It was a lovely spring day. The sun was shining radiantly in a cloudless blue sky, suffusing everything in a beautiful golden sheen. The flowers were starting to bloom, dotting the roadsides with pastel colours, even as teeming humanity rushed pass on their business, carrying out the mundane in a day that was anything but. A cool wind was blowing, making the tree leaves rustle amidst the hubbub of the greatest city on Earth (one of them, at any rate). It was perhaps slightly unfortunate, then, that I spent most of my day at a little desk within the dark depths of the DMS Watson Science Library, trying to coerce my brain into letting in the intricacies of statistical mechanics. Yup, spring is here, but cramming season is here too!

On my way home, I miraculously managed to find a seat on the no. 13 bus. I took out my library copy of Joseph Conrad's Nostromo (superb book so far), and kept myself occupied. As the bus passed through St. John's Wood, I raised my head from the pages of the book and looked at a building along the road. Something, something suddenly clicked inside me. I realised: I pass through this place on my way to uni almost every day, and I never noticed that building has round windows!

I started to look out the window and see. Certainly, I've lived in the area for almost a year, taken the same bus routes for scores of times, and the images of most of the things around there would have passed through my retinas many times. Yet, my eyes were open, but they did not see.
How often do we really use our senses? We can taste, but most of the food we eat is hurriedly shoved into our mouth and swallowed. We can hear, but most sounds, even music, is ignored in the bustle of our daily lives.

We go through the daily motions of life, in a cycle of days and nights, but most of the time we keep our perceptions reigned in. Perhaps one cannot always be in a state of constant wonder (in one of Terry Pratchett's books, there is a character - I can't remember his name - who's suffix is 'the Perpetually Surprised', expressing wonder at the most mundane things)....experience is the raw matter of life, certainly, but one needs introspection as well.

I've heard it said that the world is an ugly place. One thing I've noticed is that we often notice the ugly, but not the beautiful. We automatically shun the beggar on the streets, but how many of us notice the laughter of a toddler, and hear his giggles?