At the end of oh a long day. Woke at 2am to a possum scratching noisily at a hatch to the crawlspace under my bedroom window and that went on some hours. Now after office hours, teaching, teaching prep, and an edifying but mind-twisting course at the local REI on orienteering with map and compass – now a glass of white wine and a big fat artichoke steaming to be had with butter and garlic, and in the gap as it steams one more blog for you.
So here’s a blog, as all these have been so far, on seeing freshly. In this case, seeing what’s real in the daily, unique in the ostensibly interchangeable. A very William Carlos Williams sort of blog.
Pennies, for instance, we act as if one were as good as another. Look at them better, though, and each is its own creature, has its own smudges, patina, has carved its own arc through the ether to your pocket or your change jar.
Or stones. Everyone talks about snowflakes. Fuck snowflakes. Stones are very different from other stones. Why don’t they get some fucking press?
Why’s this matter. We live in a world system that’d make a given face, a person, interchangeable with every other, if it could, and maybe it could. To recuperate one penny or scrap of stone from all the others and say – this. In that plain ordinary moment attention is love, squishy yeah but that’s the word for it, and nothing the world commodity system raping the earth and our spirits can do will undo the moment, and the system has to fall back and die.
Doesn’t fall back far. Doesn’t die for long. But does a little, does a bit, and’s good and good again.
The Art of Compost 