Hide and seek with the ferry spirits

Coming home from Seattle Friday evening, after having dinner with our older daughter, we were sitting in the car on the ferry, talking quietly of this and that, and everywhere I looked I kept seeing abstractions -- on the walls, on the floors, in the reflections on the cars around us -- it was such a rich environment that I couldn't help getting out my camera and shooting.

Does that mean the images were fabulous, or shareworthy?  Not necessarily.  Does it NEED to mean that?  When do we give ourselves permission to enjoy the call of the moment without thought to what might emerge later?  And why don't we do more of that?

I think those images were calling me because I was more present than I've been able to be in a while. Even though some part of me was listening to my husband and some other part of me was reaching for the camera, my eyes weren't just looking, they were seeing.  And the camera, in times like that, becomes a tool for capturing and rendering what my eyes have seen; for storing it to explore later, and, in this particular case, for showing my husband what I was seeing, for isolating it from the surroundings so he, too, could see the possibilities in that particular environment.

It was as if there were another level of perception, or perhaps another level of beauty, shimmering just below the surface of things, peeking through in a kind of invitation to look more deeply; to see what is beyond seeing; as if the ferry were somehow alive and engaging with me...

A foolish fantasy, I'm sure -- to be playing hide and seek with the ferry spirits.  But the joy I felt in discovering the beauty there was very real, and the sense of engagement was very refreshing.  I suspect that if I could be that present more often, that sense of joy and refreshment would begin to pervade more and more of my life.  I wonder if that's why enlightened people always seem so full of joy...