Minutia...It's all in the Detail

I’m a detail girl. I can be a bit anal about it too. While making up a real estate flyer I’ll move photos around, resize them, crop them, un crop them, change fonts, change font colors, then I’ll scrap the whole dang thing and start again. It all has to fit together somehow! It’s just a matter of finding the right layout that is just right for the house in question.

I can dwell on the minutia (trivial details) of my life too…and I tend to blow them out of proportion turning them into hindrances. Things like the weeds growing in my flowerbeds, the leaves and helicopter seeds dropped by my ever-giving maple trees filling my gutters, my son not listening in preschool or my daughter not picking up her shoes. Lots of you will say, “Geez, who cares about that stuff…move on girl!” But all these little details….joined with things like “how am I going to pay that bill” or “when is that check going to come” or “good God, I’m only one person, how am I going to get this child here while the other one needs to be here” all builds up into this monster that breathes and feeds on each little issue that crops up…growing ever larger…feeding even more!

I’ve been a slacker this summer…in so many ways. Those minute details, drastically enlarged and the accompanying worry and dread, have taken up the time normally devoted to some of my more relaxing and artistic endeavors I typically enjoy. A number of times since Spring’s arrival I’ve noticed the thickening layer of dust on my Sony camera. The camera was a gift from my father the Christmas before my son was born. I guess it was a hint he’d be expecting photos of his new grandchild on a regular basis. I’m not one for reading electronics manuals…I figure, point and click, right. Wrong. It wasn’t until Spring 2008 that I really started to realize the potential this thing had. It started with a trip to the Fremont “Lakes”. Now, if you’re used to Angostura Lake outside Hot Springs or Pactola in Rapid City…these bodies of water are more accurately described as ponds. But ducks LOVE them. There are even pelicans that pass through. One Saturday the kids and I ventured to the ponds to try and photograph the pelicans and I was bitten by the photo bug. It runs in my genes, really, it was just a matter of time.

Before long, I was rushing to drop the kids off at their dad’s so I could go on a photographic excursion with my new friend Sony. I’d snap pictures during my lunch hour because the light on the flowers was just right or because a new rose was beginning to open. Rain, glorious rain! Have you ever seen the beauty of a string of rain drops clinging to a spider’s web…like a string of diamonds glistening in the light. I found delight in the minute details….extreme close-ups that revealed slightly darker veins running through a petal. I was moved by a branch in the foreground while I focused on a coot bobbing on the waves. I was surrounded by nature and was mesmerized by the intricacies that I’d never taken the time to appreciate. On a trip back from South Dakota with my Aunt we took the less traveled route through the Nebraska Sand Hills. We were armed with our cameras and not afraid to make abrupt stops when we spotted a wild flower on the side of the road. Yeah, did you know that? There are flowers over there…not just grass. We buzz through life trying to get from point A to point B in the shortest amount of time and we lose sight of the beauty right outside our windows because it becomes a blur.

Photography was like a gateway drug for me that year. Soon I was sitting one the back steps reading a book and enjoying the warmth of the sun on my skin and the breeze as it gently caressed my skin and tousled my hair. I took notice of so many other things that I hadn’t before. I spend so much of my time with my head down trudging through the mire of life that I never looked up…there’s a whole other world up there! Really there is! Give it a try! Lay down in the grass and look up! The light filters through the leaves changing them from green to brilliant jewel-like emerald. Birds soar, flutter, swoop through the air; insects zoom by with determination…probably trying to avoid those birds. Now close your eyes and use your ears. Listen past the roar of the cars driving down your street…listen to the details. Crickets chirping, rainbirds buzzing their autumnal drone, cardinals calling, house sparrows bright little song, robins announcing their arrival. The air even has a voice as it rustles the leaves or it shushes through pine needles. Now keep your eyes closed and breathe. Smell the heady sweetness of the flocks flowers on the air; smell the earthy warmth of the soil as the morning’s dew evaporates with the increasing intensity of the mid-day sun; smell the bright green scent of the neighbor’s fresh cut grass as flows on the breeze.

Details! Details can be great therapy. There is so much beauty around us! We just never take the time to appreciate it. Look for the details, seek them out! Next time you are irritated by the woman in front of you at the check out stand that has to price compare everything in her cart…listen for the giggle of a child. When you’re stuck in construction on the highway don’t focus on the car in front of you or watch longingly for the other lane of traffic to come through….turn your head and watch the many-colored wild flowers bob in the breeze. Turn from the details that bring you down to the details that lift you up. Their out there, just waiting to be noticed.