...then there's always that one friend who uses Apple Music

Freedom is crumpling up a receipt 

Freedom is the sand I used to play in with my friends

Freedom is a tiny kitten pawing at my feet

Freedom is my untied shoelaces

Freedom is drawing a smiley face on a little pumpkin 

Freedom is a balloon gently floating away in the wind 

Freedom is pulling back the curtains on a sunny morning

Freedom is an earl grey donut I bought from a cafe nearby

Freedom is putting tinsel up around my house

Freedom is soft candlelight brightening the room 

Freedom is my plane ticket home

I sit leftover on an empty floor, an abandoned room. The terrain is rough and worn out. All I see are the tiny ants scattered around making their way towards me as I lay here and rot. 

The people who stayed here left a long time ago, seeming to be in a hurry. I wonder what could've been so urgent that they didn't even realize I was left here. I bet I would've been helpful wherever they are. 

I dreamt last night that they hadn't left me here. That I wasn't ripped from the bunch and left to brown. Instead I lived an exciting and adventurous life, I dreamt of staying in a fruit bowl! A land full of diverse fruit to meet those who come from lands all across the world! 

Unfortunately there's no signs of anyone coming here to move me anytime soon. That dream will just have to remain a fantasy for now, even though I secretly always wanted to meet an apple. I guess instead I'll just sit here and enjoy the cool breeze coming through the broken window until the ants pick up what's left of me. 

Freedom is pulling back the curtains on a sunny morning

Freedom is an earl grey donut I bought from a cafe nearby” 

Each of these lines has detail that expands beyond just the nouns “balloon, curtain, donut” to curate a specific sentiment of gentleness such as specifying a sunny morning and that the cafe is a cozy local spot. 

Then, in the ekphrasis activity, I wrote from the perspective of a banana in a painting. For this example, there was not much detail in the photo to draw on which meant I had to add detail by drawing from my imagination. In this practice, I wrote “All I see are the tiny ants scattered around making their way towards me as I lay here and rot.“ Adding in the detail about ants is something I picked up from careful observation and understood as something small that creates a strong emotional feeling of a deserted land taken over by nature. 

Finally, I found that slow looking built the foundation for other careful observation practices such as deep listening. I noted that as I sat in the public space, I heard a lot of things I hadn’t thought to pick up and point out previously. An example is when I mentioned “Chairs scraping, friends laughing and gossiping, keyboards clacking and more. I began to notice the smaller aspects of the restaurants in the building, from the milk steamer at Starbucks to the signature smell of Subway bread.” While these are all basic everyday sounds, they are easily overlooked in the same way many visual details were prior to having practiced slow looking.