Acknowledging The Small Things - Am I Just Goofy?

Now you may think I’m crazy but I wanted to throw something out there that has been rolling around in my mind for a while now. I hope you’ll indulge me here....

I’m sure we’ve all spent some time admiring garden flowers, sunsets, mountains, things of beauty in general, maybe even regarding things that are not so beautiful. We may just give things a passing glance, study them a bit more closely or some of us may even put them under a microscope. We might pay some cursory attention during our day to all that surrounds us or simply ignore most of our surroundings as we rush to make deadlines. Am I right in making the general assumption that all of us bypass the vast majority of all that surrounds us?

Well, call me goofy, but something hit me a while back that kinda changed me a bit, deep inside. This might not be a revelation to more enlightened souls but it struck a poignant chord with me. It has even crept into my artwork as of late and it all started with a trip to a gas station, of all places!

So I’m sitting in the car, gassing up, staring off into my own thoughts. When my mind came back to the task at hand, I was staring at a small, scraggly bush that had been apparently thrown behind a cement block wall but had managed to root itself on it’s side and survive, despite the neglect. I thought to myself, “Wow...what a resilient little soul... lucky it’s hiding from the world behind that wall...hope no one sees it or they’ll just dump it in the burn pile.”

This got me thinking as I sat there. This little bush actually had someone who took care of it, at least as it was maturing. It was chosen, loaded on a truck, sent out to be used in landscaping then someone discarded it behind a wall as trash, but it survived. It was lucky...and it’s still attempting to fulfill its purpose despite being discarded. There’s a complex little story there that no one cares about, let alone ever thought about. For a moment, I was glad to have regarded the scraggly little bush and acknowledge its story, knowing that I’d be the only one who, in all likelihood, ever would.

OK...have you ever glanced out your car window on your way home and regarded a single blade of grass in the median and come to the realization that you’ll probably be the only person EVER to acknowledge that blade of grass? Am I freaking you out? LOL Or do you just think I’m a bit goofy? Well, I’m probably guilty as charged there, but it’s the same thought process as with the discarded bush. Almost like it existed for you in that moment and all it wants is a fleeting acknowledgment of its reality and purpose. If you take the thought out further, all things seem to want this same acknowledgment. - Isn’t it funny that only we humans, it seems, have the capacity to perform a thought process such as this? We are pieces of work, aren’t we? LOL

This may all just be the rantings of an off-the-wall artist, but if you take a look at my piece, “Transcendent Flight,” you might recognize this line of thinking there, along with other familiar undercurrents. I’m not sure if my explanation has made any sense, but I’ll leave it to you to come to your own conclusions about it all.

Thanks for stopping by!    :)     ~ Amy

PS - I bet you start looking at the grass in the median in a whole new way!!! LOL
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