When I walk to the Kaw River - or when I wander in my back
yard - I am trying to give myself the opportunity to remember what matters to
me. Sometimes, the obvious. The process of trying to deliberately be myself - a
living, breathing, sensing creature in an intricate and colorful world - often
catches me by surprise. I enjoy it.
Of course, my thoughts and emotions can distract me. I’m not
a cat – although I do wonder what the world seems like to that species. I’m not
those butterflies fluttering and gliding over a flower bed. And I am indeed glad
to think and feel as a human being. But I am able and I do simply enjoy myself
when I manage to attend to physical and living realities that are right in
front of me and around me.
These photos (see FB 'Walk to the river' group) are a part of an ongoing experiment of sorts.
Having you as an audience, helps me to focus my thinking and to frame my
observations. But the real point is for me to try to make an opportunity for
myself to experience some of the richness of the universe – at a pace my mind
can handle.
The first photo in the series is little more than a blur of
light and textures captured in real time. This is also how the world – Central
Middle School, South Park, Downtown Lawrence, the river – essentially looks to
me as I walk along in time. Unless I look carefully at something, it is all mostly
a blur. Our brains simple cannot make sense of every photon of light that
enters our eyes continuously. And you’ll realize - when I mention it - that you
don’t notice that you miss seeing what is out there when you blink. Or that you
don’t see what you don’t see – most of the time. Sometimes you have to just let
the words go.
But our minds are constantly doing much more than we can
notice. Our perceptions must rely on a great deal of unconscious processing. But
we can choose to attend.
There is some discipline involved in this practice of
walking to the river. The process is, in a real sense, a return to the kind of
play I pursued as a kid – but with a more grown up sense of the temporal and
cultural and ecological context that the flowers in my backyard, for example, fit
into some broader experience. But attending takes practice. What I sometimes want
as the human being I am now is to try once again to really see what is directly
in front of me. I want to simply see the light and colors and textures for what
they reveal – fresh. I want to see the flowers. And sometimes to smell them. And
so I practice playing. I try not to think about more than what I am doing. And
I also try not to just flit from thing to thing or from thought to thought. My
practicing sometimes leads to satisfaction – and surprise.
And so I took my device - and myself - the other afternoon into
my yard and I spent a little time looking at what living minds – the bee’s and
the butterfly’s and, yes, we human’s minds – are naturally drawn to: bright
colors. And then I touched the plants, the flowers – and the button on my
device. I put myself into the picture because I was there. Because I wanted to be there in that moment. Technology
makes taking photos easy. There is still some skill and time involved in making
a picture that I might want to share with you. But a lot of factors came
together to give me that opportunity the other afternoon to see something, to
touch something, even to smell something. Let me say that I did not much pay
attention to what I might have heard - this time. My brain – like yours - just cannot
attend to everything at once. Doing less at once is sometimes useful.
That little exercise out in the yard took me about the same
amount of time that it will to write this comment. This is obvious: having time
to spend is a crucial element in this sort of practice. But when I write about my
observations, when I take photos, each word sketch, each photo is really a kind
of exercise. I keep practicing attending – like doing scales on a piano, or
repeating a chord change on guitar again and again. Sometimes I get something
like a phrase or several bars of music to a point that is good enough that I
want someone else to see or hear what I have.
And so, here we are.
But step back: the real
point of all of this is for me to find my own motivation to leave the social
world and all sorts of ideas out on the periphery of my mind and to give my
attention to what is in front of my nose. And to encourage you, perhaps.
Here’s a new angle on an old joke: How do you get to the Kaw
River? Practice.
I celebrate myself, and sing myself. And what I assume you shall assume. For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul. - Walt Whitman