I am interested in gaze-shifting lately...looking for the alternate view. I remember reading a book by Tom Brown Jr. when I was rather young, a certain passage has always stuck with me. I can't quote it, but the gist was about authentic "seeing". In our "label" frenzied world we are fascinated with words, as if words hold a certain power and once something is labeled, it is known. We label things (car, door, pencil, rock, shell, tree, leaf, flower, sand, etc.) and the moment we have labeled it, we stop "seeing" it. We don't look deeply. We label this person, place, thing, feeling or experience with a name or concept and consider it seen and tidily place it in it's appropriate cognitive category. In so doing, we miss the beauty, the mystery, the awe. Tom Brown Jr. was talking about this in terms of sand, how a handful of sand holds a rainbow of color, a history of unimagined proportions, unique and unbelievably beautiful. Few of us stop