Today I was rather busy, and didn't go for a walk. Nevertheless, thanks to various other physical activities, I'm quite exhausted. And it was a gray day.
I have been rather lazy during recent weeks and not commented much on other blogs. I noticed Andreas pondering the lack of comments on his fine b&w photographs - good that he got some responses. Go and have a look at the photographs.
Today there was an earthquake and tsunami in Japan, a terrible thing. It so happened I was reading yesterday the book Pocket Gardens by Michael Freeman and Noriko Sakai, discussing tsubo-niwa, the Japanese tradition of small gardens. This is a fine book. In the garden book by Sam Abell there are some better individual photographs, but as a book on gardens, this one is really, really good: all photographs are clear, illustrative and well thought out.
And the last topic for today is an article at NYT titled The New Humanism, which is a bit soft and vague, but provided something to think about, specifically the discussion on "deeper talents", which are the following:
- Attunement: the ability to enter other minds and learn what they have to offer.
- Equipoise: the ability to serenely monitor the movements of one’s own mind and correct for biases and shortcomings.
- Metis: the ability to see patterns in the world and derive a gist from complex situations.
- Sympathy: the ability to fall into a rhythm with those around you and thrive in groups.
- Limerence: This isn’t a talent as much as a motivation. The conscious mind hungers for money and success, but the unconscious mind hungers for those moments of transcendence when the skull line falls away and we are lost in love for another, the challenge of a task or the love of God. Some people seem to experience this drive more powerfully than others.
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3 comments:
Thanks for that link, Juhaa. Certainly something to consider intensively. Having learned a lot of hard facts about photography, I had to acknowledge that those alone won't guarantee any successful picture. In my eyes it's much more the guts/inconscious that has pathfinder qualities here.
Indeed - a camera doesn't make a photographer, as they say.
Good find with that article. I could have used that word "metis" in my last post because that's what I was trying to get at. And "equipoise" (another great word) is one of the reasons why I enjoy photography, an activity which lends itself to this sort of self-monitoring.
Thanks for the link.
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