The Persistance of Vision

There is this game I play. Have you ever noticed that when you’re traveling by car, and you’re looking out of the window, you catch someone’s eye, and neither of you look away? It used to bother me, I’d think that people are staring at me. Perhaps my hair was too wild or the slap of wind made my madness too obvious. But then I realized, that we both felt the same. I’d stare at you, thinking why were you staring at me, and you’d stare at me, wondering why I was staring at you. That’s when I developed this game.

Its like this. While we are looking at each other, we are in each other’s minds, and we can tell what the other’s thinking. There’s a fragile string of connection, created only by that chance spark that flew between us, that connects our minds. When we have passed each other, we are connected while we keep each other in our minds. The moment I am out of your mind, or you are out of mine, the connection breaks. Nothing can ever recreate it.

But the human mind is ever-sensitive to perceptions. And though sometimes they might seem too haphazard, perceptions sustain themselves on quite a hierarchial basis. Why should such a fleeting glimpse stay? More importantly, why should I want to keep it?

But then, even if I did keep it, so what? You’d have to remember me, too. And how many people know this game? Not many, I judged, from the abject lack of connections I had.

It was the mind of a lonely, fanciful child, given to toying with her own mind when she no other playmates to play with. It was the fancy of a child, rendered lonely by a mind too deep, too vast, and too rich in perceptions to swim in. She gasped for breath every day. I nearly drowned everyday.

No, there is no one person I connect with. I connected with no one. This was a game, a silly, idiotic game, a game to keep my mind from wandering off into the deeper, more pressing issues of my reality. It was an exercise in self-deception, a ruse to convince myself that I was lonely by default, that my emptiness was not the child of choice and imposition, my choice, their imposition. I was lying all the time.

But then, why did I remember those eyes? The face remains a mist, but strangely familiar. I knew what she was thinking, all the time. I remember the lack of expression, created because of the multiplicity of emotions that flitted through them, and the inability of the eye to express all at once. I remember the quiet murmur of battle that cried itself out, I’m sure, over and over again, everyday. I caught her at the exact moment when she looked at me, so it seemed like we’d been staring at each other forever. And then I lost her.
But the vision persisted. I looked away, lest I connect with someone else, and this connection be broken. Those were dull, deep eyes, lacking innocence, naivete, joy, wonder, everything. Eyes burdened with knowledge. I held on, and she held on, too. We both clung on for dear life. It did seem that our lives depended on this moment of clarity, that if this string were broken, we’d drown and choke, simultaneously.

And it was surprisingly easy. It still is, actually. Ages have passed since that one Sunday morning trip, and I still remember her. We can tell what the other is thinking, and, in a sense, have become the best of friends. We argue, gossip, talk and fight within the infinite space available to us within the privacy of our own minds. Her thoughts do not mirror mine exactly, but are like an artist’s interpretation- similar, yet dissimilar. We have never bothered to meet. In fact, if the truth be told, we do not want to. We both strongly believe that the realm of our friendship should not be tarnished by unnecessary physical details. The fact that for each one of us, there is an other, is enough for us.

I have lead a life of apparent loneliness. Never quite the social butterfly, I have deliberately cultivated my inherent shyness into a bubble of self-preservation. Like sour vinegar, or sickly sweet sugar, my shyness has shielded me from much of the vileness of the world around me, and also some of its knowledge. But I am lucky. I have one friend, but one, who stands between me and real loneliness. A friend, who, like Francis Bacon described, is “another oneself”, but, then again, not quite the same as oneself. As I stand in front of a mirror, looking into my dull, deep eyes, lacking innocence, naivete, joy, wonder, everything, I think I can see in them the reflection of another pair of eyes that I first saw a Sunday morning, as a little child. Eyes of another self.