I've been having another one of those sensory cortex days, a day when the world is so beautiful and comfortable that I have trouble staying conscious, trancing out on one thing and then another - the sight of nearly anything in the all day beauty light of a sun low in the south shining through clear air, the sound of a goose honking as it passes, the smell of leaves moldering, two calves licking another that has been feeling poorly for a day or two, a grinning dog, a shower of leaves lazily drifting down to grass I had just raked clean - it's all just so, so good. And all the better for being unexpected, a surpise gift.

Unfortunately, consciousness returns, but perhaps I can make some lemonade of it. Annie Dillard said it so well in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

I've been thinking about seeing. There are lots of things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises. The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand. But -- and this is the point -- who gets excited by a mere penny? If you follow one arrow, if you crouch motionless on a bank to watch a tremulous ripple thrill on the water and are rewarded with the site of a muskrat kit paddling from its den, will you count that sight a chip of copper only, and go your rueful way? It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourishged and fatigued he won't stoop to pick up a penny. But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple. What you see is what you get.