| Camera: Ricoh GR IV Monochrome.

There are a few mediation habitats I frequent. My Zaffu (meditation cushion), art galleries, old churches, sacred sites and libraries.

To me, these places foster an immediate internal settling as soon as you cross into them. They are places of quietude and breath (Latin: spiritus). Presence and immediacy sit thick like warm toffee.

In a culture obsessed with optimisation and presentation, where everything has to be extraordinary and flashy to have a change of being noticed, the mundane image serves as quiet resistance. It suggests that unoptimised life, imperfect spaces, and unguarded moments have value worth documenting.

—- Photoni.st

I like to visit the Australian National Library. And if you see me there, I will probably be sitting in a low chair (I have a favourite) over in one of the corners. Eyes closed. Trying not to look like a creepy old guy hanging out in a library for no obvious reason.

But I have my reasons. I am soaking it in.

The smells of the books and wooden furniture. The sounds of keyboards clack, clack, clacking. Whispered conversations. Pages being turned. The photocopier cycling. Chairs creaking. A pencil sharpener.

That visceral sensation (oftentimes accompanied by a frisson of ASMR) of people examining their own corners of the universe with particularity and intent.
So many stories.

If you are not a meditation person, consider sitting quietly and soaking in a large library (or other meditation habitat) for a while.