Finally, the weekend is here. Time to catch up on sleep, to recharge, to… I’ve been over all this before, haven’t I?
Unfortunately, my intellectual indendtured servitude has been keeping me rather busy recently (work and school), but I’ve managed to slip past the watchful gazes of my headmasters, narrowly avoid their scoldings and neverending demands, and pour my soul into something that I actually want to do for a change. AKA, I’m writing this.
The sad thing is? I don’t have anything really that meaningful to write about today. But it might just be interesting or meaningful to you, my lovely and coveted audience. Yeah, right. That’ll happen.
I was walking around on campus yesterday, heading back to my office after grabbing some lunch, and I noticed something. Now, for those who don’t know me very well, I generally wear sunglasses when I’m outside. Why? I’m not entirely sure, except for the fact that I want to. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I’m more of a night owl (read: vampire) and I tend to enjoy darkness of night more than brilliance of light.
I actually have pretty good night vision, as well.
Yesterday was one of those ultra-dreary, grey-blanketed days, perfect on my eyes, not painfully bright, but bright enough that I can still wear my sunglasses without looking like a complete tool (insert vague reference to old 80’s song here).
Let me describe my sunglasses. They cost me $10 at Wham-A-Lart (Wal-Mart). They’re scratched up on the front, they’re not very clear, and they tend to fog up pretty easily. Not to mention the fact that they seem to be permanently fuzzy.
And not so fuzzy that it would be impossible to see, just a little fuzzier than most people are used to. Since I wear them all the time I’m outside, I’m used to them.
And no, by fuzzy, I don’t mean they’re “furry” or covered in some poor, endangered animal’s hair, like some fashion-unconcious rich stereotypical Hollywood woman reporter. I’m not that much of a fashion luddite.
Anyway, walking across campus. To top it off, little drops of rain were dive bombing me yesterday as I walked, parachuting out of the clouds and doing a full, 3 point landing right on my glasses. So, my sight went from relatively fuzzy to splattered. I took off my sunglasses.
And suddenly, I had to stop walking. I had to stop breathing. I had to stop… well, everything.
The site that presented itself before was something I had never really noticed before. The visual detail in the trees, the buildings, the shadows playing out of the very limits of my vision, suddenly seemed a thousand times more real to me. It was as though I had been seeing things in bas-relief before hand, and someone had taken the patch of my other eye so that I had depth perception again.
I took a breath.
It wasn’t exactly what I was seeing that really impressed me, it was simply that it seemed real to me.
Many of us, and I do it too, are only aware of our surroundings in vague stances, as though we simply give it a passing glance and move on with our own little dramas, never really even paying attention to detail. As I’ve said before, I attempt to notice the details, but it had never felt like this to me before.
Suddenly, in a single moment, when I was least expecting it, not only did the world around me seem more real to me, but my very existence, my awareness of everything around me, and particularly myself, seemed more real. It was as though, for every time I had walked outside in the past, I literally was blinding myself to the world around me. This time, however, I was offered the chance, not to look, but to truly perceive the millions of little interactions that were occuring simultaneously around me.
I took a breath.
I slowly swept my vision across the the field the sidewalk sliced through and just absorbed it all, noticing tiny details I never could have perceived before. A pair of cardinals, a wife and a husband, in that second oak tree beyond the sidewalk were having a friendly, afternoon outing to the area below the tree to take in a bit of lunch. A squirrel flicked about, deep in thought and where the hell it was he hid that one acorn. A sparrow orbits in, surveying his territory, noticing the squirrel, giving him a worried glance, and moving on, while never really taking his attention off of his destination.
For one, single, infintesimal moment, it wasn’t just my eyes absorbing photons reflecting off of these objects, it was as though I was a part of it all, in my place, in my role, and truly just another cog in the machine of Earth. But I was satisfied with that place.
I could take it all in, I felt one with it all, and this was all that mattered. For one of the first times in my life I knew where I stood (in the metaphorical sense), and it was simple, yet enough.
I took a breath.
And the moment ended. While I could still see the details around me, this connection that I had made had been broken. Was it my subconcious that had broken it? Was it simply too much? Was I in danger of overload? Or was it simply time to move on. The fact that I knew where I stood, even for one, singular, immeasurable moment, was over, but not forgotten.
I took a breath.
And made my way back to my office, to once again wrap myself up in the security and warmth of my daily, insignificant dramas and hopes and dreams.
But, suddenly, things were in perspective.
So, it’s back to the grindstone. Back to breathing in, and breathing out. That should be enough for a little while.
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