I am told some love stories start like this: You grew up next door to your love. He was always there, but you never really took note because he was the "everyday neighbor." He was the one who called you fatso in the seventh grade and the one who sneered when you stood by the tree in your front yard in your prom dress, your parents proudly cooing and taking photos.
He was the one who had gangly legs and you could sometimes hear him playing video games late into the night in the Spring when the windows to both your houses were open. He was just a neighbor guy, nothing special. He was there, you sort of knew he was there but beyond that, he registered someplace close to zero in your day-to-day awareness. Joe Neighbor. Joe Every-ordinary-guy.
And then something happens. Something unexplainable.
You notice he looks adorable when he squints and then your eyes follow his gaze in attempt to figure out what he is seeing.
You stop hearing video game play and notice he is listening to James Taylor and Stravinsky.
You notice his gangly legs have turned into confident yet not arrogant strides as he ambles up the street on his way to take photos at the park nearby.
Nothing has changed and everything has changed.
This week it has been like that for me.
Not with a man: with a tree.
This tree has been my neighbor for twenty years. It stood, barely noticed, in my neighbor's yard in the shadow of an enormous pine I have written of in the past. I call that tree the Namaste tree. This small flowering tree never caught my attention, primarily because I wasn't looking at it.
I certainly wasn't looking closely at it.
I would walk by as I headed toward the views on the bluffs.
I would drive past as I arrived home after a long day or evening doing motherly or creative activities away from home.
Last year I first noticed it when I looked for flowers for my production of "First Kisses" at the Empty Space.
I noticed it then: blossoms, so large and fragrant and making their appearance in February.
Suddenly the tree was perfect. Exactly what I needed.
My neighbor told me to help myself to the many blossoms so I did. Hungrily I took blossoms and used them in my set. It was a part of my creative life for two weeks in in 2010. I saw it differently after that, but it took this season to turn a flicker of interest into an overwhelming magnet of love and admiration.
What changed?
I started a nature journal this year. I found myself seeking subjects for my drawings close to my home. I am committed to the concept of "urban nature". I want to share the grand news that we can step right outside our front doors, wherever we may live, and be immersed in delights from the Earth.
When something becomes a subject of artistic, creative or soulful study something else happens.
It becomes beautiful. It is suddenly compelling. Out of the blue your hunger for knowledge about the object of your study increases. You simply can't get enough of it.
Some of my first nature journal entries are from early February, when the Tulip Magnolia buds were fattening. They were furry and primarily shades of green with some dusky mauves and pinks showing through. I sketched, I touched, I watched. I fell in love.
This morning was the fifth day in a row I purposefully spent time with "my tree". I purposefully moved in circles around the tree, not getting too close because that is normally my strategy. Today, I wanted to watch her from a distance, to see if seeing her differently made me notice anything differently or feel anything differently.
I sketched her full tree self. I noticed how one large limb bent to the West and one branch reached straight up to the sky. I noticed how much of the tree leaned out into the tree, as if to watch the comings and goings of Alta Vista Drive.
I couldn't smell her sweetness from this far away and yet I understood more of the context of her life, not simply the "up close" perspective.
I came home and sought quotes about tulip magnolias, about writing about tulip magnolias in nature journals. I found one woman in Philadelphia who took photos of the Tulip Soulangiania, but that was all I could find.
I figure in some text book someplace, a scientist who feels similar love as the blue color naturalist I am loves the tree.
With each visit to the tree, each moment noticing her, the love deepens, not unlike our love for people and other non-sentient things like cars or antiques or television shows. Somehow this tree and I chose each other after twenty years of being neighbors.
All it took was noticing and getting close.
What is waiting for you to notice?
What will you do today to get closer to something that waits for your attention?
Activate Your Passion.
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© 2011
Julie Jordan Scott
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