Eyes of Astonishment

I find myself often gazing out my living room window while I'm eating breakfast, resting, studying, or simply pondering. You probably wouldn't deem this living area a "room with a view." In fact, the only thing outside the window is a very plain looking brown fence and some grass. While you would think this fence ugly and blocking my view, I find it actually enhancing my way of seeing. For one thing, It blocks out the distraction of the houses, street, and cars making a type of horizon line with its pickets. This focuses my attention to the scene above the fence; a scene I've grown to love; the black vein branches of trees spreading across the sky with tall mountains in the background.

 I've spent countless times admiring these branches, the movement of the sky, the clouds, and the snowy mountain facade. Sometimes I can't see the mountain at all because of mist, fog, or haze. Other times the mountain is bathed in the most glorious rosy pink light from the sunset to the west. The poet Derek Walcott once said, "the perpetual ideal is astonishment." I strive to see the everyday scenes of the world with new astonishment. Having the eyes of a curious child, or even a tourist in a new location, turns my old town into something new and astonishing. The trees outside my plain window become wonders of beauty.

"On such banalities has life been spent

 in brightness, and yet there are the days

when every street corner rounds itself into
a sunlit surprise, a painting or a phrase,

canoes drawn up by the market, the harbour's blue,

the barracks. So much to do still, all of it praise."

- Derek Walcott