Salad bowl in front of me, clean vegetables strewn across the counter, I happened to glance up from what I was doing and saw the big tree on the other side of the driveway and noticed that its branches were bent as it bowed before the blustering wind, and the bottoms of the leaves made it seem as though the tree was a paler shade of green. The rain blew against those branches, blew against those leaves and they glistened as they tossed and thrashed. My hands paused at what they were doing as I stood quietly, motionless, and made a conscious effort to look, to see, but not to label or allow names or descriptions of what I looked at, to come into my mind. And all around the edges of my consciousness it was as though those words that describe what we look at tried to slip themselves in through the cracks, to force me to allow them, to consider them.
Later on, when I called Don in to come and eat, I told him about my little experiment. I said to him, "it is a very hard thing to look at something without getting involved in a conversation with yourself about that which you see". To just look and not think about how big it is, how many small branches are bending in the wind, what color, what texture......to just look at it. And his response was priceless. He looked for a couple minutes to test my theory, and then he said "not if you are a man". And I laughed, and was reminded of a comedian that I watched once. He said to all the ladies in his audience, "girls, next time you ask your boyfriends what they are thinking about.....and they say "oh nothing"........believe them.
Enjoy your day, and don't forget to look.....just look.
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