On Looking

Some thirty years ago, in my earliest days as a teacher, I encountered a wisdom that has served me for a lifetime. It came from a young woman of about fourteen whose face had a sublime provenance: it was remarkably plain and did not assert itself. Yet, when closely observed, one saw traces of many continents. Her eyes were subtle and not over-bright. Her black hair was tucked behind one ear. She wore nothing that I can recall, neither the color, nor the shape. I do remember her hands, however, folded in a contained calm, elegance atop the table like an eagle poised high atop everything, poised between forays.

That day, I asked the students to create a drawing of a chimera. They were to join an everyday object with an animal of their choosing. The process was not to take over-long. It served to introduce a discussion of collisions, of what flavors can be brought to the surface in unexpected exchange. 

As with many pubescents in this modern world, these were achieving a new level of uninsightful boredom and lack of enthusiasm. As a group, they were aimless and saw no purpose in the activity. They formed a bemused and distracted gathering on that day.

When I announced that we would pin the results in front of class and discuss them collectively, they protested with nasal or throaty noises and exhales at this burden, this most unworthy application of their time. 

The drawings were meant to start conversations. The results were not overly noteworthy. Several boys had merged the sports jersey with the animal mascot of the team. They felt quite clever in doing so. One of them had had the idea and then all of the rest had followed. They were the proudest in the group and, when asked about their work, they said it was good. When asked what made it so, they said, “because it was cool.”

The young woman who folded her hands in peace quietly pinned up a fluid and eloquent image of a teapot merged with the bird that took its shape from the steam emerging from the spout. Sensitive lines, modulating and muted additions of a soft pastel gave the effect of both mastery and memory.

I inquired as to her inspiration. She revealed that her father was an ambassador, and that she had lived in Asia and South America and the Middle East. Although she had seen much variety, there was no place that felt like true home. That said, her identification of home was contained in the thought of breakfast, and in a steaming teapot that could be found everywhere, and also in birds that were always outside of windows. 

She stated this matter of factly, not over-loudly. She was in no way uncomfortable before us. Yet, it was as she was not truly with us. I pictured her inhabiting a wide and low, largely empty palace surrounded by a dark, wooden eave with forest beyond. She had no need of anything. That was the impression she gave. She was neither content nor discontent. She was exactly present.

Several large boys in the class wrinkled their noses in incredulity at her tea pot. They knew they didn’t truly understand it. It was clearly mature and sensitive to things they didn’t even begin to perceive. Had the ambassadors daughter been in any way defining herself as a female presence they may have shown interest, but it was her cool jade-like weight of neutrality that rendered her almost invisible. They failed to notice the perfect almond shape of her nail beds and the milky white moons just rising into them from below.

Last, and reluctant to present in our group, was a sweaty boy with oily hair in his eyes and hands that curled themselves, not into fists, but into lumpy yellow stones. He seemed a couple years younger than everyone, uncomfortable and bursting out of himself, eager to please, yet highly aware of a history of unsuccessful attempts at participating in group activities. He was like an overeager pup that urinated on the carpet one too many times without yet being able to perceive what it is that he does that causes consternation. This repeated reprimand from many had caused him to harden and hunch. When he gripped a piece of charcoal, he held it too firmly and it snapped. Now he had two pieces, too small to maneuver with his inarticulate, black dust smeared hands extending beyond his black wiped shirt.

On his newsprint he presented, limp, with some worry lines and smudged, there were several heavy, dark lines that could not be brutal. They were tentative, unsure of where to go, what to connect to. The boy stated that he had thought of too many things he tried to draw, but that he was never sure how they could meet or join. It was “bad work,” he said, “only parts of things.” There was no agreement on where the lines could join one another. He said that and other unfavorable things about his drawing that hung before us. 

The room was silent. No one could think of a single comment. The work was roundly dismissed as people’s eyes looked out the window or vacantly into nothing. No one could maintain visual contact with what he had drawn.

After a long silence, the voice of the ambassador’s daughter placed itself onto the silent stage stating that this work was the most interesting one in the entire class. The room erupted in derision, chairs shifting in protest. She waited long until the room was silent again and continued unperturbed. The boy who had drawn the image was bright and clear, his eyes trained on her in disbelief.

“I image myself locked in a closet,” she said. “…if I could not come out for twenty years and this was the only thing I had to look at, it would give me so much to wonder about. You cannot look at it and know it. You have to keep looking.”

So sentient was her testament, it has stayed with me until this day.

