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Monday, March 31, 2008 - 05:34 PM, (523 Reads)
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 | To See - April 2008 Edition - by Flying Red Horse
Greetings from the Heretic Ranch! I am the Cowboy Heretic and I will be your docent as we trek through the corridors of mirth and mayhem, the objective and the subjective, the profound and the pointless.
Oh, if only I could see...
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Is there something wrong with my eyes? Am I blind? No. A doctor would tell me that my eyes are perfect. (Well, okay...maybe not perfect, but there's nothing wrong a pair of eyeglasses couldn't remedy.) Nevertheless I still do not see that which I look at. There is no obstruction, yet I cannot see. There is no neural malady, yet I remain sightless.
I raise a hand before my face. Bone covered by meat and sinew and skin. Blood brings forth liquid life, the pulse quickens in my veins. Muscles contract, tendons respond. There is movement. Shadows, the color of the flesh, nails at finger's end. I want to see my hand, dammit!
This thing we call sight, what is it really? Colors and shapes and movement all register in my eyes. There is focus. There is comprehension. I am told that this is sight. Though the organism is sound and there is a perception of colors and shapes and movement and focus and comprehension I CANNOT SEE WHAT I LOOK AT!! Do not lie and say the hand is seen! Do you lie or is it...is it that you do not know? I am not the only one. Do you think that you have truly seen anything you have ever looked at? You have not, my friend, you have not...
Are my words the babbling of one cut loose of reality? No, my words speak of things as they are. You have never seen grass. You have never seen stone. You have never seen water. You have never in your life seen your own hand.
I challenge you: Before you go to bed tonight look at your hand under a light. See its form, note its function as you flex your fingers. See the lines and the hairs and the nails. Once you are convinced that I truly am mad, turn off the light and look at your hand in the darkness of night. You cannot see your hand, you cannot see anything, for the light is gone. The only thing you have ever seen when you looked at your hand is the light reflected by your hand. The only thing you have ever seen with your eyes in your life is light and its reflection.
What does a hand really look like? What does anything really look like? If we are so mistaken about our sight, under what other misconceptions do we labor? What else do we believe we know that we do not know? I wish to see things as they are, not just their reflection...
(The preceding is excerpted from the author's Enright House Press 2004 release DIRTY LITTLE GODS.)
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