A journal of sorts about noticing and things noticed.

It’s helpful to have a camera at hand, not to “capture” a scene or image, but to place a seal on it, as it were, to acknowledge a contemplative experience, a rendezvous, a meeting between oneself and something that presents itself to us. We don’t find it. It finds us.

And whether or not one has a camera, walking slowly and pausing from time to time opens up a world of new awareness.

Annie Dillard, in her ‘Meaning of Life,’ suggests that “We are here to witness the creation and abet it. We are here to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but, especially, we notice the beautiful faces and complex natures of each other. We are here to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are around us and to praise the people who are here with us. We witness our generation and our times. We watch the weather. Otherwise, creation would be playing to an empty house.”

And William Stafford, in his ‘The Way It Is,” reminds us that “When you turn around, starting here, lift this new glimpse that you found; carry into evening all that you want from this day. This interval you spent reading or hearing this, keep it for life – What can anyone give you greater than now, starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?“

And one can listen, not only to the wind moving the leaves or the crunch of gravel underfoot but, sometimes, to the silence; or a melody that brings back another place, another time.

And one can write, poetry or prose, discovering things about oneself and one’s world that have long laid dormant and now emerge to surprise even oneself in the discovery of an innerness.