WHAT’S IN A TINY OBSERVATION? IT’S THE TINIEST PART OF EXISTENCE. ALL YOUR TINY OBSERVATIONS, CHAINED TOGETHER, CREATE YOUR REAL REALITY IN THE FINEST DETAIL. WHAT A GREAT FOUNDATION TO BUILD ON.
Tiny Observations
Step right up! Step up for “White Flight Explorations.” Today we announce a remarkable new program. It’s called, uh… lessee, oh “Tiny Observations.”
I woke up this morning at 4am to deafening silence. Out here in the countryside the animals and bugs went quiet. The electricity has been off since midnight.
I’ve been hungry a few times of late, out of propane for cooking, can’t use the microwave with no electricity. Late last night finally a neighbor brought me propane. I made a cup of coffee at 4am just for the comfort of it. I sipped at it for two hours.
But at 4:30am I made a tiny observation. It’s funny how these things happen — well, not really funny — because I’ve always paid attention to the tiniest things around me.
It was dark and still. I wandered the house, lighting and snuffing candles. I was unsettled. Finally I sought out my comfort coffee. It was atop a mattress standing on edge, I remembered that. I walked over to it in absolute pitch blackness and silence. I reached out both hands that I might avoid bumping and spilling the coffee.
And so it happened. A really big tiny observation. My hands saw the coffee. And they had depth perception too. I looped my index finger through the handle and raised the coffee to my lips. And froze.
Because I realized. I realized that I had just experienced depth perception exactly by the same methods I do with my eyes when there’s light to see by. With my two hands! I didn’t have to think about it. They acted just like my eyes, but in infrared! And it happened all by itself, like I’d already been finding things that way in the dark all my life.
Hmm…
You want to know what I did pretty regularly 60 years ago when I was a kid? I’d turn out all the lights in the house, close my eyes, and walk through the rooms. I’d walk right up to walls and stop before bumping my nose. I was hearing the sounds of silence, but not quite complete silence. I was locating walls by stereo hearing the exact same way as I would with stereo vision if my eyes were open and lights were on. There are always ambient sounds you don’t notice hearing.
People say I’m weird. I don’t know if I make these tiny observations because I’m weird, or if other people don’t make observations much at all so they cover themselves by proclaiming me to be weird.
Well you know, if you circle back to the subtitle up there and hear that carnival barker, and you surrender your Visa card to fly to an exclusive, expensive, and remote resort, and there you make Tiny Observations with help from their counselors… then I’ll know for sure who is weird in this picture.
FRED
