My own photo, taken from the rooftop of our building, with a little photoshopping; not AI, but, rather, DIY
“Just look” said the voice,
though it was not really a voice.
It wasn’t actually saying words,
more like making a suggestion,
as when you see someone’s eyes darting
or their hands moving, and your eyes follow them;
or like a comma, saying you might wish to pause.
More like swallows’ chirps than language,
gentle supplication — evening plainsong,
hints at what to notice, melancholy exhortation —
“See, there. Listen. This is what you’ve missed,
distracted by the fearful noises in your head. Just this.”
I was not listening.
I was walking on the roof.
It’s flat, with chairs, a table, an umbrella, left unopened.
I had a mug of tea at hand. The wind had calmed,
I’d lit a candle, left it on a dish nearby.
The sun had set and now the city lay
spread out below,
ten thousand glowing lights,
a murmuring of refuge offered
in the falling dark — the street-lamps dimly waking,
hopeful, slowly getting bolder.
Now-parched temperate evergreens,
and soaring peaks beyond, a backdrop.
Everywhere the here and now, unseen.
“Just look”, said the voice again.
“At what?” I replied.
“No, don’t look at anything. Just look.
See if you can see. Not things. Not what is happening.
That is all just make-believe,
some stories you’ve invented or been told.
Just look until you really see.
Don’t think, react, identify. And don’t ‘make sense’.
Look close, between all that.
Observe the lines and light and shapes and shadows.
Notice without naming, with an artist’s eye.”
“Too hard”, I said.
“Then look at forms and shapes that can’t be taken in.
Look at the tiny crack in the mug,
the blobs of colour at its edge.
Look at the candle flickering in the evening breeze.
Look at the lights
that stretch out half way to the hills
before they’re lost in forests’ darkening shrouds.
And notice the reflection of the light
on the gleaming edge of the metal railing.
See the spaces in between
the real and unreal things you title, tag, and label,
tearing them apart, when they are one.
These songs and shards of light that strike your eyes,
an invitation to this body you call yours;
they’re calling out, and speaking — not to you,
of course, because there is no you.
They speak as all wild creatures speak,
they tell you ‘this is here; this is amazing;
it is everything and it is nothing;
it is raucous, silent, still and ever-changing;
it’s oblivious to ‘you’, oh sad believer in your self.
It is unknowable
to those who think they have to know.
It can be seen, but not by any one.
That baby who you met this afternoon, in the café — yes
there it could at once be seen,
because there’s no one there that’s in the way of seeing.
Even if you looked for hours into that baby’s eyes
you’d still not see the wonder there, reflected. Ah,
poor homo sapiens, all you’d see
is ‘baby’ there, and ‘eyes’! And so
you’d miss it all. It’s so astounding
no mere words could capture it — there is no space
to squeeze between
the meaning and the making sense, and thus convey
what really is, that ‘you’ can’t see.”
“I know”, I say.
“It’s not your fault. For
trying makes it all the more impossible.
And knowing you can’t see
just makes it even more annoying. As
you know a sightless person can’t be made to see
by telling them to concentrate,
to focus, and try harder.
Of course the sightless one knows that.
For you it’s many times more frustrating,
since, somewhere there, it’s known
the only thing preventing all of this from being seen
is that illusive you that’s in the way.”
I nodded, sighed.
The voice said nothing further.
I stared out, then,
my elbows perched atop the rooftop handrail;
tried to hear the message of the lights.
I listened to them shout, cry, moan, whine, murmur,
whisper, howl, and peep; and
resonated with their pure, deep, single,
gentle steady notes.
I heard the candle’s trill and warble,
wrought mad by the wind.
In my room the light is warm and soft,
and here proclaims its cream-toned truth,
a steady hum at 516.*
The candle, moved indoors, has settled now;
it’s quieter and less aflame,
much of its 210 song too low to hear.
While in the parking lot, way down
below my window,
howl the sentinels of halogen,
their lonely muffled
grim-blue synaesthetic wails an endless 613.
“All beautiful”, I said then, to no one.
“Wondrous, perfect, lovely.”
That was just a guess, of course,
just something gathered, sensed
but not by ‘me’.
I was mistaken, it would seem —
there was no voice: but just
a whisper in the wind,
a flash of light from ancient stars,
now gleaming in a cougar’s wary, watchful eye,
its ears pricked up, and hearing things
no human ear could apprehend, and seeing
what no human eye could glean.
And able, like a baby, to “just look”.
* The frequencies of light in terahertz (THz). The visible spectrum is ~400 (red) to ~800 (violet) THz, with 200 THz being infrared and 1000 THz being ultraviolet. Isaac Newton, perhaps sensing the resonance between light and sound waves, equated the spectrum to the musical scale: D (red), E (orange), F (yellow), G (green), A (blue), B (indigo), C (violet).
Enjoyed, liked the format, connected with it on a deeper level than reading an ‘essay’ on radical non-duality.
Thank you.