"Pay attention," Susan Sontag once advised a young audience. She was speaking of the creative process, and also of living. "It's all about paying attention. It's all about taking in as much of what's out there as you can, not letting the excuses and dreariness of some of the obligations you'll soon be incurring narrow your lives. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager."
To stay eager, to connect to find interest in the everyday, to notice what others overlook is the difference between looking and seeing, between hearing and listening, between accepting what the world presents and what matters to you. Paying attention, making a habit of noticing, helps cultivate an original perspective, a distinct point of view.
On my walks, I notice so many "things." T is so patient as I stop to take pictures. One of my attention grabbers has been numbers in triplicate. I finally got my numbers photos into a file and realized I needed to find the 2, 6, and 9 triples. I found them this past Thursday. I'm still going to keep looking for the triplets and most likely start looking for quads.
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| This address happens to be 111 E. 1st Street! |
Great collection, a nice way to focus from the background noise of life.
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