In Fly By Night, artist Duke Riley trained 2,000 pigeons to fly above the Brooklyn Navy Yard at dusk with tiny lights attached to their legs. The performance invites us to really SEE something we are so accustomed to that we’ve become blind to it: the graceful flight of common pigeons. Says Riley:

Pigeons are actually paying quite a bit of attention to us all the time. Just as people do, they’re constantly learning and watching and absorbing and taking in information and paying a lot of attention to us even if we’re not paying attention any to them. 

We’ve often admire the flight of pigeons but hadn’t considered the idea of them “learning, watching, absorbing, taking in information and paying a lot of attention”.  

We’ve come across some other compelling examples of magical things hiding in plain sight IF we’d only see them…like this mysterious lip-shaped leaf.

Then there are the sightings that inspire embellishment and improvisation, like the massive Bougainvillea bush that Corinne Carey spotted hanging off a wall along L.A.’s 101 freeway.

Seeing “the bottom of a heart”, she clipped the top to enhance its shape (story here.)

Her act of sublime guerilla gardening, meant to be a “free gift to passersby”, has become known as “The Hollywood Heart”.

Frequent contributor Susan Dworski shared what she does to help her “see”:

I find a good way to refresh my vision when I’m feeling blocked creatively or just generally out of sorts, is to take my iPhone out into the streets or nature and make a game of trying to ‘see’ patterns and colors through the camera lens, bringing them home to play with later on my computer. 

“Play’ is the operative word here, for having no agenda except seeing, and no purpose except fooling around, makes for a relaxing, revivifying brain cleanse.

All are reminders to slow down enough to look around and see…

…the wonders and possibilities around us…

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