discovery

On a warm afternoon last autumn, Charlotte brought her dog to school.

She was supposed to be in history class, but couldn't bring herself to the classroom that day. Roonie and I didn't have a class to go to, and so we walked out to the parking lot, where the spaniel, Lily, sat in the passenger seat of Charlotte's car, wagging its tail.

The first thing Roonie said when she saw Lily was,

"Dog!"

Lily wagged her tail and pawed at the window, and Charlotte opened the door and brought her into the parking lot on a leash, where Roonie crouched down to pet her. "Dog!" she said again. "You're a dog!!"

This was all Roonie could think to say for a very long time as she sat ecstatic in the school parking lot with what truly was a dog.

And the dog licked her face and wagged its tail with every word, as if joining in on the discovery. "Yes! A dog!! That is me!!!!! I am dog!!"

I remember a time that autumn when I was sitting in the grass by a tree, and Charlotte looked at me very seriously and studiously, and with what seemed to be utmost amazement said softly, "Your eyes are so green."

And I nodded.

That is exactly the color of my eyes. They're not rimmed or freckled or striped or centered with any other hint of color. Nothing left to the imagination, nothing for metaphors to work with. They are constantly and completely the color green, and Charlotte marveled in this fact, like holding a single crayon from an eight-pack of Crayolas for the very first time.

The amazement of this commonplace simplicity was held as if of great significance, as if the color of the grass and trees and fences and highway signs has never been seen nor will ever be seen again.

And there were other times when she would state, astonished, other amazing facts, such as, "You're a girl."

The funniest part of all this is that, every time she would say something like that, I would feel almost exactly like the dog in the parking lot. "Yes!! A girl! That is me!!!! I am girl!!" 

As if I had never noticed before.

The familiarity of a silhouette on a stage is so stirring and powerful because of its factual actuality. It is as sure and simple as the glossary of a seventh grade science textbook, made no less astounding in its certainty. 

All that is is all that ever will be, and yet never will be again.

And so these small moments of discovery must be reveled in, closely and passionately, every dog and every color and every feeling ever felt. Nothing is new under the sun, this is true, but no sunrise is the same. No morning. No moment.

Everything is dying all the time, and so its worth is held in its entropy.

This has always been true, and has always been known, and yet is at this moment and every moment after discovered again and again. So I write it and type it and read it over again. And again. And again. 

And the dog wags its tail and paws at the window and barks at the knowledge of its name.