being present

Ordinary Venice.

| Mairead

After my observation on the blog yesterday that I was not noticing the beauty all around me I decided to start paying attention. My mission: To pay attention and notice the ordinary. Here in Venice even the ordinary is different so that wasn’t too difficult. As has become our habit, Denis and I set off on our fifteen minute bus ride to the city before breakfast. We arrived around nine o’clock. This was useful because a lot of ordinary things happen around nine in the morning.

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(Breakfast)

But first we were going to have breakfast. This was a much cooler day and rain was forecast and believe it or not we were looking forward to rain! When we got off the bus Denis (who was also on “ordinary stuff” patrol) noticed a pathway we hadn’t seen before so we took it. There were fewer people walking this route but there seemed to be more boats. We stopped at the first cafe and ordered coffee and pastries (not exactly high fibre but very yummy.) And that’s when ordinary Venice started to happen.

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(Taxi!)

The delivery boats. I know I’ve mentioned this again and again but… everything, every thing coming into this city comes in on a boat and get to its destination on a handcart. Three delivery boats had passed before I had wrangled the camera out of its bag. But I got DHL. Well of course DHL deliver to Venice!

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(DHL… Excellence. Simply Delivered… to Venice. On the lookout for UPS)

We took 351 pictures yesterday and they are all of ordinary things. Here’s a taste of ordinary Venice…

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(The milkman)

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(The laundry)

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(The builders)

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(The ambulance)

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(The bin men)

By lunchtime I was exhausted! Noticing the ordinary is work. It’s everywhere. It’s constant. It put my senses to work. When my senses are at work… with what’s happening right now in front of me my brain can’t be making up stories about the scary things that might happen in the future or the annoying things that did happen in the past… But it’s a bit of work and maybe I’d much rather be numb or bored or talking to myself about scary stuff…. Nah, here’s some more ordinary Venice….

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(Someone had a blocked drain…)

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(Bottle cap art – lots and lots of ordinary plastic bottle caps)

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(A bus/boat stop dock…. there are lots of these in Venice)

We’re off to Florence today…. might be hot…. might be busy…. might be fun… might be terrible… or it might be amazingly ordinary right in front of my eyes, Mairead.

Take a step… just a baby step.

| Mairead

08 03a

(Field trip to the Museum in Kildare Street Dublin, here’s a close up low light on the Ardagh Chalice)

“What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Repeated baby steps are better than some of the alternatives, Mairead.

The Botanic Gardens in the rain.

| Mairead

27 9a

(The Botanic Gardens in Dublin)

I went to visit the Botanic Gardens in Dublin last Monday. Although it’s less than an hour away I’d never been before. Not for the first time I’ve contemplated going on holidays to my own house and discovering what the area holds…. but that’s for another time. Monday’s visit was in connection with a course I’m attending.

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(Beautiful shapes in the glasshouses)

It was a cold, wet day but because of the huge glasshouses there’s plenty of inside space. Also, I had my umbrella for the sprints between glasshouses. Unlike my usual tours this one wasn’t about the place. I don’t know who created this beautiful place. I don’t know how old it is. I don’t know how many acres it spans. This tour was about noticing what’s here…. now.

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(More beautiful shapes)

There was an art exhibition in a big room over the restaurant (there was lovely sweet potato soup in the restaurant). There were huge plants in the Palm house. There were fly-catching plants in another glasshouse… and there was lots of soft rain.

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(Unusual plant attached to tree bark hanging from a post)

My assignment for my coursework was to take pictures of, and to sketch…. the things that attracted me. Taking pictures was easy, sketching not so… but half the work is taking out the pen and paper and starting…. and quarter of the work is getting over the shame when your sketch looks nothing like the object you’re sketching……

Start… now, Mairead.

Wake up Time.

| Mairead

19 9b

(Agawa Canyon… picture by Doris or Grahame (forgot to ask!))

I’m rushing off to a course this morning (more later) so instead of a post here’s a story from the book Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh that explains what waking up from unconscious living means.

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(A huge rainbow filled the sky one night as we left Staples (stationery shop) in Niagara, it was so big it couldn’t fit in my camera)

A little boy wakes in the morning and realises the whole family has slept in and the whole family will be late for school. He runs to his favourite sister’s room and very gently shakes her awake, “Wake up, wake up we will be late for school.” She awakes and is very angry with her older brother, so she shouts at him and kicks him. He is very upset, because he was gentle when he woke his sister and now she is angry with him. The he remembers that she was coughing in the night and probably didn’t get much sleep and may be very tired. With this realisation he understands his sister and he has woken up from upset. She is his favourite sister again and he is love.

