A blank canvas to start the year

“I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says “Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

These photographs were taken during my stay in Poland. A day before our flight back to the UK snow began to fall. I was thrilled. I had what I waited for and I’ve captured our little walk around my dad’s orchard above. I think that it was in my childhood that I have somehow persuaded myself that the snow needs to fall for the new year to begin. It’s as if a blank sheet was put on my old scribbled paper and I am now allowed to start again…. with lungs full of refreshing air.

Receiving Presents: Does It Matter What’s Inside?

Reminder

A father once gave his child a beautifully wrapped box. It was red and gold with a large ribbon. The father said to the child, ‘Before you can open it, let’s imagine what might be inside’.

To start with the box contained only simple objects, but as they stared and wondered, the child’s imagination grew and the box started filling up with various fantastical ideas: a troupe of dancing fairies, a musical box containing a full orchestra of mice, a pair of magic shoes that makes you walk on clouds, a toy train full of chattering teddy bears, a miniature garden full of tiny roses, trees and monkeys…The ideas kept flowing. Towards the end of the evening, the father suggested, ‘Now you can open your present’. The child responded ‘No Daddy, I don’t want to open it. I’m happy with the box’.

Would you open the box?

What would be in your box that you would find most satisfying?

Is it possible that someone’s gratitude for the gift of imagination is stronger than their curiosity and appetite for the real life? How does it feel?

First published: December 2013

Bits of life

“Whenever I feel the need to exercise, I lie down until it goes away.” ― Paul Terry

This is evidently not true of this lovely little boy above.

This life, that hour

“Happiness, knowledge, not in another place, but this place, not for another hour, but this hour.”

– Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Experiencing freedom

It’s terribly difficult (or maybe even impossible) to learn or taste freedom if we stay indoors. Freedom is born through movement and exploration, through distance and a change of focus. Freedom often comes from having the time to be on your own, from having the time and space that doesn’t involve any sort of control, neither us being controlled or us controlling others. Nature is perfect for this. Perhaps it is its total acceptance of us that is so liberating. We can simply run, poke a stick in the sand and chase the butterflies. No internet connection will break, no adverts will try and sell things to us and no message will leave us disturbed for the whole morning. Those things all stay indoors.

I need to keep on reminding myself that it’s the time outside that guarantees the experience of freedom and makes for a healthy and happy family. You too?

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