Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 29, 1995 TAG: 9506010031
SECTION: EDITORIALS PAGE: A-7 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Now, as the crow flies, this is only six or seven miles away. But you have to drive more miles than that to get there: over Lick Ridge, and then around and down between the bases of Poor and Fishers View mountains.
Consequently, I remarked the hearing of this train as something of a miracle. So very far away! Sounding so clearly through the winter air! There must have been, I decided, an extraordinary coincidence of necessary conditions on that one winter night.
But when I mentioned my miracle to neighbors, they said, ``Good grief, we hear that train all the time. Sometimes it sounds like it's passing through our kitchen.''
Since then, I've heard the train often, too. On dense foggy mornings. On sunny afternoons. On nights notable for nothing at all except the clarity of their stars. No miracles. No stunning conjunction of unusual conditions. Just air, and wind, and the train passing through Shawsville, six or seven miles away.
Thus have I come to realize that there was no miracle that other cold night either. Except the miracle that I'd never noted so obvious a sound before.
Have you also observed this? You learn a word that so perfectly describes a quality you've often tried to capture that you can't believe you've never heard it before. ``Exacerbate,'' for instance. Or ``paltry.'' ``Why haven't I known that?'' you ask yourself.
And then, suddenly, you seem to hear that new word everywhere you turn. In the newspaper, on sit-coms, in conversations with the very co-workers you always thought a little dense. Has that word really been there around you all along, just waiting to be heard? So, what's wrong with you, that you haven't heard it?
Or you find a flower in the woods that you've never seen before. Excited, you rush home to check your guides and discover - wonderful! - that this is a rarity, this pinkshell azalea, ``infrequent'' according to your guide, and on the conservation list. What a treasure!
But then, after you've seen it once, you see it here - another place in the woods - there - just over the rise - and everywhere - even growing in clumps alongside the road you travel every day. Do these frequent sightings diminish the plant's rarity? Certainly, they point up even deeper deficiencies in your attention.
And it's so important to pay attention, for we neither see nor hear what we've never seen nor heard before. Even concrete realities that occupy our very back yards remain invisible and silent until noted. Careless blindness and lackadaisical deafness diminish the richness of the world.
Unfortunately, willful blindness and deliberate deafness are much more common than simple heedlessness. And much more destructive.
Willful blindness and deliberate deafness show in remarks such as, ``What hunger? We have no hunger in this community.'' Or, ``Well, some men may beat their wives, but certainly no one I know does.'' Or, ``Isn't it terrible how those teen-agers up north are feeling so hopeless? The way they're resorting to suicide?'' Or, ``What homeless problem? What literacy problem? What poverty problem? What employment inequities?''
Open your eyes. Open your ears. Trains are passing right through your kitchen, every day.
Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.
by CNB