The wind must have tipped these over, because this is how I find them, looking upwards at the sky and at the lens of my camera, instead of flat on their faces as plane leaves usually seem to fall.On my desk is a cederwood box containing 12 crayons. On the lid of the box are the words Fundacio Antoni Tapies, words which are inscribed on each of the crayons. I bought the crayons, now reduced in varying degrees, by sharpening , 15 years ago, when visiting the Tapies museum in Barcelona. They still recall the potential, which the paintings of the Catalan abstact artist inspires, in reproducing the random effects of weather and grafitti on yellow, plaster walls. Even if the crayons had no artist's name on them, they, (beautiful things in themselves) would still offer a sense of possibilty, only waiting to be explored. If only ...
When I look out for beautiful things, the daily ritual to find three of them, is I realize open to the risk of repetition. Buds in the spring, seeds and fallen leaves in the autumn, are going to recur; and I say to myself, that, in repeating previous observations, I am only reflecting the repetitions, which occur in nature; and that there will be variations, not only in the changing habits of the seasons, but in the variant perspective of an aging observer.
8 comments:
Those leaves look remarkably similar to maple.
Tapies is one of my favourite artists. I was thrilled to see a large exhibition of his works in a museum in Germany several years ago. Nice souvenir you have there, so full of possibilities, as you say.
And I feel the same about the repetition, it's part of living and seeing. Too often we can stop seeing that which is there everyday. Thank you for your daily observations and notes here!
They are, I am sure, maple. I have been stupidly confusing these trees for some time, because I was thinking of the London plane. Thank you for the correction. You are reassuring about repetition. Thank you for that too.
Repetition can bring its own beauties. Instance the fractal. Why are we so afraid of repetition? I suppose because we most often meet it in the trivial and banal. Beauty, such as you have caught, needs no defence
Thank you, Dave. I had forgotten factals - identical motifs repeated on smaller and smaller scales - in this context.
The grey and yellow and those bold shapes are so striking.
Seasonality is wonderful, I think. When did you last hear anyone grumbling 'Oh June, cherries again, how tedious!'
Oh, and get using those crayons!
Thanks, Lucy. I don't believe in grumbling about bad seasonal weather, let alone cherries. I do use the crayons - aquerelles - but not enough
And Dave: help, I see I've done a typo on fractals.
Your last para was an ingenious bit of alibi-ing. I envisage using it myself.
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