One of my favourite works of art (among many, I might add!) is this sculpture by Albert Toft called The Spirit of Contemplation.
She sits, somewhat overlooked by her modern counterparts and the rush of the new, in the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle upon Tyne.
I've known her for over thirty years. We are old friends, she and I.
When I first caught sight of this life-size bronze, I thought her impossibly beautiful and unattainable. I wanted to be her.
I might have spoken before about my aspiration to have been an artist's inspiration. His muse. I think the time for that has fled.
But the spirit still gazes unseeingly out at an unknown future, lost to contemplation and reverie.
Who she was to the artist, Albert Toft, I do not know. I can find little about him online.
The shock of the new. L'Art Nouveau, as it was at that time.
And this leads me to ask, what time do any of us take for contemplation in this day and age?
Most of us run from task to task; from work to home; from bus to tram to pounding the pavement; from thought to fleeting thought, to ennui... From one demand on our time to another, in fact.
I am asking you to take a few moments out today, mes muses, to just sit and be. Not to do. Anything. Other than breathe... I am asking for just a few minutes of your time.
Spend them in contemplation, as I will do. Observe your thoughts as they pass though your mind, but do not allow them to derail you from just sitting and being. Concentrate on your breathing.
In.
And out. Focus on the out breath. The exhale. Make it as long as you can and feel those tense muscles across your back, chest and shoulders begin to loosen.
Let those thoughts go. There will be ample time to attend to them when you cease your contemplative moment.
Merely sit and close your eyes to the world. Still the mind.
Breathe.
And be...
For, after all, we are human Be-ings, as opposed to human Do-ings, non?
Tell me how it goes for you?! Do you feel a little less fraught? A tad less anxious? I hope it for you.
A la prochaine, mes bloggy blackberries - Well, we're in October already, non?! Blackberry time.
See you in the hedge-rows!
