...making the ordinary marvellous or the marvellous ordinary?
I stole this from the hollow places book.
And I do think that the enlightenment did us a disservice in disenchanting the world. We can explain everything and make it ordinary.
But, of course, we still cannot explain consciousness. And it's in our consciousness that we can preserve the marvellous... Though what is it that makes me so inclined toward wonder and awe? My father is too - and my mother was... that sense that in something like seeing a stag cross the top field we are blessed by not just the presence of a seldom seen mammal but actually granted a moment of magic.... The willingness to feel the touch of the numinous...
Although I will sense the symbolic in such an encounter... a hare leading me to a tree... a tree leading me to a hare... that possible excess is just a part of it. The part that is accessible to those who don't want to inhabit the realm of faerie or mature into a witch can still allow the marvellous in... it's about attention... it's about letting one's one parochial consciousness be filled, utterly filled, by the presence of the other.
I went to the Reserve, wanting to see the hare I saw a few days before. Just in case it was in the same place, I had the video going.
No. No hare. But I heard a cuckoo... and I felt the joy of anticipation.
I had gone to visit a stressed tree and I sat by the tree. I sat on the earth and then I lay on the earth and I put my ear to the earth and I could hear all the rustling of creatures I had not noticed. I sat up - afraid of things going in my ears - and looked down... seeing this unacknowledged plethora of life. A centipede, a millipede, jewel beetles, woodlice, ants, other things all in the tiniest space.
Then I saw a muntjac - who'd seen me. She wasn't afraid but was alarmed. She stamped her foot and went into cover - before making sure everyone else knew there was a person on the premises.
I came home to fill in tree alert forms online. I even did a bit of work - a very little bit of work - on the culture thing. And I typed this. Out in the garden. Visited by dunnocks, pigeons, squirrels, robins, a pied wagtail and a jay.
Nothing out of the ordinary. But, really, everything marvellous.
I like that the muntjac stamped her feet 😃 to communicate.