Nomadic Narrative

I could have hot-footed it to the supermarket without even looking up at the sky. I could have kept my pace while gazing up at the Earth’s ceiling every few blocks. Instead, I decided to come to a complete halt and gaze at the first rainbow I had seen in the city. It seemed so wide and near that I decided to look at it from a different angle — the arch grew. I hurried to the next block — the arch revealed its beginning and end.

I stood mouth agape at such surreal beauty framing the stop-and-go traffic, the tangled power lines and the side-by-side buildings. The pink, green and purple crescents were so vibrant that I could still see them burned onto the back of my eyelids after I looked away. I took a deep breath and tilted my head even further upward. I followed a mauve blanket toward a dimmer set of stripes. The double-rainbow captured a powder-blue sky and pierced a single whale-shaped cloud swimming away.

We always talk about stopping to smell the roses, but routine often lulls us away from the beauty of living in the moment. It takes concentration and practice. It’s easy to be in the present while we’re traveling. When we arrive home, it’s a way of being worth reliving. Italians call it: Sensazione — “the continual refinement of the senses, especially sight, as the means to enliven experience.” Leonardo Da Vinci, an expert in sensazione also described it as: saper vedere, or knowing how to see.

Learn more about living la dolce Da Vinci vida.