The park can be a place where I can feel remarkably free. Sometimes, I am bothered by the people there, but when I focus on other things, I feel liberated, and can sometimes perceive things in ways that are fantastic.
I saw the tree in the picture below during a recent morning. It seemed as though I could not fix my vision as I walked towards it. The branches were undulating, there and not there, perhaps partially due to the light wind. They seemed to be moving in a space as unfixed as mine, it's leaves, blurry. The lack of a fixed point of view upended the sense I generally have of being somewhere, and although the sensation struck me at the time as very beautiful, it now makes me a bit anxious as I think more about it.I remember many years ago visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York with my friends while we were all under the influence of psychedelic mushrooms, and when I saw the way the artist Paul Cézanne painted leaves in some of his landscape paintings, I understood that he had seen them much the same way I had in Central Park during the walk to see the museum. Although there has been things written that the drink absinthe (popular with many during his time), caused hallucinations, I imagine that he had altered his attitude, not his mind.
I have found that opening my eyes just a little, squinting even, can sometimes change my perspective a lot, as can the mindful exercise of looking at things as if I had never seen them before.
There have been times that I have been able to see without the use of drugs.
