mental photoshop!

this is what the ordinary eye sees while negotiating this busy street corner.

one day i realize that what i habitually see when i look at this scene is something quite different.

because i realize that i've become used to automatically turning on my mental photoshop just in this precise moment.

i mentallly crop out, zoom in, and suddenly what appears is vastly different from the scene that would otherwise be apparent to the non-attuned gaze. instead, this is what i see:

right up there on the hill is one of the sweetest peeks of green you can see from the historical center of florence. over there, on the other side of the river, laying splayed on a hill, is the lush green manicured bardini garden grasses, surrounded with hedges lining a stone stairway that climbs up the hill, topped by two marble statues.

and there, running off to the left, even if for only a few weeks in april or may, is a bright purple ribbon of an enchanting wisteria flower walkway. it perfumes the air with sweetart candy/concord grape-smelly-marker smell that is heady to the point of making you feel intoxicated with joy when you walk under it and tune into the waves of purple smells blowing toward you in the light breeze.

standing back down on the busy street corner, i realize this is a perfect example of what the artist's eye has been trained, practiced in, and learned how to do: to focus in on and find, to research, what is most essential, beautiful, what is moving.

all of which is undetectable to the hurried eye, and exactly that what we miss with a half-absent, distracted gaze, when our focus is not pulled tight, when the too-wide-angle shot of our mental lens is overwhelmed by the obvious, the next thing, the noise, the distractions, or simply by the surface of how familiar everything seems.

"the unfamiliar is right before our eyes, but we look for what we know...

freedom, freedom, never greater than its owner...

no view is wider than the eye"

...so sing the kings of convenience so poetically in their sensitivity, and it is true. we cannot see what is right there and we look for adventure elsewhere.

but we are the owner of this freedom, this ability to pay attention, and we can cultivate mental photoshop to reveal, zoom in on, and discover life's treasures invisible to the naked eye unless it looks with a kind of naked-openness of engagement and receptivity to delight.

the gift of the present, right before our eyes. we limit or perceive ourselves.

simply click inside of you to downlaoad the latest, yet most ancient app: "mental photoshop" & run it behind your eyes!