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(A rock in a lake on the way to Agawa Canyon. There’s beauty everywhere to help us wake up)

In an instant the boy could let go of the upset because he “woke-up”. We’re upset when people treat us badly, we’re upset when things don’t go our way, we’re upset when we can’t do what we want to do, we’re upset when we’re not as strong as we’d like to be, we’re upset when we’re not as wealthy as we planned, we’re upset when we’re sick, when we’re tired, when we’re sad. What if it was possible to let go of the upset and return to love? Being in our natural state of loving is much more comfortable than being in an unnatural state of upset.

We can wake up in an instant, Mairead.

Pause…. now, have a look at that thing you did….

| Mairead

30 7a

(Seagull, taking a pause in Bath)

I was digging in the garden yesterday and my project is very close to completion. You might remember the garden was overrun by weeds and I wondered how I might clear it? Turns out clearing it one step at a time works! At the moment though it looks very bare and I almost miss the green of the weeds… There’s a layer of weed control membrane and pink-grey stones, soon it will need some pots and colours, but not today. Today my body is aching and it may be a little time before I return to the land. In the meantime I can enjoy just looking at the stones…

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(Taking a pause looking at the sea in the ferry)

This looking got me thinking about all the times I’ve completed something and I didn’t take time to appreciate it or me for the completion. Take something as simple as cooking dinner, when it’s cooked we eat, we clear away and we go onto the next thing to do. When I finished school I went straight into exams and then worried about getting into college. Last night I had a dream that I was back doing those exams! When I finish posting this blog I will get my breakfast and go straight to my to-do list.

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(Pausing to look at the coffee in 3fe, Dublin)

Maybe not today. Today, I will remember something I learned a long time ago on a mindfulness course. It was about pausing between tasks. When one thing is done, pause, before beginning the next. When you do this there’s a chance you notice you have done something and you prepare yourself to begin something new. Noticing that I have done something gives me a sense of completion. Completion is nice!

You’ve come to the end of reading, pause……. Mairead.

Birds and Toddlers do it.

| Mairead

1

(A Robin)

The birds are singing outside the window again as I write and I continue to be amazed at how much their singing affects me. For the better. I’m cheered just listening to them do their thing. They have no idea I’m here enjoying them. They are definitely not doing it for me. In fact I don’t know why they sing. It makes me feel good to imagine that they sing because they enjoy singing.

3

(More birds)

They remind me of the daughter, when she was a toddler. She used to sing to herself as she played with her toys. The tune was never recognisable and the lyrics were a jumble of words and syllables. One day I told her I would write down the words so she could keep her song forever. She didn’t seem that interested but she let me write every word and syllable.

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(Rory, a long, long time ago when he was a toddler)

To the little toddler forever is right now, this moment, because this moment never ends… now is always now. To the adult, now is just a passing blink as we head straight for tomorrow. The singing birds halt everything…… and bring my attention to now, here and now, exactly where I am… now.

Now, where are you? Mairead.

Thank you Aunty Phil!

| Mairead

(Butterfly in Powerscourt Gardens)

The Happy Pear cafe/restaurant/vegetable shop in Greystones has come up with another healthy idea. They are asking people to donate their old bicycles, no matter what condition. They will fix them up and then make them available free-to-ride around the town, just like the blue bicycles in Dublin and other cities. Then you can leave your car on the edge of town and borrow a bike and ride around to get your groceries or to just meet friends.

(No pictures of The Happy Pear – a happy cabbage instead?)

That got me thinking about when I first came to live in the big city (Dublin) when I was nineteen. My mother organised that I would live with my aunt, who was (and still is!) just three years older than me. I had just got into a computer course with a small software house and she was at university in Trinity. She travelled in each day on her bicycle. At home in Cashel, I used my bike once in a while and usually only rode it on the footpaths…. nevertheless, it was decided I would need my bicycle. As my course was on her way and I didn’t know (for a while…) how to get there, we rode together most mornings.

(Old stone wall on the Aran Islands)

It would probably have been the bravest thing I ever did, if I thought it was dangerous. But I didn’t. My aunt taught me how to weave in and out through the traffic – there were no cycle lanes then. She taught me that it was essential to be at the front of the traffic when the lights went from red to green. She taught me that I had as much right to be using the road as the cars, buses (no bus lanes either) and trucks, and she taught me to believe that. Because, once I knew I belonged on the road, the other road users knew it too and they gave me space.

(Old stones on the beach)

She did all of this without telling me anything. But in her every behaviour she told me by example.

Be the example of what you want in the world, Mairead.

PS. Thank you Auntie Phil!