Thursday 22 May 2014

Small but intricate

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Sometimes it seems as if life is really mostly about the micro-level. In the body, it is the big arteries and veins that attract attention, but all the actual work - the exchange of nutrients, fluids and gases - is done at the microscopic level of capillaries.

Maybe that is why the small scale is neglected - the arteries and veins are pretty much the same in every normal person (especially the arteries) - but the small scale is unique. There is also the suspicion that the small depends on the large in a way that is not reversible: that the large contains the small (by implications)...

Well, maybe - but not really. Actually it is the reverse. The small scale implies the large - or can do, by implicit implication, when properly expressed.

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The small is not thereby simple. For example, in the kitchen, listening to a talking book version of Robert M Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance there is a lot going on. I am getting some breakfast ready - cutting a slice of cheese, some thin ham from a packet, toasting and buttering bread. Also emptying the dishwasher from lastnights stuff.

Stopping from time to time to look out the window or the glass door - looking at the sky, looking for the moon, seeing how the trees are progressing with their new leaves. Aware of the family dotted around the house - reading, watching things, music, asleep.

Then I might well be struck with happiness and gratitude; and say a prayer to that effect; and carry on.

A little thing? No, the biggest.          

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