Raise your hand if you see Vincent Van Gogh’s green stars when you look up into the night sky. Me, I don’t see them right away. I have to look and look. (Look Jane, look.) It takes patience and stamina– the ability to wait, to work, to keep faith. I am asking my eyes for much and they burn with effort.
The rewards are hard-earned and far-reaching. Vision is a muscular sense. Working out neural pathways, especially the ones that yield green stars, is an honest-to-God worthwhile endeavour.
No day is complete without an attempt at some sort of worthy action: praiseworthy, blameworthy, anything provoking a new thought or way of using your eyes. Look deeper, look longer. Put your back into it. Wait… and give the universe time to respond and recognize you as a seeker.
Then will come the hidden colour of the stars. Then you will see Emily Carr’s dancing trees, too, and all the rest that is just this side of vision.
andrea trace 