Eyes
It is a miserable, dank, rainy early spring day today. I know, I know, all of nature’s moods are beautiful, but I feel my eye turning inward, toward the topic of eyes!
Most of us who live in the countryside have had the experience of being outside and happening to lock eyes, even momentarily, with a wild creature. It is a universally profound and moving experience. It feels as if a portal has opened into another living being’s reality. There is a clearly perceived energy flow of consciousness, like a lightning bolt, moving through the line of gaze between two equally experientially sovereign living beings.
The exchange can have different flavors, based on the power differential. The experience of happening upon a fawn on the forest floor, hiding in plain sight but camouflaged perfectly by dappled light, fills one with an awareness of the vulnerability of life. Even in the case of a surprised and cornered opossum, the poor thing terrified and snarling at me, a feeling of tender wondrousness hopefully was expressed in my eyes as I gave it space to escape the threatening exposure it was clearly feeling. Dangerous animals such as grizzly bears have very small eyes, and poor eyesight, and I thankfully have not been close enough to have more than a very brief eye to eye connection! Some creatures are so foreign that the eye contact is forever and utterly mysterious, such as an octopus face to face across the glass at an aquarium. Fishers’ eyes have a wary, feral, carnivorous alertness that conveys an awareness of that same potential in ourselves, and a shark’s eye is so cold it makes me shiver. An ermine in the woodshed, with its piercing blackness of eye, evokes playfulness although if I were its size it would promptly eat me! Some creatures I can only have imaginary eye contact with, such as scallops with their hundreds of blue eyes on little stalks.
By drawing the eyes of animals I cannot or will not ever lock eyes with, I can try to feel their reality, their worthiness, their importance in the world. It is an honoring thing to do. It is said that paying attention is the highest expression of love, and drawing is an intimate form of attention. I picture a wall of eye drawings of a multitude of species, gazing at me and all the other humans, and cannot help but to imagine it as a Wall of Judgement. We deserve it. Ironic, since most other creatures do not judge but are satisfied to simply exist. The cetaceans, with intelligence equal to ours and a superior morality, I am sure, may judge but probably rise above such pettiness.
