Perception of Place: Time to Stand and Stare
What is your connection to Place? The place in which you live and work. How would you describe its uniqueness, its beating heart, what it really is, how big it is? Would you describe what you see in front of you: the 2d image of the surface and superficial. Or would you close your eyes for a moment and sense into the intangible energy of the interconnected, interbeing that is the bio-cultural uniqueness of place?
We move so fast in our modern lives. Our gaze skates over bedcover, bowl, tap, coffee cup, doorhandle as we pass from sleep to work. No time to stand and stare. And even if we could, there is no object we could stare at that, in just one glance, would reveal all of itself, its secrets, its whole potential, to us.
This stone dolphin — a much loved trinket bought on the first trip to Zanzibar in a small shop designed to capture the attention of tourists — sits on my bedroom shelf. When I gaze at it from the comfort of my bed I can see its curve, the tapering colour from grey to soft pink. And yet I am obscured from its other side in which there is a tiny chip, a result of poor packing when moving from one house to another. I cannot ever know or explore its whole, for to do so would be to break it to discover more about its unpolished insides which would destroy the object.
I cannot see the hands that hewed the stone from the wall of rock, nor those of the carver and polisher. Nor the many feet that walked over the rock before it was hewn — human, animal, insect. And yet if I pause to stand and stare, I can start to sense the warmth of the rain pouring onto the streets in a deluge as I scrambled through Stone Town to find a place to stay. I can hear the bustle portside where the young travellers meet at sundown, and smell the scent of spices.
Other memories surface as I look more closely at the carved eye scratched into the stone, and the graceful arch of the brow, I find myself sensing deeper into the stone, recalling the heightened senses of diving in the waters off Zanzibar and encountering the pod of dolphins, from which a mother dophin with a young pup loudly told me off for venturing too close. I can sense the vibrations and the echoes of her in the room. She is also in the stone.
Each time I pass by the dolphin, the dophin itself has changed again. Perhaps sunlight streams onto the polished surface revealing different flecks of colour. Perhaps dust has covered his surface where I have failed to be enthused by housework for a week.
As my focus on the dolphin deepens so my perception of the room changed and alters. Each and every object my gaze rests upon invites exploration, to the hidden side I cannot perceive, inviting me into a collaborative exchange with its richness and depth. A mutual response that my body atunes to. The photo frame, the perfume bottle, the painting on the wall — all incomplete and waiting to be discovered in all their rich context.
If I can only still my mind and body enough to hear the conversation.
When I look at my shrieking tree high atop the hill that runs behind my home, I see her graceful branches stretches out across the hillside waiting for me to come puffing up the hill with some tangible trouble I need to share with her. I see the groves of bark and the fallen branches. Behind her I can see the far horizon which stretches down towards the South Downs escarpment. And yet I cannot see the heart carved by some passing human in her far side; nor see the roots which stretch endlessly down into the humus below, nor the worms and insects, the mycellium nor the water that trickles through the soil on a rainy damp day. If I explore her hidden side in a different season the picture will be altogether different. Bare, barren even — and yet still teeming with life if I creep close enough to the bark to see the small weevils at work. I see the knobby knarls where branches have fallen or been cut down to be carved into resting seats for passing human feet. I see the moss which guards the ground on her shaded northern side.
If we are to re:discover Place, to re:connect with the teeming life that is possible in each Place in which we live and work and breathe. If we are to renew its thrivability for people and planet, sensing into the interconnections of life around us is more than mapping them on a piece of paper, it is also sensing into the unseen, the felt experience, the embodied intangibility that is yet real and true and tells the perceiver the story of that place.
We can reawaken that interconnection through practice. A practice of standing and staring until we can sense into more of the unseen.
I invite you to stop and stare over the holiday period (if you get one). And to shift your perception of what is to what really is.
