Looking Up, Looking Out

Being tall and often lost in thought, I have a habit of looking down when I walk − I like the view. When I want to focus − to think about writing −I get fewer distractions. If I want scenery, its nice to watch the world go by at that scale. The lighting behind me, falling on the path is lovely. I notice details that other folks quite literally overlook.

I see every stone, every crack in the pavement. I see the handprints that kids made when workers were laying the concrete. I wonder at how the tree roots broke through the sidewalk. I wish for roller skates, the old fashioned ones, when I’m on the smooth parts. I hear music in my mind and I walk to its cadence. Sometimes I watch my feet progress along the pavement.

On paths that I walk frequently, I find myself wondering whether there’s one square inch that I’ve stepped on every time I walked that direction. On all paths I think about folks who have walked before me. I picture them. They appear − the young aunt with her niece and three nephews going to town for ice cream. They are like imaginary memories.

Looking down makes the world move at the same pace as I do, and I’ve always been one who best likes the 30,000 foot view. But it also means I miss so much. I miss the flowers in the gardens and the beautiful, unique, and individual houses that stand by them. I’ve walked by some so many times and hardly recall a detail about any one of them.

One house has birds of paradise in a vase in the window. I drove by it not too long ago. How long had they been there? What else have I been missing?

Exotic flowers are art and symbols − colorful, rare, and seemingly alien − especially the flowers called birds of paradise. I love the way they seem to be always looking out, looking up. It makes me wonder what they’re thinking.

One shouldn’t walk past exotic flowers without seeing them. I need to start looking up, looking out, looking all around when I’m walking.

Life wasn’t meant to have only one perspective.

−me strauss Letting me be