Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Eyesight and Insight

Taken with the iphone yesterday. At last I am able to see something interesting.


I know I've been back almost a week, but I'm still reverberating from the journey to Canandaigua. My goodness, what a trip!

An example of continuing resonance is the fact that until yesterday, I couldn't see the landscape here in my beloved city. I can see visually, but am somehow incapable of noticing the stuff I usually do - reflections in car doors and hoods, flowers, you know. Since I returned, this beautiful city appears to my eye as flat and uninteresting, dull. I have not even been able to notice what's going on in the sky. It's very weird. As I sat gazing out over the lake last week, walking through the gorge, strolling around the little villages, I had no idea the experience would have this kind of lasting impact. How could I have known? This has never happened to me before.

Because I have not been able to notice, I have not taken many pictures. I think I've only taken 3 or 4, and only yesterday captured an image I like (at the top of the post).

As if to encourage me to open my eyes to this land, the land where I am at the moment, window washers came to the chateau yesterday morning. I did not schedule the window washing, believe me, but oh the timing of it, oh my. Events such as this belong in the category of You-can't-make-this-stuff-up. Oh yeah.

If life were a dream (and it is) what would it mean to have sparkling clean windows at the very moment when I realize I'm blind to the beauty of my usual landscape? The timing was impeccable. I love clean windows - and - I love synchronicities.

I'll head out in a little while to run a few errands before I see clients this afternoon. I intend to look at the sky carefully, to take it in. I want to remember that the Milky Way is up there even though I can't see it. The stars are there, even though I can't see them. The disc of our galaxy is invisible during the day because of the brilliance of Brother Sun and the earth's atmosphere, at night because of the light of the megalopolis in which I live. But the stars are up there, the Milky Way is there, always and forever. I'm hoping that truth will help my eye readjust. Will it work? We shall see.

These are the days of awe. As usual, I'm in synch with the holiday. Awesome!

Speaking of awesome, here's the last sunset at Canandaigua. 

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love the sunset. Travel always makes home no longer look like home. I return a foreigner even after a short trip. Disrupted from the local narrative for even a short time, I feel I am out of sync for a while but find that to be a positive as I am able to be an alien on familiar soil. Or perhaps it just underscores that was what I was before I left.

Anonymous said...

There is so much more out there isn't there! I find meditating on certain mandalas gives me the immediate reality and the universal reality -kind of like long distance and short range focus. Interesting to hear about your sight/way of seeing having to readjust.
Enjoy those shiny windows!

Reya Mellicker said...

I should meditate on some mandalas, Pam. Thank you.

And you, Junkthief. Love your thoughts. Thank you.