Observing is like breathing for me.
I don’t realise I’m doing it.
My writer’s brain is hard wired to suck up countless sights and sounds, make them larger-than-life via intricate descriptions, before flinging ‘em lovingly onto a page or into a conversation.
It’s like walking around with a giant set of multi-sensory antennae on my head, always on, always alive to the world around me and every living thing in it…
…from diamond-like dew on leaves and the pigeon on my ledge who sits still as the rain hammers his head to picking up on people’s mannerisms, words, even their scents and dental work.
I didn’t say it was glamourous. Or relaxing. However, it is endless fascination. But the real fun?
Recollecting it all for… you.
I sat next to a man on the tram this week. He was glued to a Youtube video on his phone which had him in fits of (silent) giggles – his body jiggling beside me. Annoying and kinda charming too.
I live in an apartment flanked by stables, lemon trees and a horseracing track, minutes from a giant park. It’s extreme glamping in my view, owing to the various creatures that enjoy the occasional (uninvited) sleepover in my home – spiders, ants, beetles and snails.
It sounds more national geographic than it really is.
Yesterday afternoon, the glass sliding doors in my living room hosted a little latte-coloured moth. She rested flat against the clean pane, her delicate diaphanous wings like living lace.
‘Wow,’ I breathed.
© Phyllis Foundis 2026