“The lover can see, and the knowledgeable.”

           Show someone a picture of an empty field and ask them what they see, some will say"nothing", another person might say, "a field of wildflowers and weeds, with huge rain clouds in the background", and a third might just say, "a beautiful day". Everything changes with perspective, each person looks for different things in their environment; most people give more attention to the material aspects of life, while others to the smaller things. Annie Dillard addresses this topic in chapter 2 of her book, "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek," when she writes, "The lover can see, and the knowledgeable." She says this in the context of drawing horses; one day she was at the house of someone in her family who lived on farm and she decided to draw a horse. Annie Dillard says that everyone found the horse, that she was quite proud of, to look crippled; when she asked them to draw one themselves, she says that they drew perfect horses because they were surrounded by them everyday, and noticed small details that she did not even know existed.  In the example I gave the third person is the lover , who only sees life through the pink lenses of love, the second is the knowledgeable, who has sufficient knowledge of the world around to notice the small things, and the first is everyone else in between, who only look at what they deem as important.
            For a lover, everything is beautiful. In literature, lovers are frequently characterized as lofty and carefree, as people who spend to much times looking at the clouds instead of their work. They notice the beauty in the small things in nature, like the faint swaying of the weeds in the field and the bird songs that perfume the air, because they themselves are indulging in a happiness that is purely organic, love. Love,which is frequently called the strongest emotion of all, is just the secretion of different chemicals in our brain, nothing big when looked at chemically, but it's effect on one's perspective is immense. When one falls in love, they will see all of the beautiful details when they are happy, and all of the ugly when they are sad. Everything around them gains meaning, from the way a fish swims around in a creek, to the way the sun shines onto the trees; in short, they see the world in a more beautiful light.
             The knowledgeable on the other hand, see the world through a different perspective. Once you learn for example, that dogs wag their tails when they are happy, you will begin to look for that small action of tail wagging whenever you see a dog. In biology class, if your teacher tells you that the some flowers close at night and bloom again the morning, you will probably pay more attention when you see a flower to whether it is open or closed. This goes with all knowledge, whenever a person learns a new thing about their environment, from that day on, they become more aware of it's presence around them. This is why a person who is learned will see the world differently from everyone else. They are completely aware of the beauty around them because they know of all the small things that make it up.
            Coming to the first person, the one who said they saw "nothing" when looking at the empty field, they are not completely ignorant, they are only aware of the things that concern them. Because nature, and the smaller details in the world around them that do not affect them personally, they pay them no attention. Not because they do not necessarily care about them, but just because they cannot see them. Ask them to describe a park, and they'll just say a bunch of grass and trees, they cannot remember the birds and flowers. Ask them to describe to you the different shops at their local mall and they still won't remember the details, because they were never taught to appreciate them.
             There is  a quote by Doris Lessing which says: "Small things amuse small minds." In the context of seeing, this quote fits perfectly with the answer the first person gives, it is exactly the mentality that many people in this day and age have. We are constantly told to, "look at the big picture," when really it is the the small things that make up the picture that are the most fascinating. Ask a lover about the one he loves and he will tell you things that you had never even noticed about them. Everything is hidden in perspective, it is up to us to adopt the right one.

Continuum

The sky was polluted by an opaque white smoke as far as the eye could see. This alabaster ocean silently swallowed everything in its path, leaving almost nothing bare.  The leafless trees against the silver fog were like ink sketching's on a slate of marble. The fog was thick, mystical in its blinding quality.  Enchanted, the birds sat, quiet on their lonely perches.

It was on a day like this that a man forgot everything he knew,
That an elephant, half way across the earth got lost,
and  a boy, for whom all hope was lost, began to read.

This is where our story begins.

Another attempt at poetry.

ELEPHANT

This is the story of an elephant who gets lost,
This is the story of a man who forgets,
and of a boy who reads.

Deep in the forest
among the emerald leaves
and glass birds
there sits an elephant
alone.

Among the suited monkeys
and chomping alligators
he sits.

What hes doing
Where hes been
What hes seen
No one knows.

He is but a solitary elephant
among thickets
of weeds.

 I'd really want to illustrate this and maybe work on it again to improve it a bit, so I guess this is just a rough draft of something I thought about while taking a shower.