What if we treasure the common as much as we value the rare? What then?
It’s not that any of us sets out to denigrate the ordinary things of nature. We just become so accustomed to them that they’ve grown, if not invisible, literally unremarkable to our minds.
Global Roadside Attraction
The name says “prostrate” but soft flower heads greet passing wanderers on roadside footpaths and other trails. Globe amaranth is, they say, “a cosmopolitan pioneer plant of disturbed areas.”
That’s one reason for our interest in recollections of childhood vision. How interesting and beautiful were these humble flowers when we were at their level, on hands and knees, seeing them — noticing them — for the first time or dozen times? What has changed?
Many of our photo-art prints lean toward impressionism rather than studio lighting and mirror-image representations. That’s because it’s our brain and hearts and, perhaps, the soul that do the seeing.
Roadside B.C.
They pay good wages to people for mowing these down along miles of country roads, several times a year, although city florists are paid well to put such things in spiky arrangements.
If we pay attention to the humble, ordinary things, the old Navajo chant begins to reverberate, “Beauty all around me…” And that’s a genuine treasure by any measure.
I love this piece on my office wall. Makes me happy every time I see it.