A Fair Witness

These comments may or may not be of any interest to you... feel free to skim past. I had a little moment the other evening when I was walking with my baby around the neighborhood. She's thankfully a small baby, light enough to just carry on walks, though I'm finding that I have to switch arms more frequently these days. So we walk with our faces right next to each other's... I can easily follow her gaze to see where she's looking, and we can stop and look at things together. On our way out the door, I always say to Mia, "Let's go look at stuff." On this particular evening stroll, her head tilted quizzically at a bunch of muhly blowing in the breeze. Breezes are a sweet thing for her, she always smiles when a breeze blows across her face. But her expression was one of curiosity, and I looked at the muhly and wondered what she thought about it... did she know that the breeze was blowing the bush or did she just think it was a bush that wiggled nicely on its own? "Look at the wiggling bush!" I discussed the matter with Soupie Andy McBride and he likened her experience to that of a meditative state, seeing things exactly for what they are, being an impartial witness to events and thoughts. It made me think of the "Fair Witnesses" of "Stranger in a Strange Land"... people who were trained to remember and describe specific images, without making the assumptions that our brains often do. To the question, "What color is that house?" a Fair Witness could only reply, "The side of the house facing us is blue." This episode also made me think back to the musical pole on West Ave between 5th and 6th Streets. It holds a parking sign of some sort but it has a bunch of holes in it like a flute, and when a certain wind blows, it plays a bunch of musical notes. I remembered having that same sense of wonder about the musical pole one night. The Fair Witness in me could only say, "There is music coming from this pole!" I think it's a good practice... keep an eye out for wiggling bushes.