Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Normal or exotic?

patches and souvenir items in a New Mexico souvenir shop

Near you there are many many plain and simple things that you might overlook for being commonplace, everyday, throwaway background sights, sounds, smells, tastes or textures.

What are walls and fences made of where you are? Some other places, it is very different. How does the air feel and smell when it's cold? What's the first plant that might volunteer to grow in a bare spot? What little animals might you see, and what birds do you hear? What do people throw away that a tourist might pick up and keep? What food is readily available, that everyone knows how to make, and has the ingredients for on hand nearly always?

When you look as far to the east as you can see, what is the view? Turn around and look the other way, too.

Where you are is exotic to most of the rest of the world. Most other people will never see it. Knowing that your plainness is someone else's curiosity can make your life richer.

Sometimes, when you look, listen, taste, feel, smell, close your eyes and rest, remember that you are in one special place.

The writing is new, but something to follow with might be SandraDodd.com/deblewis/abundance
or
SandraDodd.com/museum
photo by Sandra Dodd
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1 comment:

  1. The original had a glitch. I changed a bit to fix it, so if you saved the first one somewhere, please lose it nd save the repaired version.

    The part I fixed is here: What's the first plant that might volunteer to grow in a bare spot? What little animals might you see, and what birds do you hear?

    ReplyDelete

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