Watching and waiting

I have always been pretty good at watching. Waiting, not so much.

Which seems oddly out of sync to me, since both activities require flexing roughly the same disciplinary muscles. In each case, the whole point is the let it come to you rather than actively pursuing…whatever. Right?

I suppose you might say that watching is the more participatory activity in that it is acquisitive – taking mental ownership of idea, sights, sounds from an outside source.  Waiting is more inquisitive, and after all, who really likes the long pause before the answer?

I dearly love going on noticing adventures during which I can’t possibly know what I’m going to find but patience in anticipation of that which I know will be arriving (soon?) is quite beyond me and always has been. And it annoys me that I don’t understand why.

Writing a book is truly sublime torture. And no, that was not a non sequitur.