On the train. I sit and read my book and look around at the people getting on and getting off. There are about six people standing around the carousel of handles. All in their own worlds of thoughts and early morning concerns. My eyes are drawn to a man who’s eyes are drawn to mine. We look at each other and our gaze stays longer than what is socially acceptable these days, which seems to be none existent since the inception of our umbilical digital plug ins. I don’t remember his face, just his gaze on my eyes. Do we see into each other? Maybe not, but there is a vapour that trails behind as he steps onto the platform and I look around for more eyes and finally back to my book.
At the airport. so many people. All going somewhere, going home, going away from home. Tired, excited, crushed under the onboard baggage of their worries. Eyes scanning to see who will be waiting for them as they come down from up high. Many ploughing the corridors towards taxis, buses, trains and welcoming arms. Thousands of us pass through this processing mill by the hour and all so disinterested in what is happening for each other. Or so it seems to eye {I} as I sit, legs scooped up under me, watching the sea go by.
Later as I too walk the corridor to the waiting lounge, a woman walks towards me and as we pass I slow down my gated stride to make sure she hears my offering. “Your outfit is beautiful, you look stunning.” A delayed moment or two and a smile softens her midlife lines. I hear her breath like she had been holding it for too long. “Thank you” she replies and I catch the sadness in her eyes from all the times she has not heard that truth before. We gaze for a moment and move on into the day of leaving and arriving.
“They are not hazel” he said and he was right. They are green, maybe a little grey but with terracotta sunburst streaks. Eyes that see me in ways I’m still blind to. His eyes gaze on the shape of me under my dress like x-ray, not swayed nor looking elsewhere. Fixed. There is nowhere else to look but back at this interesting face that sits in front of me, bags half packed for another adventure, almost no longer here but in this moment.
Sitting on the couch I watch you busy with your problems and your resolutions, your attention on Sunday catch up of important things that get in the way of more important things. You’re like a living documentary. Eye {I} gaze upon the moods you travel throughout the day, you in your chair and me surfing the coach and the internet. The sun moves through the glass doors in different rays that change the shape of your face. My eye for art enjoys this living gallery of you over there and me over here watching you over there. So much intimacy in the silence of a glance.
My eyes are dark brown with ancient stress lines. My eyes with white whites, seeking beauty in even the broken and misplaced things. Children asleep so early in the morning. Eye { I } gaze at the twenty fingers and twenty toes between them. One nearly a man, one no longer a babe. Moment catching between school pick up and drop off. Watching whole generations of family flash across their faces like a mirage. Not wanting to wish a moment to pass. Liquid gold.
Stepping out of the car, door slams shut and then silence but for my breath caught in my throat at the sight before me. “Look at the sky” I whisper to myself so as not to break the internal silence. I do and there I stay, caught between eternity and solid ground, grocery bags in hands. A blanket of diamonds above me and the soft glow of the moon across the blades of grass all sleeping in a lunar direction. Everywhere my eyes dilate to more and more and more. This feeling has been here before in my body, one of timelessness and insignificance amongst the beauty I gaze above me. Comfort in my complete unimportance.
And there I gaze.
– Lotus Kruse
Comments are closed.