A while ago I received an email from my friend Laura. During our communication she mentioned she was following my blog. (Yeah !! A follower!)At the time I realized two things that still hold today. The first, that I haven't been keeping up with my blog and second, that I have been living in my head again!
Again, I find myself going back-and-forth, to-and-fro without a thought to what I was actually doing.
My everyday existence has become overwhelmed by the crowd of internal gibberish. Not a meaningful thought in the entire morass that has been the activity of my mind. I've been moving through the everyday without a seeing a thing, even though there is much to see.
This experience has reminded me of a photograph I took - the one you see here. I recall when I took this, where and why. It was in the summer of 2004, along a stretch of College St, between University Ave and McCaul St.
I was marching along in my usual manner, thinking about work, anticipating what was going to happen, planning for these imagined events and then inventing contingencies, in case things didn't go as I planned. It wasn't that anything pressing was going on that day, this was (and still is) just my mind in action.
I continued to walk along College St, my body in one place, my mind already at my destination - when suddenly out of nowhere this mass of rusty staples and bits of paper attached to a hydro pole jumped out at me.
Of all the times I walked that route, this was the first time I noticed the pattern, texture and colour that comprised this small space on the hydro pole.
In that moment I realized how often I overlook the awesome details of everyday life because I am consumed by my own mental activity.
If there is one thing this blog reveals, by virtue of the infrequent posts, is that I'm still being managed by discursive thinking and not available to appreciate the everyday.
