The Eye of the Beholder 仁者見仁

We walked home from grocery shopping at Carrefour 家樂福 tonight, heading back up the hill in the gathering dusk. Cool wind rushed down the street and tried to slip its fingers inside the jackets we never thought we'd wear in Taiwan台灣. Dark clouds scudded across the deepening gray sky and muted silver wisps of mist touched down and lifted back off of the heavily wooded mountains ahead of us. Ping and I both carried backpacks filled with yummy food, including our delicious biendang便當 for tonight's dinner. It was another good evening in a good life! We talked about how much we love all the different things we've been through: Christmas holidays in the Wallowa Mountains, trips to Lake Tahoe, and now our new home in Beitou北投.

It's all about appreciation. Whatever is right in front of us is what it is, of course, but how we approach it--how we see it--determines how we experience it.



This holiday season, we don't have our usual tree, and because of the concrete construction of our house, we can't just tack something to the wall like we could in the U.S. So how do we decorate? And where? Ping found a way to make one of our few horizontal spaces very cheerful!

We were given this neat little white bowl by one of her cousins. It looks like a claw-foot tub, and the spoon that comes with it is like a little guy soaking in that tub. Ping filled the bowl with some of our favorite ornaments that we had carefully shipped from the States.

When I [Mark] came into the room tonight after scanning my most recent sketch, she said: "I really had to tweak this to make it work."

"Tweak what?" I wondered. Then she showed me this lovely picture she'd taken of her arrangement."That's perfect!" I said.

This is how it feels, not just what it appears to be at first glance. While the original picture wasn't exactly right, she was able to work the image until it said what as in her heart.

Isn't that what art is all about? In the end, perhaps, this is what life is all about: seeing the richness of possibility all around us. Around every corner lives something wonderful.

On our first hike in Beitou we crossed a bridge high up in the hills. I looked upstream and snapped a picture of some boulders with water trickling between them. I've been looking forward to drawing this ever since. If you look at the reference photo, you won't find the exact image to the left. When I drew the scene in my sketchbook, I wanted to depict what it felt like to me.

Perhaps it is when the eye of the beholder is open, looking around in wonder, that all things begin to display their wonderfulness, their mystery, their uniqueness, their beauty.