Sunday 8 March 2015

pinecone pockets

Six years ago, I worked my way through  The Artist's Way. I have journals full of daily writing pages that I rarely visit, but folded in my pocket is a list of my touchstones:

sunrise
the smell of lavender
the colour of the sea
the sound of skylarks
bird nests
discovery apples
blood oranges
the smell of my child's hair
spotting a seal
geese overhead
Thoreau
a black and white photograph taken by my father
Van Gogh's blue
chocolate
a knitted blanket
1290
birthing
the roar of wind
deep friendship
purple sunsets
full moon walking.

Today my pocket is full of pinecones. My three year old daughter danced her way through the forest by the sea, collecting pinecone after pinecone to stick in my pocket.  I wonder, are pinecones on her not-even-written touchstone list?  Maybe practicing this ancient behavior--all this collecting--has a purpose. Is it the dance of art? Is it the walk of creativity? The path of connection?  The site of beauty?

My daughter shows me how to approach a simple ordinary object as if it were the most unique object in the world.

With wonder and with awe, she chases beauty.

   

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