Sundaze: Art of Noticing
subtle shifts, sassy pigeon, a stray granola bit
I woke up to a pigeon on my windowsill, a ring of violet around its neck blazing in the sun. I noticed her, she noticed me. Pretty soon after, she turned her rear to me and sat in the corner. I would see her tail bobbing up and down as she seemed to assess flying conditions. I didn’t know why I was so consumed by this encounter until I remembered something I read the day before,
“Attention is a way to connect and survive…a series of small miracles: the wild tiger lilies under the cottonwoods in June; the quick lizard scooting under the gray river rock…my grandmother knew what a painful life had taught her: success or failure, the truth of a life really has little to do with its quality. The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.” - Julia Cameron, 2002.
Perhaps that’s why it feels like our quality of life was richer in the early years. We spent more time paying attention to the sprouts growing in the cracks of the earth, bringing home a cool leaf from the playground and making tea for imaginary friends. We weren’t centered solely on ourselves. It seems though the older we get, the less we think about connection, what we’re stepping on, how the leaves look outside of autumn, and experience a plain loss of creative capacity as a non-creative (albeit I believe everyone has capacity to be creative, so rewording) as someone with a non-creative day job.
small scale: a stray granola bit clinging to the fleece on my sweater from breakfast this morning, a pretty pigeon diving into flight as his weight carried him down an extra few feet at first lunge
mid scale: a crease between my colleague’s brows as she answered how her day was, my mother’s loving hands as she sets the table for guests
large scale: birds flying south for the winter, protests outside congress in downtown guatemala city while configuring travel
Cameron says the reward for attention is always healing. It may begin as the healing of a particular pain - the lost lover, the sickly child, a shattered dream. But what is healed, finally, is the pain that underlies all pain: the pain that we are all, as Rilke phrases it, “unutterably alone.” More than anything else, attention is an act of connection.
Write about your surroundings. Notice your space, take inventory of what contributes to your experience of its environment.
Where are you? Are you sitting or standing - resting or in movement? How is your body connected to its surroundings? Who is around you? What is around you? How do you feel noticing them?
Solo date idea:
Watch a short film on your own. Next on my list is Bye bye Tiberias, a portrait based on the life of Hiam Abbass, popular for her role as Marcia Roy on Succession, playing now at Firehouse in NYC.
In community,
Aaisha