Look around you

I don’t know about you, but I imagine that most people these days, in places like Dundee, that is – ordinary/ extraordinary cities, full of thousands of people just trying to get by, that most of us are so busy that we don’t really notice things around us, not as much as we could. I imagine we are all rushing around a lot, trying to survive whilst working for wages or having to rely on benefits or on a pension. Our busyness and our worries may take up more of our time than noticing reflections in a puddle – blue sky and white clouds, or a single leaf, the last yellow-green leaf on a sad city-centre tree, and it falls to the road, and maybe no one out of thousands of passers-by sees it fall.

Does it matter much whether we notice things like that? I don’t know, but when we notice everyday things which are always there but we never noticed before, it feels good. Like the world is perhaps a little bit more magical. Like when someone takes a photograph of a gravestone in the Howff with a skull and crossbones on it. And we think – wow, that looks unusual, and maybe we forget we had walked by that place a hundred times or more but never noticed it.

I remember a long time ago, I had a friend who was recovering from the trauma of being in a war, and seeing horrible things, and he spent a lot of time just sitting in cafes around Dundee, watching people walk by. His favourite cafes were ones where you could sit at a table outside in summer, and watch people stroll by with their dog, drag their children shopping or be dragged by their children. Or, you might see groups of laughing or screaming teenagers who would flow past in a kind of semi-chaotic rush. And this guy, who was good at noticing lots of things, said to me: “Harvey, have you ever noticed that people walk in a big hurry most of the time around here? They are always in a rush, even when they don’t need to be. Sometimes, they could slow down, sit and breathe and watch, but they don’t.” I hadn’t really noticed. But after he told me, I noticed it a lot. And I started wondering what other things I hadn’t noticed.

Another friend of mine, who is no longer here and left a big hole in the world when he passed away, taught me about the usefulness and the fun of looking up as you walk through the streets. There’s a whole world you never see. Jungles of grass and weeds sprouting from the roofs of tall, damp buildings; splashes of colour from graffiti art – in such precarious positions that you wonder how anyone could have climbed up there, and you wonder why you never noticed that ten-foot name before, sprayed in blue and red. And, if you get in the habit of looking up high at buildings as you pass by, it’s easier to get into a habit too of noticing things lower down, nearer street level, but maybe just a few feet above your own height (which in my case, isn’t that high). It was in that way I first noticed a faded painted sign on a wall for an old photography shop, long gone, and I had passed it by but not noticed it for several years as I walked to work. Then, one day it was there for me to notice – maybe from a hundred years ago. Time travel achieved simply by keeping my eyes open.

It’s not always easy to notice things. I was in a café early one morning a few days ago, worrying about this and that. I don’t think I was even noticing which café I was in. And just before I stood up to go to work, I did this little breathing exercise I sometimes use to calm myself, because I think I was worrying too much. So, all you do is – take a deep breath in, for around 4 seconds, then hold your breath for 2 seconds, and then you breathe out for 6 seconds. It works best if you repeat it a few times. In, hold your breath, out. Repeat. And, I felt myself getting calmer and a bit happier. I began to notice the airy sunny space all around me as the sunlight came in through big windows. It was early so there wasn’t many people around, and it was quiet – just a few nearby creaking sounds of shop shutters opening, a distant laugh, the click clack of someone passing in hard heeled shoes. And then all of a sudden, a young woman walked by with bright yellow trousers, kind of flowing things, they reminded me of an old cartoon I’d once seen with brightly coloured Arabian characters. And I noticed that she wore brown boots and that one of the trouser legs had caught in the boot. Earlier, I’d been thinking about characters I had to write about in a short story, and I thought I’d like to describe this young woman’s appearance for a character – a brave young woman who fights fascists. And, I found myself thinking: people sometimes become invisible if they are too symmetrical in their appearance, It’s the asymmetry that makes them memorable. A missing button or tooth, a collar fastened up to the wrong button, or just one trouser leg trapped in a boot.  

A few days ago, I was in Glasgow, standing alongside around 4000 other people, demonstrating against around 500 racists. I noticed a lot of different things that day, but I missed things too, until later when I noticed things in photographs, things that were right in front of me on the day. One thing was a sign, handwritten, carried by a happy looking man with a fantastically detailed large puppet of a red dragon. The red dragon was so fascinating – I was actually a little bit scared of it – that I think I can be forgiven for not noticing the sign the man carried. It read: ‘You don’t have to look like me to be my friend.’ 

It’s good to notice things around us. And when we notice people, it’s like we see them for the first time. We see them, we see us.

Harvey Duke