There’s a particular building with a particular smokestack that I have been watching every morning for years. I can see it from my bed, from my desk, from my couch. It has unknowingly held my attention as I’ve watched its billows change shape and color. I don’t even realize it’s mesmerizing me as I open my eyes with the morning light and as I sip my tea while I slowly come to life.

I lived in New York for 6 years, in the same apartment. Same view. Same skyline. I must have witnessed the same angle a thousand times, and taken hundreds of pictures of it that, by all accounts, should be identical But somehow, they’re all different.

Why?

light - temperature - season - time - weather - wind

While our manufactured world changes slowly, or not at all, everything else is always shifting around us making everything new again, moment to moment.

Concrete doesn’t evolve.

Everything else does.

Constantly.

Look away too long and the sky has already changed to another shade of pink you may never see again.

The changing shapes made by smokestacks blowing in the winter wind. Even a defining symbol of industrial; life becomes about constant change when it interacts with wind and light.

The reflection of sunlight on a particular day - - - the new angle it hits a window on a building that hasn’t moved in years.

The possibility of infinite variation.

The surprise of unrepeatable color.

The wonder of moment specific light.

The singularity of forms that exist only once.

Whether we experience this perpetual evolution and constant renewal, of course, depends on our ability to notice it.

What do we see when we look out at the same view, from the same window, on another Monday?

Do we only notice the fixed or also the alive around it?

What happens when we reorient our attention on the on-going regeneration of the living world instead of only perceiving the immovable and static?

And how does the experience of our environment, of our lives, of ourselves, change when we (re)learn to identify with ever-evolving nature instead of with the stagnant concrete world?