delicious black cherries on my desk!
“There is ecstasy in paying attention,”says Anne Lamott in her book, Bird By Bird. THIS is why I love to write, whether it’s journalism, emailing, dabbling around in fiction, blogging, or just daily notes in my journal. I love the process of paying attention to details, and arranging them all into something meaningful.
It’s also partly why I love reading and art – I love to appreciate the ways others have captured life’s crystal details…
Anne Lamott has more good stuff to say on the subject:
“This is our goal as writers, I think; to help others have this sense of…wonder, of seeing things anew, things that can catch us off guard, that break in on our small, bordered worlds. When this happens, everything feels more spacious… Mostly things are not that way, that simple and pure, with so much focus given to each syllable of life as life sings itself. But that kind of attention is the prize. To be engrossed by something outside ourselves is a powerful antidote for the rational mind, the mind that so frequently has its head up its own ass – seeing things in such a narrow and darkly narcissistic way that it presents a colo-rectal theology, offering hope to no one.” –Anne Lamott
Bird by Bird is a FANTASTIC read by the way! I highly recommend it – whether you like writing or not! The book made me laugh, ask life’s big questions and take myself much less seriously…
Any books have caught you off guard recently, or given you a sense of wonder, of “seeing things anew?”
