This drawing was a 30 minute response to David Abram's The Spell of the Sensuous (page 31-44). The excerpt I was responding to is on page 33, "My life and the world's life are deeply intertwined; when I wake up one morning to find that a week-long illness has subsided and that my strength has returned, the world, when I step outside, fairly sparkles with energy and activity: swallows are swooping by in vivid flight; waves of heat rise from the newly paved road smelling strongly of tar; the old red barn across the field juts into the sky at an intense angle."

When I read this excerpt, all I could think about was when I had a basil plant that thrived the more I payed attention to it and the more I payed attention to it, the happier I felt. It really helped having something that was alive and able to just be there, as weird as it sounds. I ended up taking it home as it grew too big for my windowsill and if I left it in my dorm over break, it would've died. Well, it ended up dying from getting infested by bugs anyways. After that, I felt a bit empty and sad.