While walking down the street to the coffee shop last week, I saw that I was following a bird. A delicate, long-legged bird walked ahead of me on the sidewalk. Walked, as in, one foot in front of the other. No hopping or half-gliding. No speed-walking as an urban pigeon might. When she (or he—I had no way of knowing) reached the corner, just as I planned to do, she crossed the street and walked up onto the next sidewalk. Like a person. I wanted to take a picture to show you, but I wasn't quick enough: When several birds came swooping in, it was as though she remembered her wings—Oh, that's right, I'm a bird—and took off flying, up and over the trees and into the sky with the others.
As part of our quest to unstick, Dana and I are poking around the parts of this city that intrigued us when we first got here, but have since become old hat because we've grown accustomed to seeing them. This past weekend found us in an antique shop that I've talked myself out of exploring on several different occasions (due to operating under the faulty premise that I should explore only if I was intending to buy—and small-living in an RV meant that we were almost never intending to buy). Now that we're living in a hotel, a backpack apiece, it's even less of a good idea to acquire anything...but I'm realizing that doesn't need to preclude exploration.
Nothing was purchased, though a few things did catch my eye—particularly a folk art rendering of "Venus and her Attendants" and a collection of anthropomorphized bunny figurines. I'm not sure why I was so enchanted by them, but I suspect it has something to do with how their faces are still very much bunny, despite their human trappings.
Finally, if you're on Instagram, you'll have seen my post from yesterday of a dragonfly in a handstand. My friend Mandy's comment says it best: "The whole world puts on a show for you because you notice." And that's just it: You have to notice. Always there will be a chorus of things deserving of your attention, your emotion, your reaction, your connectedness. And if you're anything like me, you have to be supremely careful about what you let in, how much you read past the headline, which tweets and hashtags get your engagement, where you invest your psychic energy. At first pass, it would seem a really fun, iridescent thread of whimsy has woven itself through my week—but I know better: I'm keeping my eyes open on purpose; collecting as much evidence for good, for silly, for nonsense as I can find; celebrating small instances of unsticking whenever, however, it happens.
Sending you light today.
'Til soon,
Helen
Notes from the week of June 5
DISCOVERED
+ brief raptures in deserted places (via Shoko Wanger)
+ Lonely Planet Illustrated
ADMIRED
+ 'showing the world, one drawing at a time'
ATE, DRANK
+ spicy iced chai from Whole Foods coffee bar (recommended)
READ & GIGGLED
COLLECTED
+ this line from my May horoscope from the ever-lyrical, always-reassuring Mme Clairevoyant: "Give yourself some credit for all the living you do every day" (I always forget about that column for a few months, & then, when I remember it, devour everything I missed)