There is a soulful release in the contemplation of the seemingly mundane. Japanese scholar Okakura, a century ago, in his invitation to the ceremony of tea: in noticing the small, we appreciate our greatness. In the appreciation of the small, we unleash the grand.

Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973), a Chilean poet and politician, urged us to notice the small, the inconsequential. Odes to Common Things include Spanish and English odes to quotidian items like salt, a chair, a table, socks, and soap.   Lest you imagine Neruda a pithy writer of simple jest, his poem "I'm Explaining a Few Things," is a visceral description of a people bombed and destroyed: "One morning the bonfires leapt out of the earth..."  
Among these words and memories of a war-battered Spain, Neruda's love of simple elegance makes more sense.

What is it that you bring
to my nose
so early
every day,
bar of soap,
before I climb into my morning
bath
and go into the streets
among men weighted down
with goods?
From "Ode to a Bar of Soap"

"Everyday Luxury," porcelain pieces made by Australian artist Honor Freeman, 2019. Freeman's work casting everyday, familiar items in clay connects the viewer to the commonality of use, need, and daily routines. We immediately recognize her objects and can place them in our lives. Photograph by Craig Arnold.

The poignancy of things, perhaps not physically small but consequentially meaningless, reminds me of Polish poet Wislawa Syzborska's poem about the importance of microcosmos, the tiny things that we cannot even see but that determine our life.

Is it a poetic right of passage to see the universe in the small and seemingly meaningless?

My feet were
two woolen
fish
in those outrageous socks,
two gangly,
navy-blue sharks
impaled
on a golden thread.
two giant blackbirds,
two cannons:
thus
were my feet
honored
by
those
heavenly
socks.
They were beautiful
I found my feet
unlovable
for the very first time,
like two crusty old
firemen, firemen
unworthy
of that embroidered
fire,
those incandescent
socks.
From "Ode to a Pair of Socks"

But, of course, it is these things that comprise life itself. The things we cannot abandon, the things essayist E.B. White tried to dismantle from his life and self when he moved, only to find himself easily defeated.

We keep things close and, thus, make them special, like pets, for example.

Men would like to be fish or fowl,
snakes would rather have wings,
and dogs would rather be lions.
Engineers want to be poets,
flies emulate swallows,
and poets try hard to act like flies.
But the cat
wants nothing more than to be a cat,
and every cat is a pure cat
from its whiskers to its tail,
from sixth sense to squirming rat,
from nighttime to its golden eyes

Nothing hangs together quite like a cat
neither flowers nor the moon have
such consistency
It is a thing by itself
like the sun or a topaz
From "Ode to The Cat"

"Soap scale" by Honor Freeman, 2019. Freeman's porcelain work elevates everyday objects to our notice, care, and attention, suggesting a measure of permanence to otherwise disposable items. Learn more. Photograph by Craig Arnold.

"Neruda was a genius," said former U. S. Poet laureate Mark Strand, "but in whose writing beauty and banality are inextricably mixed. [...] Mundane items, modified by adjectives denoting the rare or celestial, are elevated to a realm of exceptional value."

I love
all things,
not because they are
passionate
or sweet-smelling
but because,
I don't know,
because this ocean is yours,
and mine:
and these buttons
and wheels
and little
forgotten
treasures, fans upon
whose feathers
love has scattered
its blossoms,
glasses, knives and
scissors-
all bear
the trace
of someone's fingers
on their handle or surface,
the trace of a distant hand
lost
in the depths of forgetfulness.
From "Ode to Things"

Spending time on the "small"—and, of course, by small, I mean things that pass beneath our immediate observation—we connect to something grand. My first post on The Examined Life was about the power of small. There is something comforting about objects, from the repetition of shapes to the blocks that build into something more significant.   Our connection to things has been an (unexpected) of much of my early writing on this site. I haven't figured out why yet, perhaps I was nesting (I coincidentally gave birth to my first daughter that year) or making sense of my own space. Read more on how we put our voice and memory into things in "The Precious Things We Keep Nearby", "The Gifts of Inheritance", and "Things We Cannot Abandon".

 Pablo Neruda.

Neruda's "Ode to the Plate" begins, "Plate, the world's most vital disk...," and it is, no? The commonality of objects, despite language, delivers us the human connection across time and geography.   Neruda's poem continues to find the universe in a plate, at noon: "the sun, itself a plate of fire, crowns the height of day, your stars appear, plate upon the tables of the world."  
This moment of familiar connection, like Peter Mayle's sumptuous repas throughout A Year In Provence, is something we understand.  
It also reminds me of the beautiful "flow" pieces of ceramist Fenella Elms. Elms paints individual discs and carefully arranges them with rhythm and carriage.

Ode to the Bed

We go from one bed to the next
in this journey,
life's journey.
The newborn, the afflicted,
the dying,
the lover and the dreamer alike
they arrived and they will depart by the bed.

Others share this exceedingly important gift of elevating the commonplace to the celestial. Ralph Waldo Emerson defined wisdom as seeing "miracles in the commonplace." Read Marianne Moore's heroic efforts to observe and care and Oliver Sacks' collection of adored things contemplated at the end of his life.

Ceramics by Honor Freeman.

Rolling its blues against another blue,
the sea, and against the sky
some yellow flowers.

October is on its way.

[...]

We are dust and to dust return.
In the end we're
neither air, nor fire, nor water,
just dirt,
neither more nor less, just dirt,
and maybe some yellow flowers.
From "Ode to some yellow flowers"

The small, ordinary, and everyday things are essentially the things we make, use, and disregard. Occasionally, we rhapsodize them to memory, turning them into precious items that connect our human sympathies. I care about soap, do you, too? So did Neruda. Is it any wonder he is so beloved?