It is hard to savor each moment of life. It is hard to notice all the small things that are out there to be noticed. Because there are so many. Every backyard has almost an infinite number of photo opportunities, quiet moments and details worth distinction. It’s just difficult to focus on them with so much there. Every moment passes quicker than we can fully process it. Every twig of grass completely hides amid a lawn. Every day becomes one pretzel in the big party mix of life.
Unless we’re really paying attention.
There are some things which demand presence, or demand to be noticed. It may be a screaming toddler in a grocery store while a mother is just looking for a nice bar of soap. Just a bloody bar of soap. It may be the car as the engine starts smoking on a hot day on your way to a meeting. It may be the downtrodden shingles on your roof, as water drips down onto the dinner table. It may be a butterfly, landing in your laundry basket as you hang clothes out to dry. Or maybe it’s just a breath, in the middle of the storm of life, that lets you feel where you are again, and maybe even why.
For me an occasional, and sweet-natured, reminder is the fog horns. I live near the ocean. I try to go see it once a week. And while I wouldn’t want to give up my proximity to it, to be honest I rarely see it and sometimes forget that it’s there. Some days I’ll start to realize it’s foggy outside. The other day I was working outside, fighting back the overgrown and thorny bushes, sweating and not feeling the cool, salty, heavy dampness of thick fog. The kind that only really happens near the ocean. Then the low and quiet foghorns sounded. Boats talking to each other. Guiding each other through the fog. Surrounded by trees and birds, it sounded like a birdcall. Well, maybe a Buddha kind of monk of a bird, with a very deep, clear, quiet, completely omniscient voice. Fog horns are sounded to give direction and a sense of place. They’re sounded to give whoever might hear them a sound map, so they can hear where they are, because most other senses are blinded. And the fog horns do just that. Something about their call makes me immediately present and aware of the weather, aware that I’m on a mountain, in the backyard, above the town, by the ocean, where boats and sea guide each other through the fog. Everything is connected in that the sound puts me on a map where I know I am here, and the sound is there, and here we both are going about life.
And when I quiet myself down enough to notice that. Notice it for just a minute, I can almost distinguish each blade of grass, and feel the fog all around me. And when I’m aware of where I am, and when I’m able to notice things, I wonder why did I ever think I needed to travel the entire world, when there really is a world on this mountain, in the town, near the ocean, and where my feet stand.
