I’m uncertain what I have to offer the universe, at 5:57am, the house quiet, my keyboard less so.
I stretched a little. Walked in a few circles. Read yesterday’s metaphor. Drank some water. Looked at the expected high temperature for today.
Outside is beautiful right now. I don’t often (feel like I) have time for a walk, and this is perfect, so I should go outside for a walk. But I also don’t often (feel like I) have time to write in an unfettered, unhurried way, and this is perfect, so I’ll write this at least.
Our windows are old, a bit clouded. Constant temperature differentials imbues them with a haze, perhaps from minerals dropped from the water inside the window when evaporating. Or perhaps this window has never been cleaned, in my memory.
I’ve cleaned it. But not thoroughly, inside, out, and inside the inside. So the above picture is what I see, everyday, everywhere I go, even when my eyes are closed, and even when I’m only looking through a noisy keyboard. That’s the best I get! The best we ever get! And maybe that’s okay.
The above was the third picture, actually. This was the first:
That might be as good as we see anything.
Or I feel confident in saying that this picture is as well as we see most things. We see the interference before the thing. We have an entire culture, dozens of subcultures, movies, books, hobbies, podcasts, websites, advertisements, Tiktoks about looking at (and complaining about, and making art, and having revolutions, and arguing at your homeowner’s association) about the things that obscure what we think we were seeing. We see the smudges, and there are so many smudges we cannot even focus. We focus on the streaks. (And at other times we can only see what we intended to see, and not what is there.)
Probably there is something we desperately need to see—but it’s not easy to make it out.
I could go outside and take a good picture. An uninterrupted picture. A picture of just the nature! A picture uncluttered, a picture unchained, a picture that is free! But that would be dishonest.
(My second ending to that paragraph, vs. “that would be dishonest”, was going to be, “But that doesn’t exist.” Because pictures are dishonest and etc. They are not the thing. That’s okay—I know, I know—but: pictures are a representation, a version of reality, a lie. You need to be there. And even when you are there, everything you see and experience is filtered through your own smudged window. So there you go. Enjoy this one, Douglas.)
(I do enjoy it.)
I could enter that picture in a photo contest. Then everyone would enjoy my vision, the clarity I have about our lack of clarity. They would celebrate the focus I have about our lack of focus. Everyone would look at my picture and say, “yes, exactly. It’s like that exactly. All the time! Brilliant!” And they would give me awards and follow me on Instagram and talk about my personal life and what brought me to this understanding and I would be lauded and hated and everything about me and who I am could become a long, phantom streak on glass.