The Second Look at Small Things

To see a World in a Grain of Sand and a Heaven in a Wild Flower, hold Infinity in the palm of your hand and Eternity in an hour.

Attention is mostly a matter of staying. The first glance hands you a category: cup, hand, window. The second asks for more. Hold your mug and the category falls away; there is the faint ridge where the glaze thickened, the warmth arriving unevenly through your fingers, a small chip you stopped noticing years ago. Nothing grew larger. You simply stayed long enough for the ordinary to stop being general.