There’s strength in observing one’s miniaturization. That you are insignificant and prone to, and God knows, dumb about a lot. Because doesn’t smallness prime us to eventually take up space? For instance, the momentum gained from reading a great book. After after, sitting, sleeping, living in its consequence. A book that makes you feel, finally, latched on. Or after after we recover from a hike. From seeing fifteenth-century ruins and wondering how Machu Picchu was built when Incans had zero knowledge of the wheel. Smallness can make you feel extra porous. Extra ambitious. Like a small dog carrying an enormous branch clenched in its teeth, as if intimating to the world: Okay. Where to?
~ Durga Chew-Bose, from “Heart Museum” in Too Much and Not the Mood: Essays
Photo: Paul Nicol with Walk Softly. Carry a Big Stick.
Live & Learn 
Excellent. Love the dog!! Those eyes…..
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Yes, especially those eyes!
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Nailed it.
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‘Smallness and porosity – they do go together. Brilliant.
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yes –
and ” the God knows, dumb about alot” yes, to that as well 🙂
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Smiling. Truth.
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i love this piece and i’m all about small.
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Big is definately over-rated!
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sure is!
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Smallness can make you feel extra porous. I like that!
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Sure can and does!
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I would cuddle that sweet pup…if the pup was mine.
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Smiling. I bet you would.
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and I think that the photographer Paul F Nicol, is an Ice Berg Hunter 🙂
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Really? I need to check that out.
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I said that, since his lengthy flicker feed has photos of several ice bergs…
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I love the after *after*… basking in the whatever it was that I participated in: the story and characters in a book just read, the mountain just climbed, the moment we say goodbye… there are so many in one’s lifetime, aren’t there?
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There sure are…. and yes, I too locked on the after after. Smart.
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Durga Chew-Bose words caused me to ponder: The duality of being Insignificant is the vastness of the scheme of the universe and very significant in a micro sense, to those you love…think of the impact of a Mother’s love …or the significance of a molecule of pollen of an oak tree’s leafing in its spring arrival and how it has an unwanted significance to one who is allergic to the pollen traveling into an insignificant persons nose, something so small inhaled has the power to cause the reaction of a sneeze, the sneeze spray has much velocity, that carries the spray a distance to land on a surface another might touch and go ick what did I just touch…if it were droplets from a cold virus that set a person or persons up for some miserable days ahead,,,and then I think of the interconnections of it all…as I breath in and exhale out, occupying space in the vastness…
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Beautiful Christie. It is vast.
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Yes so true! I really do say “where to next? ” woof 😃😂
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Ha!
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Okay, where to? Loved this post.
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