The Capacity to See

“Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”
--Franz Kafka

Short of Eyes

(Seen in front of the Cathedral of St. Stephen in Vienna, Austria.)

“I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.”  Mary Oliver

After 15 days of looking at incredible sights on our European river cruise, with extra days now in Budapest, I am so “short of eyes” I hardly know where to start.

It’s my favorite Dutch phrase:  ogen tekort = short of eyes.  When you don’t have enough eyes to see it all, in spite of looking from morning to night, sometimes you just need to sit back on your haunches and rest for awhile.

That's what Astrid and I plan to do when we return home on Wednesday.  In the meantime, for those of you who celebrate the second Easter Day (Easter Monday), a continued Easter blessing to you.

“Almost nothing need be said when you have eyes.”  Tariei Vesaas

Seeing Is Believing

How many times have you said you wouldn’t believe something unless you saw it with you own eyes…especially in this day and age of photo manipulation!

And how many times have you unwittingly documented something with your camera that got someone else out of a fix…because they were able to see it though your eyes?!

Here’s how it happened:

Last April, almost a year ago, demolition began on the two-story apartment buildings on two sides of our senior complex here in the Netherlands.  By December it was all knocked down, leveled, kaput…with nothing left but the dirt to walk on.

First, bricks were knocked out to release the bats.  Then the hazmat suits arrived, clearing out any traces of asbestos lurking inside the 50-year-old structures.  [We who watched just feet away wondered if we, too, should have been insulated?]

When the salvage crews arrived to tear off the roof tiles, everything broke down to a science.  What to keep and what to toss became a methodical, poetic flow.  Leave it to the Dutch, I always say.  They know what they’re doing.

As I nosed around with the camera, I eventually met Hoomer, the foreman.  After introductions, he kindly asked if I’d send him my photos, which I did through my blog posts.  And that started a long camaraderie throughout the next months as each phase of the demolition ended. 

Hoomer operated the steam shovel that picked up building pieces like toothpicks.  It was a game to him, leaving no brick unturned.  If he could rescue a window in its frame or an entire staircase, he’d treat it with kid gloves, placing it gently in the salvage truck.

Once nothing remained but rubble, the rock crusher came in to grind cement into gravel.  It would become the foundation of roadways here in the Netherlands, Hoomer said.  Nothing would go to waste.

By then it was December.  The project was finally over and done with…I thought. 

Wrong! 

Now was the time to shore up the land, so to speak…which had been the problem to begin with.  The buildings had been torn down [way too young at 50 years!] because the land below sea level was collecting too much water, messing up the sewer and drainage systems.  [Chalk it up to global warming, I say, because we know the Dutch weren’t dumb 50 years ago.  They know how to pump out water!]

Which is where the unwitting part comes in. 

Truckload after truckload of dirt started arriving.  4234 cubic meters of dirt, to be exact.  At 16 cubic meters per truckload, do the math:  265 truckloads!

So out came the camera again to document the real last phase of the work.  Now, PAY ATTENTION. 

First, worteldoek (root-control tarps) were spread out on the ground before the dirt was dumped on top.  Until new apartments could be rebuilt (once the economy righted itself), grass would grow…without weeds or roots popping through.

However, when we bumped into Hoomer during last-minute sidewalk repair and cleanup in January, he asked if by chance I had taken any pictures of the root tarps being laid.  The city’s environmental agency had received his bill but wasn’t convinced he had done it, wanting proof by digging through the dirt to see it with their own eyes.

Ironically, those were the only images of the entire project I had not yet processed/posted.  Once I sent them to him, he wrote back to say I had saved his ass day! 

You know what they say:  the camera never lies.  And some things cannot be manipulated!  Seeing is believing, even if it’s 2 or 3 persons removed.

No One Can Teach You To See

You're right.  This is not a photo...but it's Vision and a place to start my Verb.

This is a scan of a felt-tip drawing I did in high-school art class c. 1962.  Maybe I was 16?  Felt-tipped pens had just come on the market and were like dying and going to heaven for us artists, even though they had not yet been finessed into the fine tips we use today.

But here's the thing.  Where did this drawing come from?  I was a gay girl trapped in a conservative, fundamentalist body...the daughter of a Baptist preacher in Podunk City, Michigan, in the age when "gay" buzzwords did not yet exist.  I knew I was different, not like the other girls, but I didn't know there was a word for me.  All I knew was that I was trapped in a silence that equalled death.  I could not speak my Truth.  I was alone.  I was not a free girl running with abandon under the Tree of Life.

Segue now to the current movie, Avatar, where at one point is the incredible line by Neytiri, "No one can teach you to see."  Does that mean we are all born with Vision but have to find it within us?  Maybe it's the Eyes we have to find!  How many times do we look at something and don't see it.  How many times do we hear something and don't get it.  Then one day, seemingly out of the blue, it's there in plain view.  We find our Eyes.

When I started blogging 5 years ago, I was not ready to use a portrait of myself in my profile.  Dear sister Ruth encouraged me to use the above drawing, which I called my Soul Girl.  Recently she called it my avatar.

Do you sometimes write a Verb or see a Vision and wonder "Where did that come from!"  When did my avatar become me; when did I become her?  Today I am free, running with abandon, and will marry my Dutch partner on February 5, a week from today, here in the Netherlands.  So, was this avatar Prophetic Vision?  Was she answering me before I called?  Did she help me find my Eyes?

I have a feeling this will become a frequent "conversation" here at V&V:
Neytiri:  I see you.
Jake Sully:  I see you.