“We attend, waiting, for the veil of everyday habit to fall away so that what we paid no attention to, because it struck us as so ordinary, might be revealed as miraculous.”
----Czeslaw Milosz
I have not always been interested in paying attention. Most of my life I have been a driven person and have often declared if I died at 50 I would have accomplished as much as if I died at 100. Driving life fast is akin to living a freeway sort of existence that bypasses all the interesting places and people on those two lane roads that often run parallel to the large interstates. About ten years ago I began to loosen my grip on finding my identity in this frenetic pursuit. This recent Change began with some good books and, as Michelangelo stated when sculpting, "another few days and life will break through."
But I am also following a thread of attentiveness drawn from memories that reside alive in me from decades ago.
The first five years of my life I lived in Juneau, Alaska. Our home was situated at the base of a mountain across from Gastineau Channel. My dad had built most of the house. He constructed the kitchen part of it over a creek that came down off the mountain. It flowed under our kitchen floor and we could access it with a trap door. The house was surrounded by dense forest and it served as a playground for my sister and me.
In our frequent visits to the forest, the ferns that thrived there were an attraction to me. I think the reason for this is the proximity I had as a three-year-old to things short and close to the ground. They had a smell, a look, and a presence that drew my attention and gave me delight. It is the first experience of noticing and attentiveness in my memory. Attention to those ferns was a beginning that, I think, whet my appetite for more.
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