Looking with those eyes

As the nights grow colder, the lagoon has a way of throwing off a hint of fog in the mornings, and everything we see from our kitchen window takes on this lovely silvery cast.

... which feels like another reminder that the reality we think we see -- the accuracy we claim for our perceptions -- must always be a bit tenuous, because it is so colored by what else is in the picture.

A child, seeing the mountains for the first time at sunset on an autumn evening, might assume that they were topped with strawberry sherbet, because the snow turns pink in the setting sun, and looks delicious.  It is only over time that she notices the color is a temporary phenomenon, and passes with the light.

If the kiss of greeting I just got from my husband were the first he'd ever given me, I might assume he had terminally cold lips, because he'd just finished eating a bowl of cold cereal.  Over time, however, the cold of the milk will dissipate, and I know our next kiss will be warmer.

At my age, there aren't all that many things I'm doing for the first time any more, so I've had plenty of experience observing that perceptual shift, and make fewer assumptions about what I think I'm seeing.  The flip side of all that experience, though, is that I've grown used to observing patterns, and then generalizing.  That ability to generalize may protect me from assumptions, but it also has a way of removing me from the present moment -- which means I may not even SEE that the morning has a silver sheen, or the mountains look like strawberry sherbet; I may not even notice the cold tang of my husband's lips.  And wouldn't that be a loss?

That, I think, is one of the gifts of both poetry and photography: each has a way of capturing the moment, the now, that fleeting sensation; of making us stop and notice what might otherwise slide by unobserved.

So I invite you: stop a minute, right where you are, reading this in front of your computer.  Breathe. Notice.  If you had a camera in your hand, right here, right now, what in your immediate environment would make a fun or intriguing photograph?  If you were to write a poem, right here, right now, what metaphor would bring the things you're seeing to life for someone else?  What in the room would look completely different at a different time of day, under different lighting?

And how did it feel to look around you -- even for just a moment, with those eyes?