Where you at?

~ Live & Learn

Where You At?

Trace the water you drink from precipitation to tap.

How many days till the moon is full?…

From what direction do winter storms generally come in your region?

Name five grasses in your area.

Name five resident and five migratory birds…

Were the stars out last night?

From where you are reading this, point north.

~ Jenny Offill, Weather: A Novel (Knopf, February 11, 2020)

Notes:

  • Inspired by: “As it is, we are merely bolting our lives—gulping down undigested experiences as fast as we can stuff them in—because awareness of our own existence is so superficial and so narrow that nothing seems to use more simple than simple being. If I ask you what you did, saw, heard, smelled, touched, and tasted yesterday, I am likely to get nothing more than the thin, sketchy outline of the few things that you noticed, and of those only what you thought worth remembering. Is it surprising that an existence so experienced seems so empty and bare that its hunger for an infinite future is insatiable?” ~ Alan Watts, The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (Published August 28th 1989 by Vintage, first published 1966) (via noosphe.re)
  • Illustration by Ariduka55 (via Your Eyes Blaze Out)

38 thoughts on “Where you at?”

      1. The upside to being slow, and INFP-A.

        I don’t know the names of the grasses though, not even one. BUT, I’m trying to read Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. After reading his letters with Anne Gilchrist, I want to know what it is that started it all. This book started their correspondence.

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    3. As it is, we are merely bolting our lives—gulping down undigested experiences as fast as we can stuff them in—because awareness of our own existence is so superficial and so narrow that nothing seems to use more simple than simple being. If I ask you what you did, saw, heard, smelled, touched, and tasted yesterday, I am likely to get nothing more than the thin, sketchy outline of the few things that you noticed, and of those only what you thought worth remembering. Is it surprising that an existence so experienced seems so empty and bare that its hunger for an infinite future is insatiable?

      ~ Alan Watts, The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (Published August 28th 1989 by Vintage, first published 1966)

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    1. Oh, we are.

      As it is, we are merely bolting our lives—gulping down undigested experiences as fast as we can stuff them in—because awareness of our own existence is so superficial and so narrow that nothing seems to use more simple than simple being. If I ask you what you did, saw, heard, smelled, touched, and tasted yesterday, I am likely to get nothing more than the thin, sketchy outline of the few things that you noticed, and of those only what you thought worth remembering. Is it surprising that an existence so experienced seems so empty and bare that its hunger for an infinite future is insatiable?

      ~ Alan Watts, The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (Published August 28th 1989 by Vintage, first published 1966)

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  8. Ahhh… but is it knowing the grasses by their names that matters or by their feel, their scent, their colour in summerlight or moonlit darkness? How they wave and bend in the warmth of the Chinook wind that blows in from the mountains to the west or how each frond curls in icy isolation of an Arctic wind storming down from the north?

    Just askin’. 🙂

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    1. I was thinking the same thing, Louise. Some people can be so wrapped up in the names of things that they fail to experience them fully. Someone may not know the names of grasses, birds, flowers, reptiles, or whatever, but actualy “know” these things with their heart and soul. There’s so much knowledge out there that I believe humankind is losing its basic survival instincts and intuition.

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  11. This is taking the time to smell the roses to a whole ‘nother level…
    I can’t name a damn blade of grass and am limited to birds like robins, blue jays, cardinals, swallows and sparrows. The crows are probably blackbirds but I couldn’t say… However. I can say that I love to stop and listen: when all is silent, when one bird sings, when a cricket chirps… or watch a dragonfly sway, a butterfly flit…
    Does that count?

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