Particularities of the Ordinary

Particularities and Meaning
When I was thirteen, dad gave me a small garden plot to tend for a year. It was six feet by six feet, tilled to make plantings easier. This fertile plot of earth received my attention for a year and before long, a window of wonder appeared. I started to notice details in the garden – a small city of vermin burrowing and crawling on their knees and fliers with tiny helicopter blades buzzing the grass.

At a young age I loved poetry and thought what’s important was looking for the extraordinary and exceptional. But “noticing” particularities of the ordinary made life feel bigger, more significant. Noticing the everyday brought up memories and meaningful connections sometimes from experiences years ago or, maybe a few minutes that wouldn’t have been accessed without paying attention.

Garden Gifts of the Ordinary
David Haskell said, “Wonder increases as speed decreases.” As the world shrunk to the size of a parking space and personal concerns slowly faded away, watchfulness grew. Quiet moments changed everything. My field of vision narrowed and, like Blake, horizons expanded: “…a World in a Grain of Sand.” A galaxy in a pine cone. A universe in a milkweed pod. Wonder.

Spring brought an unending parade of ants, worms, fungi, dragon flies, caterpillars, and seed-eating sparrows and finches to my piece of the world. Remembering then, watching the spin and dive of the finches made me think of the time when I was nine, and rescued a baby robin fallen from the nest. Feeding it with an eye dropper, seeing it, finally, soar as a grownup into the sky, although certainly joy, I couldn’t say goodbye.

Simple Moments
One early morning, a fawn left tracks shaped like tiny human lungs across a corner of my garden. Many years later, animal tracks were glimpsed and I thought again about that deer and wondered how many times they sauntered delicately over the garden plot. Where have they all gone?

New joys came with fall and harvest. Efforts in the garden produced sweet corn, carrots and the like. Unfurling leaves like small green flags, buds of bursting kernels, the Fibonacci spiral of seed pods – Mother Earth honoring the magnificence of details.

For Writers and Artists
Writers can chart their own courses by examining the simple moments of their lives. Like the ordinariness of Ted Kooser’s topics in The Leaky Faucet or Recipe Card, a master of observing, pondering and giving his most heartfelt attention to the everyday, much can be accomplished by observing the world. These gifts of the ordinary, of watchfulness – packing a school lunch, hearing the friendly toot of a nearby train, seeing a child’s handprint on a window’s glass – are contained in seemingly mundane interactions, but often carry significance and meaning. And because they are part of our daily lives, they are overlooked. The ordinary “doesn’t insist upon being noticed,” noted Cynthia Ozick, author of The Riddle of the Ordinary, “…we take for granted the very things that deserve our gratitude.”  – Becky Breed

Writing/Creativity Exercise:

1. For a deeper reflection on awareness, read David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech This is Water, highlighting the parable of the two fish.
2. Enjoy Ted Kooser’s In the Basement of the Goodwill Store https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42631/in-the-basement-of-the-goodwill-storeand The Urine Specimen  https://slayground.livejournal.com/861656.html
3. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines connection as “having the parts or elements logically linked together.” But what if our memories connect us like shirt tail relatives to experiences? Remote or, perhaps, indistinct, but there? The red of a coat to a valentine and him. The smell of hay and the runaway boy. Our minds make patterns and recollections we can’t always immediately decipher.
4. Take notice of your routines and habits. When you look out your kitchen window what do you see? Something that captures your attention? The feel of raindrops on your face. Does it have meaning? Where were you? Or the smell of paint. Any memories evoked?
5. Select one that stirs your emotion. Make the connection and bring it alive through writing, drawing or wherever your creativity takes you.

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