seeing

Astonishing. Getting older and older, I still stand here at this window, watching—as if never having watched anything like it before . . . Through my breath condensing into fog on the cold window pane, I still see bare branches chasing their shadows in the icy wind, black threads of water crinkling through fissures in the frozen river. I am aware that what I am seeing is no more, no less than the great Mystery, that of being here at all, that of seeing it—as from the other side of a mirror—snow, birds, my breath still condensing, that breath that started so long ago as my first cry.

-- Frederick Franck in "Behind the Mask" Parabola 20:2