[Mike Todd]

I think what Miller was suffering from was an addiction – to wonderment. I think his experience had led him to realise that, if he paid attention to a flower bud for long enough, it would eventually open. Maybe he even realised that there was something about the act of paying attention itself that coaxed the buds to unfold. Dr. McGilchrist has spoken at length about this curious reach of receptivity, which elsewhere is called wu wei.

Fortunately, I have no aversion to snippets. Invariably I find that others have already said what I want to say – better than I ever could. In that spirit, I hope you won’t mind if I turn aside from this now fully-open flower with one last wave. See you around.

For Once, Then, Something

Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.