It is just over a year since I came across Clare Grant's web log, Three Beautiful Things (she has just completed her second year), and nearly a year since I took up her idea in my own. What appeals to me about this approach to log keeping, is its positive nature. There is no whingeing. You record only the things which, in the course of a day, have interested or amused you, and given you pleasure in one form or another.
For me it has become a sort of diary, but a diary, which ignores the routines and preoccupations of daily life - the subject of most diaries, and concentrates instead on a world of minutiae, which is generally ignored. It is also a way of sending post cards to new and old friends, but daily ones, to which, if they want, they can reply immediately, by making a comment. (And the more of those the better from old friends and newcomers). Above all it is about looking around you, and seeing wonderful things, which often become more wonderful the closer you look.
Why three things? One would bestow undue importance; two would imply contrast and invite comparison; three, on the other hand, reflects the variety and contrast, of which the world is made up.
It's mid-summer day when normally you would not pay attention to the young horse-chestnut, which is already sporting green conker cases. They are only the size of marbles but are complete with perfectly formed spikes.
Yesterday's wind is still blowing. I look down at the short grass in the Grove and watch the daisies, no more than a centemeter or two above ground level, quivering.
No comments:
Post a Comment