leafless woods
wearing dark green again
rifle shots boom
We've been traveling this past week--back to the East Coast to visit family for Thanksgiving--and as we drive the clogged highways, discover new towns, I think often of seeing. Not only about imprinting Pennsylvania mountain shapes on memory and watching the wide Ohio and Monongahela rivers float past but about noticing and really experiencing this lovely world. It's really hard to do--to see deeply, taking it all in--not in our casual everyday way where sense impressions zoom by often without us noticing them.
Yesterday, I walked down to the bay here in Rhode Island and watched swans float regally past. The sun glinted on the water, the swans circled in wide loops, the trail to the fishing jetty was covered in deep black mud. The dried grasses were bent and broken by walkers. A lone fisherman spent Thanksgiving morning giving thanks in the best way for him enjoying solitude and the thrill of tugs on his line.
Here's a few quotes about seeing. As the new year rapidly approaches, my goal is to really notice the world around me.
Painter Paul Klee said, "Art does not reproduce what we see; rather it makes us see."
Teilhard De Chardin wrote, "The whole of life lies in the verb seeing."
Finally, I love this quote by sculptor Isamu Noguchi. It really shows the effect of this deep seeing on the body, "We are a landscape of all that we've seen."
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