What is the nature of observation?
Well, there is the thing seen - it knows it is being watched, and may change its behavior; or it doesn't. The roll of the land in the country does not know it is being watched, the hawk and the crow do not.
What of the observer?
One can be aware he is paying attention and know the significance of what he is seeing; one can be aware of paying attention but not know the significance of what he is seeing; and one can be unaware that he is recording information from the world going past.
I think I am one of those who is aware he is paying attention but doesn't know what it all means, doesn't know the thrust of it, one who has not yet put the pieces together to form the big picture. I can appreciate and understand blissful unawareness - perhaps that is the ultimate state given to the most pure of heart; I have been tainted with enough education, tinged with enough cynicism, you couldn't say any more that I'm pure of heart. Yet neither am I so wise as to understand what it all means. Sometimes I think I'm lucky to understand what any of it means.
Observation is the act of seeing; for me it requires also a drive for comprehension, for understanding. Yet the land rolling away, the years stretching onward, the seasons turning - I do not see it all at once, as the whole it is, the living, moving, breathing being. I am like the blind man. Sometimes the elephant is a rope. Sometimes it is a pillar. Sometimes a wall. Sometimes a mighty python.
I think of the short grass prairie south of Eastend, Saskatchewan. As we drove the gravel roads, I watched, I watched intensely. Yet I had little understanding of what I was seeing. I still don't understand. I didn't understand the Cypress Hills either, their place in the scheme of things, so far from any likeness. Nor could I comprehend Saskatchewan's Great Sand Hills.
Yet I think back to all three landscapes, wrestle with particular images, and maybe I have learned something I cannot yet put into words.
I need to bring some of that quality of intense observation from Saskatchewan to my every day life, to these every day places.
That would be observation.
Sunlight and blue sky and long shadows again this morning. I am seeing the same old things today, am I not? The way the light lays on the grass and bends the stems toward the west.
Well, now a stout frost is firmly attached to the windshield of the pick-up. There is a smooth surface to the pond.
North of the village a flock of sea gulls flies above the road - a lot of lights flashing on and off, on and off. I have seen that before, haven't I? Recorded it earlier, didn't I? On and off.
I am late this morning, later than I should be. I have spent too long with my thoughts. I had to get gasoline in the pick-up. I had to go back to the house to get my billfold. Silly boy. I am late.
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