Second Glance

This is the bamboo fountain that resides in the small Zen garden on campus; usually it might get a passing glance from students rushing to their next class, if they happen to hear the thump and splash the tube makes when it has filled enough to tip and pour the water into the pool.
However, on the day that I took these photographs, something was different: there were flowers floating in the water. White flowers, with one solitary red one in the center, made the little pool inexplicably extraordinary. Whomever had placed them so carefully had left no explanation, so we were all left simply to wonder...and to take a second glance at something often taken for granted. Is it a memorial? A shrine of sorts? A celebration of something? Or just a random act of generosity, bringing a little beauty back into the world, into our everyday lives?
It was interesting to see the reactions of others, as I sat on a bench nearby to eat my lunch. One guy stopped and stood staring for almost five minutes, as if in a trance, meditating, or just plain puzzled. Others walked on by, oblivious, talking with friends or buried in their phones. Many gave the scene a second glance, a few wandering closer to look, to wonder, to smile and move on.
When the extraordinary is unexplained, even if as simple as this, it takes us by surprise. Does it have a purpose? Who knows... but at least it invites us to think, to look again. I think that good art has this same quality.