I wrote this piece some years ago, when trying to understand my focus and how to look at things.  I was captivated by Annie Dillard's writing at the time and the rather vertiginous swirling discussion is evidence of that influence, but follow it through.  There is useful stuff in there.

 

My commute via bike and train is rarely without incident or something worth reflecting upon: some things are clearly noteworthy but others need teasing out as if hiding behind a cupboard.  

A couple of months ago I stood on the platform but the train was delayed – the display said there was a problem with animals on the line.  Around the bend where the train belonged, trundled a cow; stepping quite lightly over the sleepers.  As she approached the platform people laughed, phoned other people up, and someone filmed it on their phone to be broadcast on the local news.  The train inched along behind her, being very aware of the potential for causing a panic-led flight.  The transport police finally caught up with the cow and guided her into a field; we all embarked and got to work without too much delay, pleased to have an entertaining story to share.

This particular day I rode through the dark to arrive at Backwell station; gliding into the railway station and to the ticket machine.  Ahead of me was a man I had seen once or twice before at the station, dressed in army camouflage that stood out rather inappropriately against the grey and black formal work clothes of his fellow travellers.  What caught my attention was the overly powerful smell of his after-shave and a seemingly inappropriate fluorescent yellow elastic snake belt bisecting his uniform.  I wondered what the regulations for after-shave were in the army, or whether he was exercising an oddly non-conformist streak.  And the belt?  Possibly a touch of frivolity against a backdrop of staid responsibility.

The sky was grey like wadding as I cycled along the road from the station to work; the air rich with moisture.  Cars were speeding in both directions and preventing me from thinking, and at one point two barely missed a woman who had decided to cross the road without bothering to wait for a gap in the traffic.  The ground glinted with rain, although despite this winter marker the wind blew a warmth that made me regret wearing a merino top under my jacket.  Suddenly I was hit by the smell of my mother’s washing powder – a man on the pavement was damp enough for the familiar perfume to be driven out of his clothing.  Neither flower nor food; the smell offered a tiny aperture into a different olfactory world, but failed to feel genuine.  However, the scent transported me to my mum’s house: the orange sweater of my dad’s that lives in a variety of cupboards upstairs in our house: the car she gave us.  My mother in law suggested once that our washing powder is equally evocative, but we maintained it has no scent at all – familiarity has begotten invisibility.

 Annie Dillard suggested we look to celebrate the small, the invisible, the hidden in a place.  What can trees and flowers be without soil?  Look at a sunset, then turn around and look at the dark – can there be a sunset without the deep blue behind?  Each force must have an equal and opposite force pushing back, yin and yang, black and white.  The tiny things (look at the world through an inverter) the big things are often far less powerful than the invisible. A lichen in all its innocent camouflage sitting without growing for centuries has the power of existence and a quiet discourse with its surroundings, but it would be a foolish man to start telling people about this observation.  Not big enough.

I have spent a long time thinking about and sharing the significant; standout experiences that translate well to other people’s lives, car-crash sights.  What I have often missed is the chip of grit on the edge of a puddle, the smell of emptiness after a cool night.  These things are hard to share as well as hard to see and so become subsumed into the backdrop – too many microscopic details living out their own existence.  Is it possible to describe a beach by poring over each grain of sand?  Every tiny stone has its own beauty and colour but we ignore these for the big sweep.

Dillard describes with great beauty the origin of a mangrove island – one seed attached to a smear of soil bobbing on the surface of the sea.  As time goes on the little habitat accretes material and builds up mass; this in turn attracts small creatures and other living things and before long we have a substantial pontoon no longer bobbing but resisting the waves.  From small things do giant islands form.

So what is it – looking away from the obvious to spot the significant?  Celebrating the miniscule?  Recognising the value of all things?  Knowing that small things can grow to be big ones?

If we look for the significant in the smallest of objects will we not get overwhelmed by the innumerable possibilities?  If everything is significant then we dare to discard nothing.  Or perhaps, equally and conversely perhaps nothing is significant.