Monday 1 December 2008

The visible world


Autumn's curtain call

It makes me very happy that quite a few people liked my 'under' photos, below, and they actually inspired two poems, Bill's in the Comments below and Dave's on his own blog! This means a lot to me especially because I took them when feeling pretty wretched. The effort to be attentive, it seems, is never lost. As long as you keep looking around and trying to express something, there is an accumulated quality of attention that may creep up and surprise you, creep up from somewhere way deeper than the currently prevailing mood.

The redoubtable Whiskey River has a lovely quotation today from Czeslaw Milosz:

"... for I have learned to doubt philosophy
and the visible world is all that remains."

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very beautiful photo - it reminds me of playing in willows tree as a child, bundling several branches together and then using them to swing around Tarzan style.

Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Oh, that quote is wonderful, as is your photo!

Zhoen said...

Lovely. And philosophy is usually wrong.

Dale said...

(o)

Leon's current assignment said...

The effort to be attentive, it seems, is never lost. As long as you keep looking around and trying to express something, there is an accumulated quality of attention that may creep up and surprise you, creep up from somewhere way deeper than the currently prevailing mood.

Indeed. And Sylvia Boorstein, a wonderful, warm teacher/writer with whom I do not know if you are familiar, does a very good job of expressing these same sentiments.

Check out It's Easier Than You Think if you ever cross its path. Methinks you might enjoy her style.

Best to you.

Jean said...

Kurt! How good to see you here again.

Psychotherapist, you are very shrewd. I'm familiar with and influenced by Sylvia Boorstein's writings. The buddhist teachers I most often practice with are linked to the US Insight tradition and Gaia House in Devon, where I often go, to Spirit Rock in California. Of course, we can hear or read wise teachers over and over and it only finally clicks when something in our own experience resonates.