continually
unfolding
becoming more and more
with every second
an old man's fingers
cracking at every limb
infinite
unfurling
across the universe
green fractals
endlessly repetition
spread across my body
Ferns are interesting if you take the time to look. I am working on the idea of A Poetics of Looking, but I digress.
If we take the time to look, to really appreciate the imprint of life onto our desiring and intentional minds, we will see the world with new eyes, dare I even say with child-like fascination.
Humans hide behind the familiar, things we can box together in seamlessly neat, smooth, boxes. We make sense of the world through this process, we make sense of it all by placing things into categories. Because the alternative - forever seeing the world anew - is not in any sense desirable; think about seeing your significant other or partner anew for the "first" time every single morning; think about the utter confusion one would experience when you experience a coffee machine every morning anew. We learn, we place things in boxes, we grow, and things work. For the most part, at least.
Recently, we had the opportunity to walk in the woods, to sink our souls into the very presence of non-presence. We lost ourselves a bit in the sensory overload of woods and forests. But hidden in the grass, the fingers of ferns, the fractals of nature, pushed their presence onto me. And I was again struck by the beauty of the world - if we only take the time to look.
In this series of photographs, I present you with ferns through my lens, the infinite "Becoming" to which the title of this post alludes. Please enjoy them, interspersed with my philosophical musings, thoughts, meanderings, and reflections through the infinite fractals of ferns and becoming and looking.
We often hear the phrase, look at life through the eyes of a child. Or, we are told to "believe like a child" (this is something my family says on a regular basis). But even though this might be a good thing, as I said above, life would really become strange. The familiarity that allows us to do things will fade away, and we will not be able to go about life in the ways we are currently going about it.
However, it is when we realise that if we combine the child-like fascination with our current mindset, one characterised by familiarity, we can see the world through a pair of lenses that utterly shatter the familiarity but in a productive way.
When we look at life with a mixture of familiarity and fascination, we are thrown into a radically novel world, one we can continually shape, fold, mould, and transform. Life becomes life clay which we can endlessly reshape.
Life through this lens becomes infinite becoming, always malleable, always taking the shape that we allow it to take. We do not look at life the same every single day, even though we convince ourselves of this strange "fact".
I am currently reading a novel by Milan Kundera, and through one of the characters he wrote:
This was one of the most beautiful quotes that I read in a long time. We look at the past with different eyes, it shifts, and changes, color as we perceive it with new eyes. History, the past, culture, ideology, tradition, it all becomes infinitely reshapable, even though some might see it as rigid, hardened, like marble into a statue that we can never change.
And this is exactly what I want to achieve with this renewed interest to look, to see life through a lens of both familiarity, but also wonder.
We are also always told how short life is, but (if I remember correctly) Stoic philosophers of old held the idea that life is actually just long enough, that is if we appreciate every moment.
How can we appreciate every moment, though, with life throwing so much at us?
I think with this combination of familiarity and wonder, sameness and difference.
We cannot look at life anew every second, this would really mess with our way of living. But we can push aside the radical idea that things are completely and totally familiar and embrace the strangeness still embedded in life. The flower on a plant is not the same each and every time. If we know where to look - familiarity - but we seek wonder - strangeness - in the same experience, we will see life with new eyes. We might just begin to appreciate each moment.
Alas, this might still be very utopian. We might not always revert to this position of familair-wonder. We might fall back into our routine, coffee, shower, work, eat, sleep... This familiar routine has a certain allure, a false sense of security. There is a reason why so many people fall into this routine. But once we settle into it, we can see the utter strangeness of thinking things are the same every single time. If we really look, if we let the world imprint itself onto our minds, we will be struck by the utter strangeness of life. We are, luckily, tethered to the familiar, yes it is strange, but there is some familiar that will never truly fade away.
Looking at these ferns, I was again struck by the beauty in the familiar. I hope that I could make you see it as well. That these beautiful structures that repeat itself in nature could imprint themselves onto your eyes and mind so that you might just look at life with a renewed sense of wonder. Even though we are tethered to life with the familiar. Only in mixing these two dispotions can we really appreciate the beauty of strangeness in life.
Keep well, and happy photographing.
All of the musings and reflections and writings are my own, unless hyperlinked and stated otherwise. The photographs are also my own, taken with my Nikon D300 and 50mm Nikkor lens.