FROM THE LAB · FIELD NOTE · SEPTEMBER 8, 2026
Let's See What We Find—and Find What We See
On walnuts, accumulated attention, and the difference between observing and perceiving
There is a difference between being an Observer and becoming a Perceiver.
An Observer looks at what is there. A Perceiver enters into a relationship with it.
But perhaps those are not fixed positions. Perhaps there are many shades of attention between them:
Seeing. Looking. Noticing. Observing. Regarding. Discerning.
Over the past several months, I’ve photographed walnuts in different stages of becoming: green fruit, changing husk, brown husk, nut, walnut heart.
I’d seen every one of these forms before. But until now, I’d never thought of placing them together in a progression.
Placed beside one another, they become more than a collection. They form a kind of constellation—a continuity made visible.
What first appears to be a sequence begins to feel less like a straight line and more like a spiral. Each form contains something of the others: what it had been, what it is becoming, and what I can now recognize because I’ve seen the whole.
I’ve picked these walnuts up. Turned them over in my hands. Photo-graphed them. Brought some home.
I’ve watched their green outer husks become mottled and brown. I’ve found them darkened and collapsing inward, and stripped down to the familiar ridged nuts hidden inside.
And when some of those nuts broke open, I found something else.
Caverns.
Hearts.
They were there before I perceived them, of course. But once I had seen them, they became part of what I began to look for—and part of what I was able to recognize.
Attention accumulates.
What I’ve already seen becomes part of what I’m able to see now.
Perhaps that is one of the differences between observing and perceiving. Not a hierarchy. Not one better than the other. Just different ways of encountering what is there.
We see.
Sometimes we look.
Something catches our attention, and we notice.
We stay with it and observe.
Sometimes we linger long enough to regard.
And somewhere among all those layers, we may begin to discern relationships that weren’t visible to us before.
Not necessarily because the thing we’re looking at has changed.
Sometimes the Perceiver has.
In this case, perhaps we both had.
The walnuts had been changing across time. And as I encountered them again and again, something had been accumulating in me as well.
Each encounter became part of the next.
Once something has been seen, it cannot be entirely unseen. It becomes part of how we perceive what comes next—and sometimes part of how we perceive what came before.
Maybe that’s why I keep returning to the idea of a revealing.
Not a revelation. Revelation feels somehow finished—as though something has finally shown us what it is.
A revealing leaves room for another layer.
Time passes. Things emerge. We change. We return. We see again.
Not quite from where we started, because we’re carrying what we’ve already seen with us.
A spiral.
And then there is the angel.
I placed a walnut in her hands, and she appeared to regard it.
Neither the angel nor the walnut had changed. But together, they became another encounter—another occasion to pause, look, and see what might reveal itself.
And perhaps that’s what I’ve been doing with these walnuts all along.
Seeing what I find.
And finding what I see.
A Sensory Pause
Look a little longer.
Experience the Pause →
