NOW, AND NOW AGAIN

I’ve said it before so it must be true – one of the best thing about walking is the way it sharpens up your perceptions – the more you walk the more you look the more you see.  Just basic rocket science.

And I suppose there’s an argument that if you go away from home you may in fact observe with less acuity, because you’re seeing things for the first time, and so you only notice what’s new and obvious.  Whereas if you stay in you own neighbourhood and walk variations of the same old route time after time, day after day, you end up looking at the same things with the different eyes.

And so the lockdown might be construed as some grand experiment in the nature of perception.

This being so, I’ve been walking while paying attention to three minor Nicholson obsessions: benches, arrows, and cars in gardens.  I’ve always looked at these things in various locations, and sometimes I’ve taken photographs of them, but right now I’m only looking at the ones within walking distance of home, although admittedly I’m also thinking about more distant examples I saw in the past.

This for example is a bench at a gibbon sanctuary somewhere up the Interstate 5 in California – pretty fancy:

but now I find myself looking at this one in the neighbourhood:

This is an arrow in the zoo in Tokyo:

and this is an arrow which has suddenly appeared on the road surface very close to where I live:

This is a car in a garden in Los Angeles:

and this is a car up the road by the (now open) garden centre:

And of course there is death with variations everywhere you go. These critters were shot dead in the desert somewhere near Yucca Valley:

and this is a swan on the shore of the River Stour.  I don’t know how it died, but it makes me realize that I never saw a dead swan before.