My waking thought this morning was looking through a cardboard tube when I was a kid. The kind that paper towels come on. Toys were simple when I was young. Dad's 2X4 cut-offs were my building blocks.
I looked through the tube like it was a telescope. Pretending to see things that could otherwise not be seen without it. Using imagination to see pirate ships at sea. A couple of years later I ordered a real telescope from the back pages of Popular Mechanics. $3.98 with a money order I got from the post office. Probably a 6 cent stamp and wait for weeks to arrive. Big and black in the picture. High power magnification. When it arrived I found it to be made of cardboard.
Looking through a tube focuses attention narrowly to see things. Magnification is not entirely necessary when to look at them closer all that is necessary is to walk up to them. Climbing a tree to the moon does not get a much more detailed view. That is where the telescope is valuable. After the telescope was showing me things that I had already looked at I discovered my mom's magnifying glass. A new world opened up. Also the use of the magnifying glass to melt plastic and burn our names onto a piece of wood. Start a fire with extreme pinpoint concentration if the lens was held just right. Later, microscopes fascinated me and I learned about staining slides. I have worn glasses since I was 11.
On long road trips I do not listen to the radio very much. Just look out the window at the ever changing scenery or do endless miles on the bike enjoying the beauty of what I see, what my bike will yet take me to see.
Observing things figures them out. Recently I fixed a frozen pipe. The solution spoke to me by observation. All I had to do was listen to it. Someone asked how I knew what to do, where I learned it. Was I a repairman? Dad was, must be in the genes! He did not repair as much as he created solutions. He was good at it.
Some rule in my life says that if I look at a thing long enough I can figure it out. For some things in my life there was not enough time in an other's life for me to do that. Seeing things in real time is often only knowing them later. My reactions are quick but my mind is slow.
All things come into view and focus with time and effort. Effort I have and I do not quit. time is not mine to own, only use while I have it.
On this Thanksgiving I am grateful for time. My gratitude is expressed by using it the best I can. Even if I was blind I could still grasp things in my hands, touch them, feel them move in relation to other things. I would be even more object oriented, more focused on only the thing that I could touch, that was close enough to touch.
Is that why I close my eyes to kiss?
There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth. ---Rumi
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