Dark and the air drunk with rain this campervan morning, the oak offers protection, but not a huge amount, so I may still be driven back into the van. I am partial to sitting and walking in the rain from time to time, but it’s fast becoming persistent and heavy. A dark indeterminate sky overhead, the rain becoming more persistent summons a retreat. There is a firm breeze driving it into you and sending accumulated water down from leaf and branch. Discretion now being the better part of valour, dryness calls.
And I am back in the van. I catch an early morning Robin, before disappearing into the tin can that is my sanctuary, which only serves to exentuate the downpour and ears become submerged in its drumbeat sound. So wets off and warming up, coffee still in hand. A slow day yesterday and hopefully more of the same today. I sense the rain will assist in that plan. I became immersed in a podcast a few days ago about seeing, the primitive urge of watching and the fear of missing something worth seeing that sits within all of us and perhaps the judgement that we attach to the process. I am a huge people watcher. I enjoy watching interactions between people, watching people go about their daily lives from the vantage point of my coffee table, train carriage, walk, camper, shopping, it’s actually a bit of a habit. Witnessing the world unfold about me, in the people that inhabit it, seeing the beauty in exchanges, conversations and in the people themselves. Suzy Kassem writes ;
“ I have been finding beauty where I did not want to look. And I have learned so much from journeys I did not want to take… I have been closing my ears and eyes for too long. I have learned that miracles are only called miracles because they are often witnessed by only those who can see through all of life's illusions.”
Friedrich Nietzsche talks of ourselves learning to see and ;
“ To accustom the eye to calmness, to patience, and to allow things to come up to it; to defer judgment, and to acquire the habit of approaching and grasping an individual case from all sides… One must not respond immediately to a stimulus; one must acquire a command of the obstructing and isolating instincts.”
The controversial R D Laing, a man who threw a rock into and at the somewhat cozier elements of psychotherapy said ;
“ They are playing a game. They are playing at not playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me. I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.”
The act of looking, seeing, watching and witnessing, a bit serious for a Saturday. Lovely days people.
“ To look is easy, to see is difficult!” Mehmet Murat ildan.
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