What does it mean to gaze back at what gazes? What are we missing? In the words of poet Kaia Sand, how do we notice what we notice? How do we notice what we don’t notice? How can we see that which has disappeared?

As a college student, I witnessed a classmate leave pregnant on a Friday and return Monday as a new mom. In a handful of days, she gave birth and came right back to class; only now she needed to care for her newborn who would dominate her time and energy.

There was a time during what now feels like the distant past when being lost in an unfamiliar place was a familiar and near-universal experience. Without a phone with which to input an address or location so we could be assuaged with step-by-step commands to a relevant reference point, most of us experienced the disorientation associated with our inner cognitive map’s learning curve.

During my undergraduate years at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), I rarely made my way to the university’s library. For my research, I often used the library’s digital resources without much thought. Those resources had always been available to me, and I had never taken a moment to consider just how those digital resources made their way to me.

Before the summer of this year, I had only set foot inside the Centennial Museum and Chihuahuan Desert Gardens at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) perhaps once or twice. Unfortunately, I do not recall what prompted me to enter a building that I had passed on several occasions to and from the English Department's Hudspeth Hall and the UTEP University Library.