3/4 of my library, I have come across several books on Seeing, since you wrote this. So obviously I will now dip into them before they join the outward going piles. I will mix this reading with returning to a hero of mine, Carlo Ravelli (whose books are stuffed with underlinings and post-it’s and will come with me) whom you also mentioned in your writing this week. I so enjoy these exchanges and connections. Thank you Samantha.
I think I first read about it in Paul Virilio the Aesthetics of Disappearance, and his idea of 'picnolepsy' - that our experience of reality is perforated with gaps...and Rovelli, yes! How he managed to make such complex ideas accessible to us is miraculous! Downsizing your library must be quite a daunting task - and, I would imagine, a good opportunity to notice all those feelings of attachment and grasping....!
Ohh another author, thank you.
Yes downsizing the library is tricky, but also quite liberating, and definitely illuminating.
I have set myself the task of a bay (7 shelves) a week. I think the done the easy ones first!
But when I have half left it will make touch choices of who comes with me easier I hope.
Luckily once I have decided my husband is doing the liberating side, so I don’t start retrieving!