And I sometimes saw / what man believed he saw                   -Rimbaud

 


What is seen but not stated?
What do we see and what do we sense?
A doctor asks you to look at an eye chart and asks very specifically,
"Is this clear?"
You answer yes or no.
On the way out, you say goodbye, and if you are observant, you have sensed the doctor's mood, or maybe something more.
You see the psyche.
But you were asked only if the letter was clear or blurry.

You can see things in your periphery that you cannot see while looking head-on. 
You don't trust it, but the eyes are extensions of the brain.  Their functions are much broader than simply keeping us from bumping into each other or recognizing our parents.
Seeing is experiencing and sensing your environment.
And yet...there are also illusions... 

Are these lines curved or straight?





Steel Bridge; photo by Zeb Andrews

But I watched a good long while, and in the end, I saw he was doing several things.  I saw the enormous coat that had been mine; I saw that the spotlight on the porch cut a clean, sharp shadow; I saw that Bill Bob stood in that shadow so close to the line of light that his puckered lips sometimes barely touched it, glowing pale and pink when they did; and I saw that he wasn't just whistling the song: he was watching it.  Each slow, sad note sent a bright stream of vapor into the spotlight air...  And then I saw that not only was he watching, he was aiming his song; the high notes he blew downward, the low notes he sent high, the middle ones he blew horizontally.  I nearly laughed and ruined the sight.  My brother the juggler, balancing everything he did.  There he stayed at the edge of the dark, bundled up and buttoned down, satisfied - a dry darkness making wet music stream into the light.

A passage from 'The River Why' by David James Duncan

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