Breath by Breath

I can’t remember what first gave me the idea for this exercise, but it has stuck with me over the years because my first attempt had such a funny outcome.

The whole thing only takes a few minutes, and it can be quite revealing.   Here’s what you do:

1- Without looking, take a moment to write down (or describe to someone, or draw, etc.) the scene outside your window in as much detail as possible.  Preferably this will be a window you encounter often, one in your house or office.

2- Now look out the window and compare what you wrote to what’s really out there.  What details did you catch?  What did you miss?  Did you get the colors right?  Etc.

I first did this on a peaceful, early Sunday morning, with the birds chirping and the rest of the neighborhood still asleep.  I wrote down the scene outside my living room window– the houses across the street, the parked cars I expected in front of my building, and most importantly the bus stop bench cemented into the opposite sidewalk.

At that point, we’d lived here for three years, and that bus stop bench had been a frequent source of annoyance.  Our condo faces a busy road, about six blocks into the eight block walk from the fraternity houses near campus to the convenience (ie. cheap liquor) store, and that bench seems to draw drunk college kids like a magnet every Friday and Saturday night.  My husband and I have joked many times that if our car … accidentally … took out that bench, it might not be such a bad thing.

So, imagine my surprise when I moved on to step two of the exercise; I looked out the window to compare notes, and the bench was completely gone.  Simply vanished. The city must have taken it out because it had been disengaged from the concrete and the sidewalk repaved, though I never heard them do it.

There’s a funny game you can play with babies to watch their logic circuits starting to form.  Make a little wall out of a blanket or a book and let them watch you place first one object and then another behind the wall.  Now lift up wall to reveal … only one object (the other you’ve hidden away).  The baby will stare at the space where the second object should have been, unsettled by its vanishing.

The missing bench left me feeling kind of like that, all of my logical notions gone haywire.  Seriously–how did they dig up that whole bench and repave and I didn’t notice, didn’t hear any of it? Baffling.

A few weeks later, a new bench appeared and the drunk kids returned.  It’s still there as far as I know, but for good measure, I make sure to check whenever I walk by my window.

I don’t expect the laws of physics to bend for everyone doing this exercise, but perhaps something will surprise you.  Did you notice anything new?  Are you as observant as you expected?