Watching w/what Objective?

I'm sitting parked in a car, curbside, watching:

5:15pm

The building is a 2 story Victorian, a powder blue, slightly grayed with age. It stands on the corner edge of a T intersection, pressed visually against the backdrop of a hill so steep that you perceive a sheet of green, although hill is cut with a wide terrace of a soccer field, which the topmost windows overlook. The trim along the eaves is a plum wine color and has a decorative scalloped cut. There's a front porch, large enough for table and chairs, shaded by small shrubbery in which an empty nest at far left is nestled. There are many windows of various sizes, evidencing an attic and full basement in addition to the two main floors. There is a carport in the back big enough for a sedan and a half. Four steps and a small landing lead up to the back door. The house is gutted from the old, and not quite ready for the new.

5:18pm

To the house's left, our right, there is a Maple. Not a sapling, nor an old tree, something in between. The leaves are the characteristic five-point hand-sized type, and there are bunches of "helicopter" seed pods. Both a brilliant verdant juicy green. The crown rises to the top of the fairly new roof in height, but the trunk is only about a foot in diameter. The mature trees in this area by comparison are around 4' wide. The brown-gray bark accordingly is only moderately rough, and the thin branches easily sway in the slight breeze and stretch towards the upper story windows, not quite reaching. The tree shades the living room side of the house. There is no special area surrounding the foot of the tree; there is just grass below and no roots are visible. It is the only one near the house, the other greens are shrubs.

5:21pm

In the top branches is a bird. The state's bird. A robin. Orange bellied, with bark colored head and wings. It shifts its feet up and down and consequently bobbles on the twig as if (consciously?) playing on a teeter totter. It is twittering cheerily and seems focused on a particular point near or just beyond the house, singing/ calling. The series of notes is followed by a couple of staccato chirps. No other robin is visible. No nest is visible in the tree, but again there is one fully built within the porch corner shrubbery. The bird suddenly scratches its back with a leg and then flies forward, alighting the roof of the house briefly, and taking flight again and disappearing behind the neighboring rooftop.

Reflections....

I note that I use vaguely anthropomorphic terms for the building... describing how it stands, and its background in the landscape and in history. It is otherwise static but changing. And again, quite personal language for the tree. It is moving, and relational in my viewing, to the building. The bird is the most active element and inferences are strongest (consciousness, motivation, purpose) despite attempts are being, as requested "objective." I think I have refrained from judging, but I seem to have suggested inherent bias in perceived motivation... where there may or may not be any, or shouldn't be, in the inanimate... all of which is very delicate and subtle in the wording. I suspect that the purpose of this assignment is to make one aware that these nuances are all the more prevalent and hazardous when given another human as subject of observation. And how much more so critical if the other is beyond the scope of one's cultural or experiential or developmental context? ...whether foreign, gifted or disabled.

Poem...

The Articulation

I know not the way

the wind blows in

my imagination

a space so nearly

close irrational

and relational

beneath the gavel,

the eye that strikes,

at object with notes

visual and critical,

as passing of time

while sitting in the

bubble of a car

Parked in idle...

05.12.2023

Assessment & Inclusion challenge @7v7