The First Small Thing

This is one of my favorite photographs:

It’s a real photo. Taken with real film in a real camera (an old Fujica ST605) by my mother, on a mountain top, on the Blue Ridge Parkway. The baby—closely inspecting the petals of a wild flower—is me.

This is something I still do. I go on walks and I come home with flowers or pebbles or pinecones or bottlecaps in my pockets so that I can examine them more closely in the quiet of my own space. I feel a deep satisfaction and sense of calm in the consideration of small things. Bird’s eggs and buttons, petals and plums, sea glass and sand dollars: I am the sort of person curio cabinets were designed for.

However, curio cabinet ownership and frequent upheaval (I’ve moved thirty-seven times) are not compatible. So, instead, I thought I’d make a curio cabinet out of my website. Write a blog. Host it here. Send out newsletters. Share these items of interest with you. Because maybe you, too, enjoy small things.

And maybe, in a world that it otherwise so overwhelmingly big and noisy and busy and loud, deeply focusing on one small thing is... nice. Nice and necessary.

At least, it is for me. And, clearly, it always has been. And maybe it is for you too.

So, I’ll share my small things with you. One small thing at a time.