In my core class this quarter, my mandatory one, I've had to use a sketchbook that the instructors handed to me during our introduction the course. It's not meant to be graded, and it's not meant to be seen by anyone but the owner, but it is meant for us- the students- the use in class, and everywhere else.
Thus far, my professor has asked the twenty people in her class to draw in the sketchbook at some point during each seminar we've had. Most recently, she requested that we take our sketchbooks outside with us for ten minutes and just sit and sketch whatever it is that we notice.
An object, or a feeling, or a person, or the place that we choose to sit in while we draw: just something that we notice within the moments that pass throughout the ten minutes.
I hesitated to do the exercise.
I notice plenty, I thought. I don't need to be told to take some time to go notice things.
Why hesitate, though? If I'm already a proficient noticer, why not do what my professor asked me to do?
I continued to procrastinate on the assignment, and left my sketchbook untouched for a couple of days. Then, one evening, I went into the one room on my floor that has a pet living within it. The following essay is the result of my noticing, and the result of the inspirations I got from the sketches I did in the room:
The Cat of 507
The residential assistant on the floor of my dorm, Sarah, has a cat called Monty. When I go into her room (number 507), Monty is typically the first thing that I see. I’ll walk in, shut the door, and sit on the horizontally-striped carpet among flecks of litter that the cat kicked out of her litter box. My eyes seem to never stray from Monty when I’m in her presence- she’s a beautiful animal, with fluffy fur and a pink tint to the insides of her otherwise white ears. The amount of attention I pay this cat has made me aware of how focused I can be when I notice something.
People are capable of being this aware of their surroundings, and it leads me to wonder why they can’t be so conscious of each other in day-to-day life. If a human can notice all the details of, say, a cat, why can’t they notice someone’s body language so easily? Why is it so hard to notice that a person is leaning away from you or fidgeting in an attempt to signal that they wish to leave, or don’t want you to be so close to them?
As I speak with Sarah, Monty will either wander about, left to her own devices, hopping from the bed to the bookshelf, clambering over books and the tissue box and more books. Then she’ll jump down onto the desk, and onto the floor, or sometimes straight onto the windowsill. Monty’s black fur has little white hairs flecking throughout it, leading into the white fur of her underbelly. When she chooses to play with Sarah instead of pacing the room, her claws come out. The pink pads on her toes point at Sarah as she scratches her hands, trying to keep her fingers caught between her paws and gnawing at the skin on Sarah’s wrist. When Sarah moves her hand away, Monty’s large green speckled eyes follow it with her little ears twisting as if it could hear the movement of a hand.in the air.
“Again and again, I find myself trying to really look at what I’m seeing” (Klinkenborg). When I’m around her, I feel like I’m really looking at Monty: I notice that one of her pads on her right front paw is black, and the length of her claws when they’ve been trimmed, and I recognize the way she arches her back as high as possible when she brushes up against the posts of Sarah’s bed. I enjoy being able to absorb every detail of little things, even if they’re just cats. “Every day I feel blinded by familiarity” (Klinkenborg); the process of noticing what I’d typically consider obscurities is familiar to me at this point in my life.
Watching Monty allows me to look without actual stimulation- I can notice her while reflecting really intensely, internally. I think of how as the years passed, I’ve come to appreciate everything I view more than I used to: “all I could do was look” (Klinkenborg). I notice where a person’s eyes flick to when they get distracted during a conversation, I’ve noticed the details in bark as I pass thick old trees, I’ve become more adept at noticing my friend’s minuscule gestures and twitches that indicate that they need something but are too nervous to ask. But why has it taken me so long to notice these things?
We have to be taught to notice the details and learn to love the small things in life that we’d usually take for granted, because what we’re seeing is so familiar to us. Things that were once familiar can still fade from our memories, though. Maybe what we need is “a good peeling”- or something, just to get us to really take in the tiny nice things that might be constant for a while but won’t last forever in our minds if we don’t really take them in.
Work Cited: Klinkenborg, Verlyn. “Really Looking.” The New York Times, 2nd Sept. 2002.
