Close-In [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on June 18, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

I am not good at minutia. Too much detail makes my brain hurt and forces my synapses to stop all action. I experience it as static, fuzzy noise where thought should be. It’s why I nearly flunked physics in high school. It’s why writing grants – a necessary activity for freelance artists – was akin to a near-death experience. On the upside, I’ve developed an uncanny capacity to stare into space for freakishly long amounts of time. Synapse recovery on the inside, deer-in-the-headlights on the outside.

Kerri took me for a walk. I was staring into space and she has learned that movement expedites my return to the land of the living. I was updating software in an attempt to fix a bug in my computer system. It was akin to delicate brain surgery and I had to dive into the weeds to understand what to do. I was well on my way through the procedure when it happened: white noise where coherent thought once trod. “Let’s stroll,” she suggested. I managed a head nod. I may or may not have remembered my shoes.

I am learning to discern between minutia of information and the expansive beauty of the world close-in. In my life I have avoided taking a closer look, reveling in my view from “30,000 feet”. I claimed to be a global thinker, which was true, but was also self-protection against having to write yet another torturous grant or swimming through pages and pages of budget numbers. I am learning to see the universe in a peony petal. E.O. Wilson introduced me to the miracle of ants. Kerri teaches me to see close-in. “Lookit!” she says, her photo a raindrop on a leaf, the fibers of our fallen tree, tiny seeds bursting from a pod. The secret geometry revealed, the pattern in the chaos.

Often, looking close-in is just like gazing into the night sky, marveling at the infinite wonder of The Milky Way.