Friday, July 27, 2012

CURIOSITY. I've decided that it is one of the most important qualities that makes my life worthwhile. I don't understand those who are not interested in the fabric of things around them. Years ago, I sat in an outdoor restaurant patio one day with a sandwich and lemonade. We were traveling through California and it was a place I'd never been before. Next to the patio grew a beautiful tree with lovely shaped leaves. I admired it so much that I asked the waiter what it was. "I don't know," he said. "Do you think anyone inside would know?" "I don't know," he said. After I paid my bill, I went in and sought out the manager. He didn't know either and obviously, didn't care. I left without being able to name this beautiful tree. If it happened today and I had a cell phone, I'd take a photo and go home to the computer and ID it. Amazing Google, right? But that day, as I left I thought, how sad that this beautiful thing lived next to someone's workplace and it wasn't noticed. I wrote an essay called "Lint & Light" that's in our book,"The Desert Eternal" and published later in "The Art of Living, A Practical Guide to Being Alive", a book edited in Spain, but with an English as well as Spanish version. Someday I'll blog about that. The premise of my essay came from an art professor, Rhinehold Marxhausen, of Concordia College in Seward, NE who talked about noticing the things around us, something as simple as the design of the cracks in the sidewalk. He took colored lint from the dryer and made abstract art work from it. I still have one of his works. I suppose he taught me about seeing. But curiosity goes deeper. It would explore all sorts of things about that tree. Recently I was told there's a Catalpa sapling outside our house, along the pond's edge. I don't know anything about Catalpas, so now I'm off to find out more, feeding my curiosity.

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