The Art of Noticing

A thing of beauty is a joy forever

-John Keats

‘Tired eye’ (Yes, this is a Last Christmas reference), although an apt synecdoche for the entire being, personally feels undermining to the eye’s chores. The busy bee of the senses hardly ever rests given the fact that one’s pupils still flutter past the closed and asleep eyelids. Eyesight is hence our most developed sense, an adept butler right at our service since birth; quite literally the apple of our eyes. We, the Victorian children sans the richness, take this butler for granted as we sort of let it function on autopilot; letting it look but rarely notice. 

We are no different than a hamster on a wheel. Our life ‘revolves’ around checklists; chasing one goal after the other in the blink of an eye. In this process, we are so fixated on the final holy grail that we turn a blind eye to the process itself. Alexander Fleming didn’t just ‘look’ at his ruined, moldy petri dish; he noticed the bacteria weren’t growing near the mold. For once if we float away from the noise and actually try to notice instead of merely looking, we find that life is full of easter eggs: small easy to miss poetries indeed, hidden in plain sight, waiting eagerly to amuse us.

It has caught my eye how that one beam of sunray peeks through the window sheds: a spotlight on the nearby objects; transforming them into relics in a museum. The minute dust particles levitate in this beam as if they are being abducted by aliens. Or the two droplets racing across the window on a rainy day. The wind pets the long grass with its invisible hand. A rainy street is no longer a crowd of commuters, but a school of colorful, bobbing jellyfish navigating the pavement. Even the sky joins the theater as the birds perched on wires become musical notes on a staff, composing a melody only the attentive can hear. I believe it is sheet music for the cuckoo. The foggy street lamps soften into dandelions: puffballs of light, waiting for a breeze to blow them away. The traffic signal plays a tireless game of ‘red light, green light’ with the cars. Inanimate objects express a sudden, hidden soul when we spot ‘faces’ in them. Heart-like structures are hidden in the wired headphone tangles. A light bulb flickers to show its breathing. The heavy sigh of an old wooden floorboard or a staircase which groans once we’ve stepped off it, as if it’s finally catching its breath after holding the weight. Hairy projections on plant stalks look like a sudden breakout of goosebumps against the morning chill. A tree branch laden with a fruit droops as if to bow its head in respect to the Earth for her blessing.

It is quite paradoxical how our monotonous routines collectively make us selectively blind. This eternal fatigue calls for a pause as we are reminded to keep an eye out for the mundane things stitched into a lively and breathing Pinterest. We are rewarded in bounty when we let this “butler” blossom into the fondest storyteller one could wish for. Beauty being in the eyes of the beholder fits like a jigsaw piece in this context as we adorn our canvases with the art of noticing.

-Shakalya