I walked this morning down one of the familiar alleys I walk a few times each week. The sky is gray today, though painted with soft clouds that are both delicate and glowing in places and in others dense and dark. Today I held a small, three petalled red flower in one of my hands as I walked, thinking about trust in each day’s unfolding; thinking about radical uncertainty. Each moment is after all an opportunity to practice spontaneity, to understand that at the bottom of things is an impulse to improvise (that bed of leaves), but I forget.
As I walked I began to notice the bottom of my feet as they met the ground, a paved ground, and I remind myself not to dwell on the sense of suffocation I often have in the city. So, I kept walking, practicing letting go, and finally began to notice things with my eyes in that certain way that, for some reason, causes me to feel comforted with things as they are.
I noticed a wall that contained an exposed brick, the groove lines of the terracotta also visible in the painted ones, coated with a milky white pigment. As I continued a few paces I noticed the familiar metal surveyors tack in the asphalt, encircled with a spray of red. These things are banal and mundane visual elements in this alley, but this morning as I noticed them they took on a kind of importance, a vividness. So, I will go (
) back to capture these remembered images and include them with this entry, my first sounding into the deeper place I wish to live from each day.
