See what I mean?

[ornoth]

The human organism has been designed with particularly good eyesight. We’re especially attuned to detect and focus on any movement in our field of vision, which was a significant evolutionary advantage for an opportunistic species that might equally find itself as predator or as prey. If something moves, we want to know about it, what it is, where

Comments

[f_l_i_r_t]

This is a fantastic, whimsical and wonderfully discovered insight into a new world. I am going to give this a go. I have taken time away from the noise of society and only focused on the nature of it before, but this is one step beyond. Cheers!

[ornoth]

Well, I hope it lives up to that billing! Let me know how you fare.

Of course, part of that could just be my own natural inclinations, too. I'm someone who could just sit and hang out and stare at a river flowing, or the surf, or a tree.

[iniren]

Well said, you. And a great use of a walk to work!
I wonder - how does this relate to photography? I mean, you know I'm not in any way a photographer, but I did notice that when I'm taking pics, how I see things does, very much, change. Perhaps in that case it's more about framing, or capturing the moving into a non-moving still... Hm - that could be a fun thing to try - looking at non-moving things through a framing perspective - like, what would this tree look like if I were only looking at this 1" square of bark? Or my walk to my car if I included the normally unseen sky and gravel by my feet?

[ornoth]

Yeah. I was actually thinking along similar lines today.

I started out by asking myself how I might capture in a photograph the richness of the things that don’t move, without it just appearing flat and static.

As I was walking along, staring at a tree, a van zipped past, and I was struck not so much by the depth of the everlasting trees, but how briefly the van was there. Taken from a tree’s perspective, the van’s presence is but a fraction of a moment, which kind of puts our preoccupation with what moves in perspective. Why do we grant so much importance and attention to something that is only present for ten seconds before it’s gone, whereas the tree will stand there and be part of our sense of place for sixty years or more?

So my thoughts went from trying to somehow capture the solidity of the eternal to depicting how briefly moving things matter. Visually, the obvious technical answer is stop-action or time-lapse or long-exposure photography, something where the element of time is built into the very form. By showing the van

[iniren]

Well, that has to do with our proccupation with change, I think - and the whole idea of speed (hence my deep disappointment at the "faster" book - it didn't really address any of this at all).

And then, moving away from the visual, branch out from the perspective of the tree, to that of the universe - all of us are just "vans", moving by. What makes us interesting? What makes any piece of your life something you focus on...? Ok, maybe that's a little far fetched of a comparison, but it all comes down to perception, certainly.

And yea, I think that's what the ultimate goal of the meditation's all about - getting into that perspective of connection, of seeing, of "slowness" as characterized by inner calm.