WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2008
What Do You See?
I have to ask my sister. "What do you see?"
I need to know.
Not that I doubt my own eyes, my own judgment, but I want to see through her eyes.
I want to feel the image pressed against her retina, smell the odor of it within the confines of her receptors.
I want my hand to reach out and feel what she feels and he feels and they feel and you feel.
Right here, among us, the creator constantly works. Everywhere, mountains of creations, worlds of creations, simple, plain, ornate in a million different ways, surround us. Each one, only the same one, made again and again. The medium never changes. The hands work with the same level of skill and the skill never varies. Not one is any more precious than the other, not one looks different in its creator's eyes, like a cook preparing innumerable meatballs for a great feast they are all the same, only these are Faberge meatballs, their value beyond comprehension.
Each one shaped with love and exquisite care. Each one honed and fired and decorated and then, just before letting it go, a thumb presses slightly into the cradled object. One thumbprint, a small indentation for identification. A shallow shadow of a place left to hold all the differences that can be. Almost invisible, it is the only place visible to many of us and it is a shape shifter, a reflecting pond displaying our own selves, not the one before us.
How odd that we judge ourselves so harshly thinking that it is someone else. How strange the conclusions we draw from such a shallow place. How bizzare the levels of resentments and pain that pile upon us from something so immaterial, so miniscule and fleetingly fragile. How often do we crack the object during our perusal, imagining a tiny little flaw the creator deemed a signature? This ever changing flicker of uniqueness becomes the visage blocking our view and we spend our entire lives seeking what we are.
And so I ask my sister, "What do you see?" Thinking that perhaps I should stir the soup one more time, this time with my eyes closed so that I may immerse myself in us.
I need to know.
Not that I doubt my own eyes, my own judgment, but I want to see through her eyes.
I want to feel the image pressed against her retina, smell the odor of it within the confines of her receptors.
I want my hand to reach out and feel what she feels and he feels and they feel and you feel.
Right here, among us, the creator constantly works. Everywhere, mountains of creations, worlds of creations, simple, plain, ornate in a million different ways, surround us. Each one, only the same one, made again and again. The medium never changes. The hands work with the same level of skill and the skill never varies. Not one is any more precious than the other, not one looks different in its creator's eyes, like a cook preparing innumerable meatballs for a great feast they are all the same, only these are Faberge meatballs, their value beyond comprehension.
Each one shaped with love and exquisite care. Each one honed and fired and decorated and then, just before letting it go, a thumb presses slightly into the cradled object. One thumbprint, a small indentation for identification. A shallow shadow of a place left to hold all the differences that can be. Almost invisible, it is the only place visible to many of us and it is a shape shifter, a reflecting pond displaying our own selves, not the one before us.
How odd that we judge ourselves so harshly thinking that it is someone else. How strange the conclusions we draw from such a shallow place. How bizzare the levels of resentments and pain that pile upon us from something so immaterial, so miniscule and fleetingly fragile. How often do we crack the object during our perusal, imagining a tiny little flaw the creator deemed a signature? This ever changing flicker of uniqueness becomes the visage blocking our view and we spend our entire lives seeking what we are.
And so I ask my sister, "What do you see?" Thinking that perhaps I should stir the soup one more time, this time with my eyes closed so that I may immerse myself in us.
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