Saturday, June 20, 2009

Mastery of admiration

One of the cute and poignant things I encountered during my recent stay in Hong Kong was the Yuen Po Street Bird Garden. There you could take a look and (if you would like) purchase a variety of birds. Those animals of flight were exhibiting their gaiety in the cages hung from the roof, or, the case may be, piled up on the pavement. I was particularly interested in birds which looked like a magpie. These birds pass the mirror self recognition test. It would be fun to observe their behavior as they learn to make use of the visual reflections.

Observation is an art open to anybody, but takes many years to develop and refine. One old gentleman admiring the birds stands in a particular vividness in my memory.

He seemed to be an epitome of the mastery of admiration.



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good morning, I am Michiko, PhD student, School of Nursing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. So amazing. You are (were) here. I am regretting I had no information on your lecture in Poly.... Your books and writings are fascinating. They sometimes really surprise me. I love Anne's stories as well. Thank you.

Ben said...

Bird watching has always fascinated me. Once you really stop to listen and watch, there's so much variety and beauty to be seen and heard. Thanks for the great blog.