I’m still not sure what British mythologist Martin Shaw means by beholding and seeing – does he want us to pursue beholding before seeing? I have used seeing as something more intuitive than looking so maybe he uses beholding and seeing as I use looking and seeing. I look in order to see. I sense he is suggesting that beholding takes a lot of looking and then, we finally see, albeit intuitively. In colloquial terms to me it means take a while to stop, be still, present, look and let the space – as with this pool on my daily walk this morning – seep into my soul. Stop the rush!
As I was walking this morning I broke my own rule and had my smart phone out and looked at an image on Instagram and suddenly realised that I was missing this pool and the fallen leaves with the still texture of tress watching the madness on the bordering road in the early morning work rush traffic.
And I was reminded of that famous photo of a group of young women in a gallery sitting on an ottoman in front of a significant work of art – on their phones as I had been this morning.
Streams of consciousness have never been so far from in these days of visual acquisition and rapid eye movement. A need to be still, slow, looking, listening and being calls quietly.
Not collecting but communicating.
Not hoarding but hearing.
Not promoting but present.
In looking into this pool it is the depth of endless reflection that finally found me and yet I need to return so driven am I to fitness – a tick box agenda of a health and image conscious capitalist paradigm – that I missed the voice in the pool, the still quietness. I would rather behold the beauty than raise the pulse-rate!
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