January 4: Vicarious Experience

Thought-Random:

        To be under the weather is tough enough in weather like we're having now...tough with snow and ice and rain and some wind notwithstanding the sun! But the world wouldn't be  the world I know now were it not for beautiful people and beautiful things around me.

         So I am barely out of the traces of the cough from that flu which had me few weeks earlier.  Feeling much better now with the therapeutic touch of friends and loved ones, I look around my study corner for some aspect of interest and I lay my eyes on this orchid. No, not the real thing... just a nice photo of it from dear Bong in Malaysia...and it lights up memories of when I'd receive one pressed dry and enclosed in a love letter .... and of when one time, another one was handed to me personally, gently put in my hand, guided by another one, to clasp in all its freshness and fragrance.

        But this picture does well for the enjoyment. With my eyes, I slowly trace the outline of each petal as I take in the varying purple shades of the flower. Very much like tracing the outline of a beloved's face, my fingers outlining his ears, his eyes, now fingers tracing the bridge of his nose and immediately putting my index perpendicularly pressed to his lips - in an effort to stifle his instinctive response to the sudden playful twitch I made at the tip of his nose! Ooops!

        Back to the beautiful picture of the orchid! But there is such a thing as vicarious experience, isn't there?