18 June 2011

On Seeing Things

Lucky, how lucky I feel sometimes.  Glad to be alive.

Not in the sense I survived a life-threatening event, like crashing a tractor-trailer into a guardrail on a bridge and hanging over the side until rescue came along.  Glad to be alive in that the body and the mind, fatigue combined with stress notwithstanding, feel good about being alive.  This sensation is not unknown to me but I can say it is not like a best friend who comes over to my house everyday.

Yet, it is here.  Has been for some matter of days, now.  How to explain that?

In part, it is a result of my vision returning.  My inner vision, mind you, not my actual eyesight.  (For that matter, there can be a difference between 'vision' and 'eyesight'. But I digress)  This inner vision I fancied to be a set of mental lenses and filters that allow me to shift focus, zoom in and out, try different colors on the fabric of the world, all without leaving the confines of my admittedly big head.  These filters allowed me to see things.  Good things, wonder and beauty.  One day, a few months back, I woke up and I could not see those things.  Or if I could, then not very well.

I would have panicked, if I hadn't been emotionally wrung out and physically exhausted.  So I didn't.  Instead, I simply sat down and reckoned that I wouldn't see those things again.  The creative process began to ebb, and finding those things of beauty increasingly became harder and harder, to the point where I thought I might give up. What vision that was left to me was gradually losing its light.

Yet I didn't give up.  That I kept going, even if the going was glacial, is truly a wonder.

Things have begun to turn themselves to the sun.  I feel the warmth on my face, and color has returned to the landscape. I am seeing rivers as rivers and mountains as mountains, for the first time in months.

To see things for what they are, is to know beauty.

17 comments:

  1. Yes, lucky and wonderful and unfiltered and beautiful.

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  2. Sounds like a return to spring after a long, hard winter.

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  3. here's to the light, sugar. here's to seeing the beauty of the leaf and the grandeur of the trees. or something like that. ;~D xoxoxox

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  5. this post reminded me of this poem:


    "... Bath the eyes
    We should get a different vision...
    ...We are not here to learn the secret of the rose,
    We probably are here
    just to lose ourselves in its beauty..."

    by Sohrab Sepehri

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  6. Thanks for sharing your journey. It rings familiar to me. My mind becomes more or less cluttered with materials that I hold onto, carrying them along in hopes that they will protect me from impermanence and uncertainty. The more stuff I carry along like this the less I am able to 'see'. But when I slow down and allow space for the clutter to clear, I am able to engage with life in a more interesting and friendly manner.

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  7. I love the way you write. It's so good to be able to see and feel just being (if you see what i mean)

    Why not join us? ExposeYourBlog!

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  8. good to see that the light is returning with warmth :)

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  9. AHHHHHHHHHH! It will NOT let me post a comment. I am a new blogger and can't figure it out. And I wall all feeling warm and fuzzy and liking the inner peace your blog entry was infused with. I will try again. LOVE it. i was brought here by the word gumbo, because I am a Cajun, but i love your writing style and creativity. i will try to post this D**N thing again. wish me luck.

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  10. i figured it out. Yay Me! and I love this blog. I hope you have time to read mine. I have NO readers. Well I have one, but she knows me in real life, so does that count? anyways..I will come back and read more when I have a quiet living room, which means no kids hollering and playing video games. =)

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  11. It's so nice entrance. Thanks. I really like this blog, could I put a link in my blog to your blog? It's very interesting :)

    www.barcelonatodo.com

    Greetings!

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  12. I'm so so glad to hear this, Irish. I've been where you were, so I totally get it. Happy is a really great place to be.

    xo

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  13. For me, what you speaks about, doesn`t sounds like that you`re happy again, or like some would says: no more depressed... To me it sound you speaks of seeing things like for the first time. Seeing everything about one thing or situation, and just feeling it`s okay.. I get that feeling myself sometimes, and it cant really be explain in words. But at that moment, nothing is too big to handle.

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  14. Well Gumbo...talking from just a little bit of slightly damaged eye experience! Its the inner vision that always counts!
    Especially when you need to find your way through dark places at least?

    Those little moments when it all shines through?
    Feel really good don't they?
    The sad thing about writing in the way that some people do, is that you often need the yin and yang though?
    But fuck all that complicated psychobabble shit when you get one of those good state of minds!
    Right now, neck that dram, stick on that tune with a juicy riff and boil that fuckin' popcorn!

    Keep the happiness within you and when you feel that other side, scribble down a bit and expand on it during some dark and rainy night!

    Good luck mate!

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  15. Love the words. Glad they're back!

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  16. isn't it interesting how sometimes we bask so deep into the light that it makes us close our eyes & turn away? We almost protect ourselves from it by holding on to what doesn't matter?

    Glad to know that things are looking up - even if I had no idea things were glum. Knowing someone is smiling somewhere, makes it more important to move forward in our own journies.

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"Let your laws come undone
Don't suffer your crimes
Let the love in your heart take control..."


-'The Hair Song', by Black Mountain

Tell me what is in your heart...