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It is not in literality or skill that we best tell or share, but often in our refusal to look away when something is challenging or difficult. Through creative insistence we are victorious and join ourselves with others who have been stymied. The success of work often lies beyond the effective aspects of it, in the breakthrough that comes of the devotion. We must encourage others to keep looking because there is so much to see. We must seek a wholehearted application of that which is directly in front of us. This is our most effective way to connect to the past and give birth to the future. There is much to say about looking, how we learn to look and what to glean from it. 

Looking occurs, in fact, when we are looking inward and outward at the same time. However, to suggest that looking encompasses only two concurrent operations doesn’t even begin to address the process.

Things take on different qualities when looked at by a painter, or a poet, by a weaver or a gardener. To a great extent, we learn to see by borrowing the eyes of others, as much or more than we actually see with our own eyes. 

As much as the artist or writer wants to personally encounter reality, the work of the artist or writer is to reveal a new world to the spectator or reader. The creative experience is built by examining the scene and interpreting it to the greatest extent possible.

The greatest part of looking is built on something revealing itself, and the potential to extend this new knowing to others who may come later. It is a translation. The creative being is, in many ways, an oracle, a doorway to new dimensions, a guide to new worlds, latent, hidden in plain view. 

Every well observed object or concept can be a mirror. Luminosities, reflections and transparencies indicate the potential to dissolve into or filter through a surface, or, otherwise, to vault our perceptions against, and thereby rebound back into ourselves to the inward direction. We can sit long, watch and scry into what appears to be smoke or glass or clear broth and see more than now.

The challenge is to honestly know the things which feel ineffable, that we cannot speak of or describe. We abstract and circle those concepts, phenomena and emotions and, through due diligence and devotion, draw them out, weave them, tell stories about them, as best we can. 

In the act of circling, in the act of imperfect but devoted description, we find the epiphany, not because a rendering is effective, but simply because the interpreter would not give up, could not look away. 

Through witnessing devotion, we come to know that what is repeated is important. Even poorly executed prostrations refine themselves over time. When we are unable to tear ourselves away, even when results are not sleek or masterful, there is emphasis not unlike grace. 

A many times patched coat worn by several generations in one family does not tell us about tailoring or any discreet materials; it tells us of persistence, and, in spite of having little, these many people have managed to keep at least one sewing needle accounted for, in service, and, with this one needle, have spent a great deal of time, accomplished much. Such a powerful small tool, so easily lost, yet this detail makes an entire possibility possible. See not the coat, see the small needle that devotedly keeps holding it together.

At its best, devoted looking can share recognition with a larger audience, connect us all in our circling and struggling indescribable things. Everyone is given one precious needle and with a small, threaded eye, stitches the variously rendered lines of attention.

So, the creative reveals not the thing that is seen, but a devoted way of seeing. This hopefully ignites in the audience a greater commitment to looking as well. A world filled with more observant beings would be a gentler world.

We have to forget everything except for that which is in front of us. For, only in truly being here now, will we perceive. 

Looking happens in motion. Even when all objects around us are still, we are breathing; ever so slightly expanding and contracting in a rhythm that has both fluctuation and inherent will. The process can be automatic or highly aware and intentional. 

So too with seeing. The nature of seeing shifts between discreet images we place into memory: still encapsulations. But, often, we hold vignettes or moving, film-like poems, essentialized, stylized seeings, like a fish in a bowl of water. Often, we do not know why we remember certain aspects of what we have seen. Also, in the present moment, it is unclear why some element of the whole speaks to us as essential and fascinating; it draws us to it, it imposes itself, and implies either obvious meaning, or it beguiles us and insists that some emphasis is here in a particular texture color or shape.  

How all of the elements of seeing play together can never be purely visual; we are interpreting and cross-referencing at every moment, often simultaneously hearing and smelling, and coming to the seeing with the mood and the overall greater expression of our current health or spiritual state.

There are some seeings that insert themselves or have the ability to supersede what is firmly ensconced in our consciousness, somehow indicating that we can leave, reframe or shed some of what feels affixed within us: invitations towards liberation. These seeings coax us out of who we are and remind us that we become located in habits and in preferences. But, the absolute truth of them is something that we should inquire into. Their verity is transient. 

Seeing is time-based. We are mindful of change and there is an urgency. We know that what we are seeing is before us, held in a present moment, affected by the light of this present day and even this time of day. What we see is affected by our height, our age and our vantage point, even by our arrival at this place and moment, even by our decision to keep our eyes open and not to look away, or elsewhere.

So, there is a great how, in how we look. We do not all look or see or gaze upon our environs with equal emphasis. We look through the mantle of our references and our inclusion, adjacency or aloofness. We look through our hypnotisms. That which is before our eyes, is in fact a play with many chapters before it. It is on the proscenium that is our mind. We have opinions about the actors and the costumes, the scenery.