Looking For..., Wonder

How To Be An Explorer of the World

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You are an Explorer.

Your Mission: to document and observe the world around you as if you’ve never seen it before.  Take notes. Collect things you find on your travels. Document your findings. Notice patterns. Copy. Trace. Focus on one thing at a time. Record what you are drawn to.

1. Always be looking. (Notice the ground beneath your feet.)

2. Consider everything alive and animate.

3. Everything is interesting. Look closer.

4. Alter your course often.

5. Observe for long durations (and short ones).

6. Notice the stories going on around you.

7. Notice patterns. Notice connections.

8. Document your findings (field notes) in a variety of ways.

9. Incorporate indeterminancy.

10. Observe movement.

11. Create a personal dialogue with your environment. Talk to it.

12. Trace things back to their origins.

13. Use all of the senses in your investigations.

(The list here is taken from the book, How to Be an Explorer of the World, by Keri Smith, p. 5.)

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Finding Happiness: November’s Observation Writing

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Through the Car Window, New Delhi

A child crouches barefoot beneath a concrete wall
beside the black asphalt, traffic and fumes.
She scoops up dirt with her bare hands, piles and pats it
into a pan, then dumps out the grains and begins again. There
under the freeway overpass the powdery music of dirt
whispers through the cracks of her fingers as she listens
and listens to the calm of its voice, holding it
like satin in the palm of her hand.

Through the Car Windo

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October observation

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A Dog’s Life

The dogs in Venice prance across stone plazas, tails wagging,

toenails clicking as they toss their toys at the master’s feet

and wait for more play. Glossy fur shining, a dachshund

scuttles through a crowded alleyway, calmly wearing its leash.

On the boat a blond terrier boards, spies the legs of strangers

and snuggles up, waiting for pets. A Brillo-haired poodle

with perky ears  turns the corner with his master, and trots

toward a window to sniff a potted plant while his master waits.

Dogs in Delhi do not prance or parade their glossy coats

and frilly hair. Unwashed, uncombed, they wander

wary-eyed and restless through streets and bramble patches

behind ruined temples. Into hard sand they scratch and dig

to make their beds. One grey-haired dog curls himself

onto a manhole lid littered with leaves, then rests its head

on the curb, unnoticed while strangers walk by. Sometimes

there are advantages to life on a leash.

Looking For...

2nd response to observations of things rain does

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Reasons for Rain

Colliding beads. The soaring chunks and crawling legs
of rain. How the water jumps from the rooftop in a
cataract gallop, creeps in under the balcony door. How it
scuttles along the stone, leaps across the sky in thrums
and waves of thunderous hooves from herds of running beasts.
Winds blow across the plains of oceans where mountains
we do not see block the clouds and the rain falls. Monsoon, and
this is the way the world becomes: Drizzling darkness day after
day, rain rolling down. Mold covers cloth, grows inside
the grain of doors. Drop by drop, water rises. Roads turn to river.
Steadily, the rain clatters on plates of leaves, and I wonder, as I
lie between damp sheets in my bed, how did Noah feel, the beams
of his boat filled with must as he watched thunder clouds push against
the mountain of sky, drop by drop the roofs, the roads, the world he knew
covered over, dissolved, even though he understood the cause?

Looking For..., Uncategorized

Observation of an everyday activity that has an important impact:

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Before Moving On

After working all day, we set out
down our driveway with the green arch
of trees reaching over the road. We pass through
redwoods, and glide under branches past
the narrow necklace of stream rolling down
banks of thick earth, then pull up to the main road
and stop. It’s a kind of ritual we go through
each time we come to the crossroad. I look back
up around the corner to the right, past the tall strands
of wild grass, trees and shrubs that have grown up there,
and are rarely trimmed back. I pause and peer
through the branches, twigs, and shadows, waiting
to see if a car, or bicyclist might come racing past.
And there we hesitate, like birds poised on
the edge of flight, lifting and cocking their heads
to gaze into the sky the moment before
raising their wings for the long trip south.
“Yes,” I might say, or, “Wait,” while a
slender-legged deer rounds the bend
and trots past. All our journeys, into town
or half way round the world hinge
on the trust inside those words.