I was sitting talking with a friend I hadn’t seen in years and we began to reminisce in an effort to catch up. There is something about placing yourself. Trying to describe how you came to where you are, how you are relating to the world now that you are here and what ventures are to come…places you in a way that observes the moments of the present with some real interest.
Today for example I ran toward the mountains again. I had thrown on many clothes-probably because I have a Michigan winter radar attached to my shoulder blade just to the right of my left armpit. I didn’t need the gloves or the bandanna or the long-sleeve or the tights or the wool socks or the t-shirt for the matter. And so as I stripped the layers I felt lighter. Maybe as light as I have ever felt with a kind of carefree funk in my stride that seemed different-new-young. I had the long-sleeve tided around my waist like you did with your jean jacket when you were little. The difference being that the jean jacket felt cumbersome while this shirt felt like a tail. With the gloves that I stashed against my low back with the waistband of my shorts and the shirt sleeves batting in the wind I most certainly had a tail…maybe I felt foxy, but young either way.
Cooling down I was walking across the highway, where many enlightening thoughts come, and I started to rub my eyes like kids do-with their fists all balled up, you know. I can almost see my little cousin doing this as he yawns indicating it is nap time. I can also see my grandmother doing the same thing. Our eyes can be telling of the whole of our selves. Like when your talking to a girl and your trying to make eye contact because she is offering it to you but you look away because you’ll forget everything if your eyes meet for a whole undisturbed second. Your eyes will give away what the whole of you is thinking and you know they can’t hold on to that so your looking away. Such is the way we see our own eyes and therefore ourselves.
Can you look yourself in the eye? Metaphorically and literally? I got home from the run pressed for time to get to class but stopped at the mirror to see if I had something in my eye because as I rubbed full-fisted I thought I might have scratched myself with my knuckle. I saw an old man and then looked back and widened my eyes and saw a young man and then I stepped back and remembered I had stretchy pants on and I saw a kid. I rubbed my eye a second time and got close to the mirror and saw only my eyes. They have seen so much. So much beauty and pain all mixes into a number of locations and experiences but then I thought briefly that they had barely glimpsed of this world and the stories that fill it. Barely glimpse of love and life and skies and LA bridges and people and they haven’t even really looked into the eyes of another human being-pulsing with vulnerability and fear and love and trust.
My eyes will one day be old with the wrinkles to prove it. When those days come, and they may come slow or maybe at thirty-something they will just turn themselves over to age; but when this happens I hope its true. I hope that my eyes have steadied and had a single-eyedness to them that has journeyed unwavering towards wholeness. I want some old eyes.
