Now I am Thinking That It Is The Small Things
I’ve been painting this one bird, the woodpecker, with its head thrown back in a Certain Way. It’s a way not at all pleading nor swooning. It is proud, maybe a little awed. It is a little odd, reminiscent of the ecclesiastic. And out of the blue I find myself certain that this particular bird in this particular pose is declaring, sure as sugar, its importance and validity. It’s saying that it matters.
And who would I be to deny it? There is something about the bulge of the hearty chest and the swerve of the vulnerable, vigilant neck that just says “I am as valid and permanent as any mapped geography, as relevant and crucial as any democracy, any biography”. Suddenly I’m painting a clear argument for the importance of the small species. And this is something I’m happy to doing.
I’ve always been concerned with conservation and the depletion of species, dismayed at humankind’s (including my own) ability to underestimate and ignore the ecosystem around us, the crucial struggles and victories of the non-blogging, non-speaking, smaller earthdwellers. Remember? Clear-cutting and decimation. Night sweats and extinction.
To reconnect with this concern feels natural, and there comes with it the hunch that there is even more to it: it is all the small things that are powerful, not just the feathered and deforested. Small things matter, and small things count, and so on ad infintesimal, and this is not a particularly wise epiphany, seeing as there are, I think, a few dozen trite books written on the theme and titled things like “Everything I Need to Know I Learned While Looking Up My Own Nose in the Mirror”.
I’m just saying that right now it feels like it is the small things. And that, if I’m going to respect the importance of small species, I might also respect the importance of small efforts, like the artistic efforts that I’m always belittling as I search for something huge to do. In the end it’s the small teeth that build the dams and it is the small lessons that bring the roof down. It is the small lies that get me out of bed in the morning, hot on the trails of a louder life. Everything counts.
I’ve been painting this one bird, the woodpecker, with its head thrown back in a Certain Way. It’s a way not at all pleading nor swooning. It is proud, maybe a little awed. It is a little odd, reminiscent of the ecclesiastic. And out of the blue I find myself certain that this particular bird in this particular pose is declaring, sure as sugar, its importance and validity. It’s saying that it matters.
And who would I be to deny it? There is something about the bulge of the hearty chest and the swerve of the vulnerable, vigilant neck that just says “I am as valid and permanent as any mapped geography, as relevant and crucial as any democracy, any biography”. Suddenly I’m painting a clear argument for the importance of the small species. And this is something I’m happy to doing.
I’ve always been concerned with conservation and the depletion of species, dismayed at humankind’s (including my own) ability to underestimate and ignore the ecosystem around us, the crucial struggles and victories of the non-blogging, non-speaking, smaller earthdwellers. Remember? Clear-cutting and decimation. Night sweats and extinction.
To reconnect with this concern feels natural, and there comes with it the hunch that there is even more to it: it is all the small things that are powerful, not just the feathered and deforested. Small things matter, and small things count, and so on ad infintesimal, and this is not a particularly wise epiphany, seeing as there are, I think, a few dozen trite books written on the theme and titled things like “Everything I Need to Know I Learned While Looking Up My Own Nose in the Mirror”.
I’m just saying that right now it feels like it is the small things. And that, if I’m going to respect the importance of small species, I might also respect the importance of small efforts, like the artistic efforts that I’m always belittling as I search for something huge to do. In the end it’s the small teeth that build the dams and it is the small lessons that bring the roof down. It is the small lies that get me out of bed in the morning, hot on the trails of a louder life. Everything counts.
posted by Josie Morway at 2:33 PM
1 Comments:
Great post. Beautiful.
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