Timeless wisdom from my August archives 2013 about wabi-sabi, window wisdom and poetry.
Your Brain is Wider than the Sky
It’s Friday and windows week is at an end but I hope your reflections continue. This narrow window (below), not unlike the one Emily Dickinson used to look out from is the backdrop for a line from her poem: Your brain is wider than the sky.
For a woman who lived a cloistered life, she embraced an expansive view, proving once again we more than our surroundings and need not be defined by our circumstances. The poem in its entirety follows. Visit her lovely former home turned museum
The Brain — is wider than the Sky —
For — put them side by side —
The one the other will contain
With ease — and You — beside —
The Brain is deeper than the sea —
For — hold them — Blue to Blue —
The one the other will absorb —
As Sponges — Buckets — do —
The Brain is just the weight of God —
For — Heft them — Pound for Pound —
And they will differ — if they do —
As Syllable from Sound —
Posted by Layla Morgan Wilde at 8/22/2013 11:42 PM | View Comments (6)
Beauty is Imperfect, Impermanent and Incomplete
Sometimes it useful to reflect on where we were a year ago. I posted the photo quote de jour exactly a year ago. Clearly this theme still appeals to me and if anything, I love windows more than ever.
After seeing this image, I realized the philosophy of wabi sabi has worn a deep groove into my life. Wabi sabi is the belief that beauty is imperfect, impermanent and incomplete.
Where were you a year ago and what beliefs do you still cling to and what beliefs have drifted away?
As a lover of wabi sabi, this old farm hit pay dirt. There are rooms with views and then there are windows of vision.
What we see from our windows has more to do with our inner vision than pieces of glass and mortar. Did your eyes move to the words and black obstacle or zoom past to the green of the other window? Were you more attracted to the shadows or mortified at the peeling paint?
In the pop quiz of life there are no right or wrong answers. There are only the results of our choices.
Posted by Layla Morgan Wilde at 8/22/2013 12:00 AM
It’s not what you look at, it’s what you see. What do you see? A door? Forest? A stone woman? Is something out of place? Artists are always looking at the world in fresh ways in order to see something new, something hidden, something different.
It turns out artists really do see the world differently. University of Oslo psychology professor Stine Vogt, PhD. did a study Perception (Vol. 36, No. 1) comparing how artists and nonartists see.
She asked nine psychology students and nine art students to view a series of 16 pictures while a camera and computer monitored where their gazes fell.
The artists’ eyes tended to scan the entire picture, including empty expanses of ocean or sky, while the nonartists focused in on objects, especially people. The nonartists spent about 40 percent of the time looking at objects, while artists focused on them 20 percent of the time. Artists are able to look at the big picture.
I believe we can train our eye to see differently. Today, see if you can notice something in your familiar surroundings you’ve never noticed before.
Posted by Layla Morgan Wilde at 8/21/2013 4:49 PM
It’s Zen Tea Tuesday but we’re celebrating coffee as well during “inspiring windows’ week.
This window is reflecting a shop window and street outside the French Press Cafe and a teapot in my garden.
My message is: life is too short for cheap coffee or tea and life is short, stay awake, literally and figuratively. Can’t decide between having tea or coffee? This cool infographic will tell you their awesome differences.
Posted by Layla Morgan Wilde at 8/19/2013 11:21 PM |
We’re doing windows week with thoughts and hopefully inspiration about windows. Today; two window poems.
The Window by Charles Baudelaire
Looking from outside into an open window one never sees as much as when one looks through a closed window. There is nothing more profound, more mysterious, more pregnant, more insidious, more dazzling than a window lighted by a single candle. What one can see out in the sunlight is always less interesting than what goes on behind a windowpane. In that black or luminous square life lives, life dreams, life suffers.
Across the ocean of roofs I can see a middle-aged woman, her face already lined, who is forever bending over something and who never goes out. Out of her face, her dress, and her gestures, our of practically nothing at all, I have made up this woman’s story, or rather legend, and sometimes I tell it to myself and weep.
If it had been and old man I could have made up his just as well.
And I go to bed proud to have lived and to have suffered in some one besides myself.
Perhaps you will say “Are you sure that your story is the really one?” But what does it matter what reality is outside myself, so long as it has helped me to live, to feel that I am, and what I am?
Posted by Layla Morgan Wilde at 8/19/2013 12:00 AM |
We’re doing windows week with thoughts and hopefully inspiration about windows. Today; two window sand two poems.
The Window by Charles Baudelaire
Looking from outside into an open window one never sees as much as when one looks through a closed window. There is nothing more profound, more mysterious, more pregnant, more insidious, more dazzling than a window lighted by a single candle. What one can see out in the sunlight is always less interesting than what goes on behind a windowpane. In that black or luminous square life lives, life dreams, life suffers.
Across the ocean of roofs I can see a middle-aged woman, her face already lined, who is forever bending over something and who never goes out. Out of her face, her dress, and her gestures, our of practically nothing at all, I have made up this woman’s story, or rather legend, and sometimes I tell it to myself and weep.
If it had been and old man I could have made up his just as well.
And I go to bed proud to have lived and to have suffered in some one besides myself.
Perhaps you will say “Are you sure that your story is the really one?” But what does it matter what reality is outside myself, so long as it has helped me to live, to feel that I am, and what I am?
What do you see,
when you look outside a window.
A changing face, an transition stage in my life.
Taking new challenges and walking different routes,
to reach my ultimate destination.
Over coming obstacles that,
may cut into my life.
Looking through the light that
guides me to the right direction.
Gazing at all the souls blissfully walking,
down my road wearing smart suits,
and grasping each and every,
Opportunity to achieve their goals.
Seeing what was once a single race leading,
the country, which now has become,
a multiracial community.
Glancing at the vehicles striding by
I spot only one carrying the sick passengers to the building
with the Red Cross where,
Saviours are there to aid and save those lives.
In my eyes I see the world and my life through one,
little square tiled glass door that opens and shuts.
What do you see
when you look outside a window.
Windows of course aren’t always about actual windows.
Open The Window of Your Heart
Don’t worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn’t matter.
We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.
The strumming and the flute notes
rise into the atmosphere,
and even if the whole world’s harp
should burn up, there will still be
hidden instruments playing.
So the candle flickers and goes out.
We have a piece of flint, and a spark.
This singing-art is sea foam.
The graceful movements come from a pearl
somewhere on the ocean floor.
Poems reach up like the edge of driftwood
along the beach, wanting and wanting!
They derive
from a slow and powerful root
that we can’t see.
Stop the words now.
Open the window in the center of your chest,
and let the spirits fly in and out.
~ Rumi
