Golden leaves sparkle with possibility
Stand still and pay attention
I think I contemplate the beauty in nature most at the turn of the season from summer to autumn. I also think I talk a lot of shit, and probably say this as every season ends and then conveniently just forget about it.
I go into the office twice a week and walk to work (sometimes I walk halfway and then get the bus but who's counting). Either way I always make it to Kennington Park. So I guess it’s the main expanse of green space I find myself in regularly. I like seeing all the dogs out for their morning walkies most of all. But I’ve also been more conscious of watching each season unfold around me in real-time. This week, I blinked and it was autumn. Swathes of golden brown were pooled at my feet. Autumn calls to you as much as it puts on a show for the eyes. The sounds of dry leaves swirling around, scraping along the floor. Crunchy twigs. I purposefully take the path that requires stomping through big piles of them, seeking out the dopamine hit from a little kick and a rustle.
I am trying to be slower. To sit, to wait, to watch. To pay attention to what’s actually going on around me. It’s amazing that familiar spaces can continue to bring us new perspectives. Ever changing, ever-evolving. We will never know it all, despite how hard I like to try.
One of my favourite paintings ever is The Boulevard Montmartre at Night by Camille Pissarro. I can’t quite bring myself to say this is the favourite. I am a Libra after all. Too indecisive, duh. Pissarro fell in love with the same place over, and over, and over again. He was besotted with all the ways it changed and surprised him. He actually painted 14 different views of the same street in total all in the space of one year. Each one depicts a different season, time of day or weather. He wanted to capture the evolution of Paris as a city, emerging as something new and exciting going into the 21st century.
I remember seeing the painting in real life for the first time at the National Gallery years ago. I got up as close as I could so the brushstrokes blurred into something unidentifiable. You know when you let your eyes glaze over, or you don’t have your glasses on? It was like that. The reflections of the lights from the lamps and the shop fronts on the wet pavement softened further out of focus. At the time, the installation of light was still relatively new. For Pissarro to get to see this street illuminated must have been magical. Witnessing all the different ways people started to interact with the space after dark. Imagining what other changes might come to pass in the future.
We often look but we don’t see. We listen but we don’t hear. We’re too busy thinking about the next thing, the next task to stop and take stock. I have peeled eyes. They scour and scan looking for little changes. Subtleties that could have otherwise gone unnoticed. For me, that’s where my best daydreaming happens. Thoughts that plonk themselves in my brain, arriving unselfconsciously and filling my brain with possibilities.
In English Lit at school we studied King Lear and one of the lines I remember most vividly comes from the character Kent, Lear’s servant, who tries to warn him and make him see sense. He says, “See better, Lear”. But the King doesn’t listen. His inability to intuit, to perceive beyond what was merely visible was his greatest downfall. Okay, let’s not dwell. Circling back from Shakespeare now because I’m not a complete twat. The point is to try and not always be so distracted, or get so swept up that you miss out on seeing something wonderful.