Something catches my eye. I notice. I linger. I become a question mark.
It’s not really me doing the catching, doing the looking, the lingering and yet: it is me, and yet: it’s more than me, it’s beyond me. It is in me, around me, high above me.
My beholding eye. Still. Moving. My selfless self wavering like a paper thin kite lifting and suspending in the air. Holding the twine between my fingers, my eye floats. I follow. I go where the kite goes. It goes. It catches.
A bird, the curlicues of a falling leaf, the wideness of a late afternoon azure sky, a bevel in a pane of glass, a paint chip, the downbeat off a bass lick. Or as Denise Levertov describes, noticing a dog going, “intently haphazard.”
What strange subtlety, little invisible imperceptible perceptions. I wonder. I wander. I pause and without forethought, my eye dilates and beholds.
It has a life of its own, my eye. It sees something I don’t see and now I see it. It knows what it’s looking for. Yes? My eye or the object of my beholding? It is the curious threshold between me and the world.
christopher
Monks & Mannequins 