a scattering of thoughts about thoughts

We were on a walk today, with Peggy dog on her leash, Edith Emily in her sling. I could smell the rain coming. Wind was blowing, and the colors seemed extra vivid to me. Wherever I looked I noticed interesting combinations of colors - dark purple berries on a forest green bush, the sudden florescent spattering of fallen leaves on a bright lawn, sun faded tan adobe walls flush against sun faded bricks, the light grey of concrete as a backdrop for a teal painted iron fence, some lavender blossoms - and I realized I was imagining the colors as skeins of yarn. Hand dyed hanks of the colors I saw around me on a day whose sky was greyer than the rest. I have been thinking about knitting a lot lately, and knitting a lot as well. Ravelry provides an endless source of fascination, as nearly everyone in the world currently using wool to make things seem to have a profile on there, with pictures of finished projects, yarn stashes, and hand dyed, handspun fibery goodness. Then there are the knitting blogs....

But anyways, I did not open this posting box to write about knitting. I wanted to express somehow, the thoughts that swirled through my head this afternoon as Peggy dragged us through the neighborhood, nose first. It seems like whatever my mind is tuned into, becomes the way I see. I do not remember ever noticing colors so vividly before. When I was taking a lot of pictures, I would notice interesting colors, but they were always part of a larger scene - something with visual interest beside color - form, content, light and shadow, whatever. Today was different because it was so specific to just color combinations. I realized that I haven't been writing as much (yes I know, nanowrimo actually took too much joy away from the writing process and I turned to knitting instead. told you something like that was bound to happen...) lately, but when I was writing pretty regular blog entries, my thoughts on walks like this were more word oriented. I would spend mental energy thinking about how I would describe something, and sifting through the day to find interesting situations worth writing about. So now that my thoughts have been tuned to knitting, the pieces of the world that I perceive the most happen to be color and texture oriented. Forgive me if I am repeating myself, I'm just circling what is probably a very simple concept.

Different people perceive the world differently. We probably all know this, to some degree. Yet it's a hard thing to really know. I am constantly surprised when another person reveals that no, they are not on the same page as I am. Because I'm only looking at one page, I forget that there are words on the other side. I have never had any interest in sailing, but my cousin has an album full of sailing photos on his facebook page. He's also a commercial pilot. Which reminds me of a friend of mine's father, who has participated in sailing races and also got his pilot's license a few years ago. He and his wife live on a private runway so he can fly his plane whenever he wants. Today it was windy, like I mentioned, and to me that means that my skirt flaps around on our walk, Edie wears a hat, leaves eddy up into momentary swirls of color, and the trees dance. A windy day is beautiful to me, and exciting to walk through. I was thinking today, after noticing how I was noticing colors especially, that on a day like this my cousin or my friend's dad might have some extra perception regarding the wind. The direction, the quality, how fast, how cold...things that don't matter much to me necessarily, because I am just walking around going gaga over the color of things. But if I could jump into somebody else's head, what bits of the world would I notice especially much? The sound of things? The way it smells? How healthy the plant life is? What kind of birds are singing? The make and model of every car that passes? The price of cigarettes at the corner store?

What if we were aware of all the details, all at once?

Today I finally remembered to water Kenneth's garden while he was at work. I turned on the sprinkler and ran inside to try and squeeze a shower in while Edie napped. She woke up screaming before I could turn the water on, and I ran to comfort her wearing my towel. She was inconsolable for a long time - she hadn't been ready to wake up when she did. Finally she calmed down, though she was clingy, and I remembered the sprinkler. Ran outside and turned it off, but the garden looked like the flooded farms of the midwest. Gurty drank from one of the pools between the rows of kale. And now it is pouring rain like LA thinks it's Portland.