There is a sticker on a lamppost that reads “get lost”. The lamppost hasn’t been cleaned in a number of years so the sticker calls out to those who view it, as a blinding yellow circle. I listen.
There is a bench dedicated to a woman from her husband, after her death five years ago. I sit there and wonder what she looked like when she was alive and if she would have liked to have a bench dedicated to her. Maybe she would have hated it. Maybe she wanted a plaque on a birch tree instead.
There is coffee shop that sells up-market, overpriced coffee beans that taste delicious. Above the counter hangs a single plank of wood displaying several paper takeaway cups with drawings on them. A shakily drawn cat sits next to a blue alien which is accompanied by a spaceship, next to a green bicycle, followed by a miniature drawing of the front of the shop itself. The steam from the machine rises giving the drawings a mystical quality.
There is a cat lying in the entryway of a garden on the side of the road. It purrs and flops over as I tickle under its chin and I’m hit by how similar it is in colouring to my childhood cat I grew up with. It rolls over and stretches its feet out towards the wall, which has now been overtaken by climbing vines and small cracks have started to show.
There is an art to noticing things and I have found that my best attempt at this often happens on my worst days. On days when all I want to do is count the cracks in the pavement or wonder why that doorframe of a house has small gargoyles sticking out of each side, instead of stay in my own head and worry about big things. Small things are the perfect distraction. At the same time, it helps you see the beauty in noticing.
These can also be found in people. The way someone’s hair catches sunlight so you see the full array of colours there or the hidden appearance of a necklace that wasn’t noticed before. Maybe it’s dimples that were kept secret until they smiled or an eyebrow scar from a childhood accident they haven’t told you about yet. They are all wonderful little details that give hidden insight into people’s true selves and lives. Maybe the eyes aren’t the only windows to the soul. Noticing small things about people can make them feel seen even more than eye-staring ever might.
I also find the art of noticing a key aspect of film watching. Maybe it’s the way a character stands that subtely calls back to a previous moment or a particular kind of music motif is played only when a specific character is about to appear. Sometimes I can hear the difference between a cello and a clarinet as the music crescendos into the protagonist’s final feeling of freedom as they escape the emotions they have felt all this time weighing them down. Other times, it’s the changes in bass or the sudden appearance of a brass instrument that ignites a fire that speaks to the beauty of music as a partner to the visuals you watch and you know that without it, the film would not be the same. Colour is used in this same way. Blues and greys represent a characters’ slow spiral into melancholy while vibrant sunset orange signifies the end of a long personal struggle into adulthood.
Maybe this is all just what people notice daily but I never seem to find anyone writing about it. Maybe this is what poetry is about, what great art is inspired by or simply what keeps the day from becoming a bad one.
On my walk home I walk under a canopy of auburn leaves that fall with each gust of wind that flies by. Some leaves hit me in the face, so I collect them to flatten them in a book later on. The coffee in my hand grows cold and the lingering worries about my finances creep back in. The wind takes them away again as the sky begins to turn scarlet.
I pass the bright yellow sticker on the lamppost and wonder if feeling lost is really the answer. If feeling directionless is really as bad as it sounds, because I happened to have just found a whole host of beautiful small noticings that help ground me in place.
I’m sure there’s a double meaning to the sticker.
I’m sure that if I look close enough I could see so much more in those two words but for now the bigger realities creep back in and I am forced to focus on the distant rising of the moon and the fact I can now see my breath in the air to distract me.
There is an art to noticing things, because that is all that is required.
Noticing.
No judgement. No moral argument. No moving to change things.
There’s a freedom is simply existing.
And I continue to seek this freedom because there’s very little required.
A sort of minimal effort glance at happiness. To centre yourself on earth when your mind is floating to the outermost reaches of space.
To realise that you are the artist when doing the noticing.
And no one can do it like you.
“The voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses.”
– E. E. Cummings
For Wanderers and Wonderers 