Lu dans le New Yorker de cette semaine sous la plume de Ian Frazier (pas en ligne, sur abonnement) :
Jensen is thirty-one years old, slim, long-legged, and dark-haired, and his eyes have a special brightness that comes from use. Standing in the cavity where the tree had been, he trained his eyes on the uplifted roots and dirt. At first, he saw nothing, which didn't bother him. He enjoys looking hard at nothing and believes it is a skill, a meditative state, which artists should cultivate. After a number of Zen-like minutes, he registered a fleck of red among some thin root tendrils. Reaching up, he took the fleck between his thumb and forefinger. It was a bead. A tendril had grown through its middle. Leaning in closer, he saw others, red and white and yellow and blue. He picked them from the tendrils like fruit. Each measured about a sixteenth of an inch across, and there were more than sixty of them. He had found a cache of glass beads probably dating from Manhattan's fur-trade days, two hundred and fifty or three hundred years ago. Though surrounded by forest, he was close enough to pavement that a good run and a jump could have landed him on Dyckman Street, and he was almost excited enough to do that.
Je suis persuadé qu'on ne voit pas grand chose quand on ne regarde pas attentivement et qu'on passe à coté de merveilles et de découvertes intéressantes. En particulier dans la nature. Aujourd'hui je me suis astreint à regarder la nature avec attention, en prenant le temps, méditativement. Je n'ai pas fait de découvertes exceptionnelles mais j'ai remarqué des tas de petites choses que je n'avais jamais remarqué avant. Des tas de belles choses ordinaires et pourtant qu'on ne remarque pas généralement, ou qu'on ne remarque plus. Et j'ai trouvé l'expérience enrichissante et apaisante.