A new daily project?

I am winding up two weeks in England, a little experiment in self-awareness (I guess you could say). I more or less stayed away from the main tourist sights (the British Museum being a brief exception), or anything that cost money for admission (aside from Kew Gardens). Really, mostly what I did was walk. And walk and walk and walk. In London, through various neighborhoods, along the banks of the Thames, through green spaces—Kew, Kensington Gardens, Hampstead Heath; and then I spent a week on the Thames Path, from Lechlade in Gloucestershire to Windsor in Berkshire. Walking, daily, 20, 30, even, one day, 40,000 steps. It was glorious.

And every day, too, there were so many things that caught my attention, whether a piece of public art by Antony Gormley (in Greenwich and then again in Eton), a cute and funny dog (every single day: so many dogs here!), a snatch of conversation—with Steve the Northmoor Lock keeper, or the 90-year-old man in Windsor who kept declaring, "There! I made you laugh!," or our captain James ⬉, just now winding up a 13-year career with his hotel boat the Tranquil Rose. The red kites (that's a bird), the weasel at the Church of St. John, Inglesham, the rutting deer at Windsor Great Park, the flash of turquoise across the river that I declare to be a kingfisher. Some arcane fact of history or of popular culture. The ways that people spend their time, whether to make a living or simply to amuse themselves. It's been, to say the least, stimulating.

Today in my FB Wordle group, I posted this quote, by Anthony Doerr: "'Research,' for me, is a big word that encompasses a lot of different activities, all of them based around curiosity. Research is traveling to places, or studying snowflakes with a magnifying glass, or excavating one's memories. Research is walking around Hamburg with a notebook."

Based around curiosity. 

To which Gabi responded with a quote by Zora Neale Hurston: "Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose." And, doing a little research, I finished the quote: "It is a seeking that he who wishes may know the cosmic secrets of the world and they that dwell therein."

The cosmic secrets of the world and they that dwell therein. 

I've been missing my old projects of paying attention, of being actively curious, here in this blog. And so, I think I might give it another go. Once I get home and settled in. This is merely my Statement of Intention. Let's see if I remember to actually do it.

(I couldn't find a single image of my own to illustrate this post with, so I googled and found the above painting by Doris Duschelbauer, entitled "Curiosidad." It works.)