Notice What you Notice

 

If you have been reading my posts for awhile you know occasionally I say "notice what you notice". This is the primary reason I write blog posts. One of my dear friends often uses that term and I loved it so much I started using it too. On doing a little search I found that it comes from Allen Ginsberg, but I have a feeling it has been said in many different ways by others.

"Ordinary mind includes eternal perceptions. Notice what you notice. Observe what's vivid. Catch yourself thinking. Vividness is self-selecting. And remember the future." Allen Ginsberg

Recently a friend through blogging recommended a book called Enchantment, Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age by Katherine May. I finished reading it this morning. It is exactly what "notice what you notice" is all about.

"The natural world never stops giving you details to observe."

"learning seems to be a perpetual cycle of forgetting." We must keep noticing to remember and learn once again.

"Naming is a form of power." This struck me in thinking we name flowers in the garden and our own children. In so doing we give them the power of living and thriving.

"More often than not, I find that I already hold all the ideas from which my enchantment is made. The deliberate pursuit of attention, ritual, or reflection does not mystically draw in anything external to me. Instead, it creates experiences that rearrange what I know to the insights I need today."

She talks about searching for the magic and finding surprises, something that delights and enchants us. It might be finding the sliver of the crescent moon up above or a bird song we have never heard before.

Pictures were snapped last evening in my backyard. What I wanted to take were the lights, but then I noticed the moon. What a treat to sit for awhile outdoors and notice what I noticed. It was my own private celebration of the beginning of summer.

 

Happy Weekend, dear friends!

Now go out and "notice what you notice".