The Fog of Thought

I was walking in circles yesterday afternoon. I was trying to see through the fog for a very long time. I started to look at it instead.

The leisure of looking. What a comfort. In certain circumstances, there can be no greater.

I think back to old entertainment, arched over a candle lit book, a shadow, a fire, the old outdoors. Same rapture as our most sophisticated simulations, the same thrill of escape. In just looking? Just seeing something? And the painting, the image, trying to distil and bottle this gladness at the world, trying to better it even, from the dawn.

Photographers are told they have an eye for a photo, but this isn't the case. This is the storyteller. The eye is busy elsewhere, devouring and lapping at the raw materials of vision and light. How it comes together in a mystery that we all share.

Go and look at something today and just enjoy it. You'll walk miles and drink and think and speak and the day will end and you'll never know what you looked at, least how much you loved it. There is no order in vision, no impetus to buy or understand. Seeing can be hard, but looking is heaven.