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And some, like me,
are just beginning
to guess at the
powerful religion
or ordinary life,
a spirituality of
freshly mopped
floors and
stacked dishes
and clothes blowing
on the line.
- Adair Lara
Next month it will be 10 years since I received my grant to go to the Western Isles of Scotland and renew my passion for photography. What an interesting journey it has been in those 10 years! For the past 3 years I have been recording that journey on this blog. This image of a clothes line on South Uist is so exemplary of that initial trip, when I was fully immersed in the monochrome image.
What hasn't change in those 10 years is my equally passionate engagement with the commonplace. The "religion of ordinary life" as Adair Lara calls it. Now, I no longer need to travel great distances to practice my "religion"...it surrounds me everyday.
It isn't just my ordinary life that fascinates me but the ordinary lives of the birds and squirrels, the trees and pond, the flowers and grasses by the roadside. It is the ordinary life of the natural world around me that draws my lens and my heart.
Look
at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the
stars... and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole
existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no
reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and
they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank
balance. Look at the flowers — for no reason. It is simply unbelievable
how happy flowers are. ~Osho
