Fixing Your Gaze
Thomas Merton wrote, in The Seven Story Mountain, that “October is a fine and dangerous season in America. It is dry and cool and the land is wild with red and gold and crimson, and all the lassitudes of August have seeped out of your blood, and you are full of ambition. It is a wonderful time to begin anything at all.”
At some point, you have to move. You have to make a first step, whether it scares away the timid deer at the edge of the woods or that heron wading in low tide or whether it makes the Muse run and hide. Moving can shatter moments and break eggs.
It’s just like when we were on Denali and we realized that, risks notwithstanding, you have to at some point make your compact with the Mountain Gods, shoulder your pack, stab your crampons into the ice and get moving uphill. You have to take that first step or you’re always going to be just sitting there.
In his book Paper: Paging Through History, Mark Kurlansky asks in the first sentence “What do humans do that other animals do not?” He briefly reviews opposable thumbs, the ability to build and change one’s environment, being uniquely violent, sense of humor and communication, dismissing them all. The author continues, “But there is one truly unique human trait: people record. They record their deeds, their emotions, their thoughts and their ideas…they have an impulse to record almost everything on their minds and to save it for future generations. And it is this urge that led to the invention of paper.”
That is why I am here once again, another October beginning, using both paper and computer, recording some of my own thoughts. I doubt these electronic impulses will have the 15,000 year durability of the paintings on the cave walls at Lascaux, but nonetheless I must, I must, as the early eastern light sluices through these old streets by this old river and sweeps us toward tonight’s waxing crescent moon. It’s just writing about what you see and wanting to remember it, somehow, and I recently was reminded of a laughable scene from our early marriage that I have never written about.
Years ago, before my wife and I had effectively stopped daily television watching and before we got rid of cable, we did tune in to Letterman just about every weeknight lying in bed. It was during that period of time when he was escorted from out behind the curtain for his monologue by two decidedly hot women. Night after night we watched this and one night I said “I wonder how many different women he’s got back there.” It really seemed like they were two different ones every night. She looked back at me and said “There are only two.” I said “How do you know?” And she said “Because I look at their faces.” Busted! What faces?
I can never tell that story without laughing and it has been a source of enjoyment for us and for friends repeatedly over these years. John Travolta’s angel Michael in the movie of the same name said “You gotta learn to laugh, it’s the way to true love.” We have laughed a lot together.
It really is all about where you’re looking, though, isn’t it? Fixing your gaze in another direction with intention, like raising your eyes up those few extra inches to a woman’s face, can take a little extra effort, but can also be worth it. As the old saying goes, energy flows where attention goes.
