That Perfect Square Inch

One Square Inch

Measuring Focus Measuring Focus

From the first visit to Monticello I became obsessed with the instruments carried by Thomas Jefferson. On the back of his horse he would sit and write in notebooks everything he would see. He measured everything in one way or another. He was a man of his time consumed with exploring every detail of his world which included our new land and that of those across the big blue seas.

Those instruments he collected and kept with  his person, those instruments he designed and had manufactured, such as a portable desk and his idea of a copy machine, may be seen at the visitor center along the interstate Highway located at the bottom of the mountain where he set up his homestead, most fascinating to me because these things remind me of my own father, a man interested in the future of

exploration of space and tools in which to accomplish this daunting task which he would design and lead experimentation to prove it here on earth.

Jefferson loved books, I love books, my father thought they were a waste of time, he only used books as tools to find answers, quickly. He was more interested in living each moment in the now. I probably loved books because he did not. But, I love Jefferson just because he did.

I see this thought process as a way to focus, a way to measure focus, a way to abstract from the environment one inhabits, a form or symbol to connect with other beings or to simply crystallize a thought for oneself in a concrete form, to communicate, these tools we use  to facilitate our ideas.

I joke about the fact that a lot of the time my focus is about 6 square inches. In this space there is no time.

It may be 3 dimensional or something flat, it doesn’t matter.  I am consumed by this focus.

It could be a book, it could be a knitting project, it could be stitching embroidery, it could be gazing at the mixing bowl, it could be planting a bulb, it usually involves a grid.

A grid made up of multiples of 1 square inch.

Six squares up

Six squares down

Six squares over

Six squares back

I find so much beauty in a square inch of a photograph especially if taken with  high resolution which can be gone over with  focused attention looking for that one perfect square inch.

Jefferson, Dad, and I were all gazing at the world and beyond looking for that perfect square inch.