Looking

We spent all day looking. Practicing looking. Looking and drawing. Looking and describing. Art class day one was training our eyes to see.

Now I’m standing in the kitchen and I catch a glimpse of the clouds outside. I see the blue and puffy white, with spots of pink. I decide I’m going to practice what we were taught. So I stand a little longer and look. I look. I look. What is that? Is it smoke? Is it a bubble. It looks like it’s fading, but also growing stronger.

I must have been staring pretty hard because all of the sudden two students are behind me saying, “What is that!?” We open the door and go out on the terrace.

We all look together. Throwing out different ideas. Bug? Smoke? A balloon? We finally conclude is must be a group of birds heading south for the winter. I’ve never seen anything like it before. And I would have missed it had my eyes not been trained to look.

Who knows what I might see next.