Beauty under our noses...

Dear Diary,

Emerson loves to play with a feather on a string. I guess most cats do. His feather of choice is a peacock feather. I was adding a new one to his string, it doesn't take him long to destroy one, and I really looked at it this time. It is a very beautiful thing. The iridescence and the striking, almost hypnotizing, design I found fascinating.

I suspect we over look many beautiful things in our daily rush. The way the light is falling on a stack of books or the shadows along the driveway in the late afternoon. Common place, everyday sorts of things. I have been trying to train myself to pause and pay more attention to these small things.

As we age, our world by necessity becomes smaller and smaller. Sometimes it ends up being just a solitary room. Thoreau once said that he had traveled the whole world and never left his hometown of Concord. I think you could say the same for your own hometown or even, perhaps, your own home. Maybe, in time, our outer landscapes become inner landscapes and we will finally be able to see the universe reflected in a peacock's feather.

To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower. Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour.

- William Blake