Sunset with Clouds

I love the light streaming through the clouds in this photo which was taken at Plaza La Luciernaga situated above the city of San Miguel de Allende.

Instituto de Allende, Courtyard, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

Photos by Patricia Garcia Arreola

A Cactus and Flowers in the Botanical Gardens of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

Ordinary Things

"Still Life with Pottery and Shells" by Anthony Maulucci, oil on canvas

Most of us form attachments to simple, everyday objects such as a coffee mug, a pen, a Swiss army knife, or a pair of scissors. Ordinary things that we love to use on a daily basis can be very beautiful and give us a great deal of pleasure. I have a thick lucite ruler with drawings by Matisse that is not very practical for measuring things but which I love to hold and use as a weight to keep a book open when I’m taking notes. This ruler has been in my possession for forty years and has accompanied me through several major relocations. It sits on my desk as I write this. One of my other treasured objects is a small piece of driftwood picked up on a beach in the Hamptons. It flows like the cresting of a wave and is lovely to look at. It serves no practical purpose, of course, but I have become very attached to it, and it too is well traveled.

Many poets have written poems in celebration of the beauty of simple objects such as these. One of my favorites is a poem by Pablo Neruda called “Ode to My Socks.” As translated by Robert Bly, the first stanza goes like this:

Mara Mori brought me
a pair of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder's hands,
two socks as soft as rabbits.
I slipped my feet into them
as if they were two cases
knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin,
Violent socks,
my feet were two fish made of wool,
two long sharks
sea blue, shot through
by one golden thread,
two immense blackbirds,
two cannons,
my feet were honored in this way
by these heavenly socks.
They were so handsome for the first time
my feet seemed to me unacceptable
like two decrepit firemen,
firemen unworthy of that woven fire,
of those glowing socks.

I love the image of the “sheepherder’s hands.” Not only is there a nice assonance in the flow of the expression (herder’s-hands) but there is a vivid picture for me of strong and supple fingers working quickly and deftly with two knitting needles instead of the crook used to guide the sheep or hook a stray lamb. The simile of the rabbits works with economy to convey a sensual image of the smooth fur, but it also gives us an appropriate sense of delicate and nimble feet.

Now that the socks are on the speaker’s feet, they become “Violent socks,” a reference to their color perhaps, and he sees them as “two sharks,” a delightfully surprising metaphor, which charge through the sea with a golden streak like the dawn emerging as blackbirds and cannons, a wonderful transformation that reveals feet which are beautiful to their owner, who now sees them in a completely new way.

In the second of three stanzas the speaker expresses his wish to use these beautiful socks rather than save them in a collection. A very wise and practical decision since his feet, so adorned, are not to be spared their duties to the rest of his person.

The poems ends with this stanza,

The moral of my ode is this:
beauty is twice beauty
and what is good is doubly good
when it is a matter of two socks
made of wool in winter.

thus leaving the subject with a light touch and suggesting that the speaker is after all a man who must live in the world of reality in which magnificent socks must serve their purpose by being unseen and encased in a pair of shoes.

Neruda’s odes to the ordinary have been published in a bilingual edition called Odes to Common Things, and I recommend it highly.

Why not take a closer look at the objects around you, the ones you prize most, and try to see them in a new way by writing a poem in praise and appreciation of their beauty.

What This Blog is All About

This blog will be about the joy of simple things as well as the more sophisticated pleasures of living with an awareness of nature's gifts. Flowers, trees, young women in pretty dresses, food, textures, faces, walls, vibrant colors . . . in short, my favorite things, with photos, some textual descriptions, and an occasional poem.

Summer, oil painting by Anthony Maulucci