Microcosms

So much world in so small a space. Look at that amazing dandelion. Each of those little white threads ready to fly off, each carrying its own world.  Boggles the mind.  Well, my mind, at least.

I like seemingly simple things: clean close-ups, small impressions, single flowers, 'ordinary' people, though no person is ordinary if you zoom in for a close-up, just as no flower or stone or weed is simple if you lean in and focus.

I like this lettuce, grown right outside my door, so delicate and astounding:




I like this birch bark, with all its convoluted curls:




Many years ago, I read a slim book about an ordinary man, Marcovaldo, by Italo Calvino, and while I was reading I felt as if this book was a doorway with a sign saying, "Come on in," for this was the sort of story I knew I would write--stories about seemingly simple, ordinary people.

If you write, was there a book like that, that opened a door for you?  If you don't write, do you like the simple or the complex?