Dust
It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.— Henry David Thoreau
Someone gave these to me the other day. I was stunned by what I saw when they opened.
The same world that is in a pear is also found in the rust-colored dust or the tiny veins running inside the pastel-pink petals of a flower. And the best part? You can transfer this little universe to your living room for a couple of bucks and look at it whenever you want.
I love that quote. Are you familiar with the poet Mary Oliver? If not, I think you would really like her.
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Aaaaah!!! I quoted her in my post “The Soft Animal of Your Body” haha :) This is great. I will have to look into her poetry more then! Check out the post though, our teacher gave us a wonderful poem and I think it fits quite nicely for HSPs (and everyone else, obviously).
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Yes, I saw that when I continued on to your previous post and felt quite silly, thinking “that’s what you get for reading a blog backwards.” But it sounds like she is new to you. I’m a little envious that you are about to read her poems for the first time. I don’t know if “nature ecstatics” are a thing, but that’s how I have thought of people who thrill to the awesomeness of nature ever since a friend introduced me to her poetry 30 years ago. Only recently did I start to wonder whether those people might also be HSPs. Here’s one of my favorite Mary Oliver poems, a poem for fall from her book, Twelve Moons:
LAST DAYS
Things are
changing; things are starting to
spin, snap, fly off into
the blue sleeve of the long
afternoon. Oh and ooh
come whistling out of the perished mouth
of the grass, as things
turn soft, boil back
into substance and hue, as everything
forgetting its own enchantment, whispers:
I too love oblivion why not it is full
of second chances. Now,
hiss the bright curls of the leaves. Now!
booms the muscle of the wind.
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This is beautiful, thank you for sharing! I do believe there is such a thing as “nature ecstatics”! I just told someone else: do you know Richard Louv’s “The Nature Principle?” I’m currently reading it and find it explains a lot about this intense connection which, I assume, is yet again perhaps stronger for highly sensitive people? And as for poetry, Thoreau is of course also amazing when it comes to nature ecstatics :D I guess that’s why I love his poetry so much, actually!
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I haven’t read Thoreau since high school, but I still have the copy of Walden & Civil Disobedience that I received as a gift back then. Are you saying he also write poetry? If so, I’ll have to check that out. I haven’t heard of the book/author you mentioned, but I’ll check him out too. Thank you for reminding me of all this. I was raised by proud academics, so my native language is tragically analytical, but poetry still lurks in my soul.
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Hehe, he is one of the most famous nature authors, as far as I know! He wrote Walden, which I guess can be considered poetry? It is to me! A man who substitutes the word “gardening” with “making the earth say beans instead of grass” is just… I mean… I don’t even have words for it!!
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