The Summer of Noticing

Josef and Anni Albers

I've returned to where I started a month ago, but nothing looks or feels the same. I'm somewhere new although objectively everything looks the same. What a fun way to start the week. Maybe I should say I'm home, but I can't be sure that's what I feel. I'm not sure it matters so much. I have home inside of me. I know that for sure. I'm back in San Francisco after a month of traveling in the South. After taking a course that taught me how to weave and think about how pieces could go together. After being taken care of day in and day out, freed to focus on present time and the experiences that can come from that. After a month of summer and all the sensations of that season. After passing through the hands of the people I've known forever and grown to love in just a few hours or days. After being down in a Tennessee Valley and brushing up against a possibility that I thought only existed in my head. What a ride I've been on, filling me up to the brim.

I'm starting to come down from that ride, and I can feel myself being friendly and gentle and patient because I'm curious. I want to notice how this experience has affected me with all its subtle shifts. I don't want to miss out on anything by thinking that something's over or by holding onto the memories or hopes too tightly. And I want this to be a friendly reminder to myself that there's nothing to figure out. Everything is in front of me. I just hope to be open enough to notice it.

We're so often filled with doubt, unsure and mistrusting of our selves. Doubt rears up with very little effort, but when the attention is placed on noticing, sensing and perceiving, the world and oneself in it, that doubt just seems to dissolve. The noticing takes on a life of its own. I can feel the substance of noticing after a month of easy yet substantial experiences, having the chance and the time to take in what's around me. The year seems to have started with noticing the sensations in my body, a noticing of myself. There's been an expansion as I submerged myself into a creative state and back into a summer season. Both of those created a loosening and opening. I don't want to stop. I'm completely clear about that. I've been saying yes a lot lately, and I look forward to that continuing. It may all come down to noticing.