Mundanely Exquisite
I dread the mundane and have actively tried to live outside of it
I perceive it as boring, vanilla, common, cookie cutter
Same, same - sheep
Possibly due to, overwhelmingly at times, living the day to day to day of life
Never a dull moment, yet most of them are mundane.
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Common; ordinary; banal; unimaginative
Not my favorite qualities
I have felt alien and yet at home so often in my life
Not remembering the dialects of the region, bus system,
local fads - Pet rocks, “in” or “out”
There was no reason to live in the mundane - particularly in the unimaginative
Being always the new kid I was already outside the lines
so why not make those lines have just a little more color
In doing so I uncovered in lowly normalness
A dwelling place for common poetic beauty
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Simplicity, routine, reassurance, steadfastness, not giving any lip
Some great qualities
Background noise to the self import, auto-updating techno gadgets,
With their bings, blips, and custom ringtones
The hanger can’t compare to an Iphone - just can’t
Without the hanger closets would inevitably be in a constant state of disarray
But no iphone? No photos, no texts, no apps, no music and yes no phone
Both essential in their role and place of order in our lives,
We certainly don’t give a hanger its deserved regard
Without the mundane all worlds would truly collapse
And the exquisite couldn’t exist in its comparison
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Household Mundane:
Spoons
Nail polish
White bread
Humidifiers
Laundry soap
Dog brushes
Ash
Omelets
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Shoelaces:
The tender banal shoelace, the routine of daily gliding aglet smoothly into eyelet
Holding it all together, hanging the bunny, until it isn’t - with that always unexpected snap!
Critical thinking is forced to kick in
No more taking for granted the humdrum bits
Immediately initiating creativity, tie them together?
Discard broken one and work with what ya got?
Their undoing is our undoing
Like so many similar items they are critical to proper movement, protection and to our most common form of functionality
Ian (aka Professor Shoelace) the founder of the Internet's #1 website about shoelaces,
found the ethereal in what most of us perceive as a boring shoe lace.
“Bringing you the fun, fashion & science of shoelaces”
Ian of Ian's Shoelace Site – https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/
Complete with suggested lengths, knots, laces rating, and lacing photos. Home of the Ian Knot!
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The Necessities:
Are the basics of life, the essentials, as a rule, inherently mundane?
Is a car mundane? Depends upon the car? The driver? The passenger? The destination?
Everytime that key turns or that finger pushes that button with ease
The trigger of the ignition of the engine’s nearly inaudible rumble,
all the moving parts bolting to life
we don’t usually give a little thank you prayer for this daily miracle
maybe we have had “that car” at one time in our life,
the car we pray starts regularly and without drama
but today, we slap it into drive and go
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Heart’s Mundane:
Scent of a baby’s head
Touch of puppy ears
Cupids, cherubs, angels
ojas, nectar of a baby’s cheeks
The desert
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While pondering the mundane now for weeks
I couldn’t help but find my copy of
Encyclopedia of the Exquisite by Jessica Kerwin Jenkins
“An anecdotal history of elegant delights”
Most of them being those daily lovely elegant charming rare items
The E.O.E. being the antithesis to the mundane
But what is one without the other
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Phenomenally Mundane:
Childhood jewelry box
Twirling ballerina inside on a spring
Playing clinky Tchaikovsky
Hand in continuous non motion
Toe shoes always tied
Stiff tulle tutu popping out in perfection
Filled with pink satin fabric and small compartments for pet rocks
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Mannequins, and their viral video craze 2016 challenge,
standing still in time, camera encircles the frozen action
Black Beatles beat booming as the backdrop
Androgynous, fashion display, almost inappropriate to see not fulfilling their intended job
Fashion
Art drawing
Red cross - infant and CPR
Body doubles
Substitutes
Crash test dummies
Computer simulation
Eyes painted on in a perpetual state of surprise
Attempting to represent human form,
anatomically correct with synthetic hair
I prefer it left to my imagination
No distinguishing features please
Just simple blank sockets for eyes
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Signs and Signals
Everywhere
Drive ten feet there are thousands of instructions
Labeling, locating, notifying, informing, regulating
Number limits of your speed
White guy saying cross
Red hand saying not
Car yields to bike sign to pedestrian sign - hierarchy of yielding
Possible to literally assimilate them all?
Or to rely solely on symbolism, arrow, structure, color, shape, intuition
Deer with a hula hoop - pedestrian crossing with stenciled balloon in hand
Bumper stickers in my daily coursing through the back streets
Are the entertainment of driving - life snippets at a stop sign
Signs and signals the well-intended overly informative
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Life Signs:
Stop
No parking any time
Love
Fine doubled
Breathe
Dead end
Stop
No U Turn
One way
Road work ahead
Alternate routes advised (my personal favorite)
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The allure of Gabriel Orozco's exhibit at the Guggenheim in 2012
His exquisite journey through the mundane
“Using his visually appealing yet ultimately banal systems of organization, the artist exhales a refreshing breath of unadulterated beauty contemporary art rarely sees.”*
1,200 found objects, including wood, metal, glass, paper, plastic, Styrofoam, rock, rope, rubber,
Creating artistnal asterisms, the small parts that makes up the whole
The big dipper as part of Ursa Major
Can one exist without the other?
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Exquisite Mundane:
Tassels
Caftans
Fitted above elbow leather gloves with buttons
A beautifully crafted handbag, shoe, boot
Tea
Gold wedding band
Linen Sheets
Swimming in natural bodies of water
Homemade with love tollhouse cookies
Turbans
Love Notes
British murder mystery series
Down comforters
Perfect red lipstick (still unfound)
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As German Philosopher Novalis wrote in 1772 “... to see the ordinary as extraordinary,
the familiar as strange, the mundane as sacred, the finite as infinite”
Common, lovely, ordinary, elegant, banal, charming, unimaginative, rare
Authentic qualities of day to day to day to day living
Finding balance of both the exquisite and the mundane, simultaneously, in each other
merging the two, the union of an ordinary extraordinary life -
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*11/23/2012 08:36 am ET Updated Dec 06, 2017 Huffpost
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