L’enfer est myope autant que le ciel
On t’avait dit que tout se paye
Regarde bien droit dans le soleil
–Détroit/Droit Dans Le Soleil
Did you ever wonder why you see things so differently from a camera? You discriminate. A camera doesn’t. A camera will see whatever is there. You will focus and interpret. A camera puts everything in the frame and doesn’t have the ability to choose not to see like we do.
The other day I read that people with compulsive disorders like OCD don’t have any different thoughts about suicide, violence, sexuality or whatever than other people do. They just think about the thoughts differently. Dwell on them. Make them their focus.
Thoughts out of balance are not better than anything else out of balance. Balance is such an asshole.
Most of us think about the exactly the same things, but we gloss over the disturbing thoughts. I might think “what would it be like to drive my car off a cliff” or “I wonder what that girl would do if I walked over there and kissed her” or “I would love to poke that moron in the eye with a fork” just like someone with a compulsive disorder. I know I am not suicidal. I know I won’t really poke anyone with a fork. I know I’m not gay. Well. Mostly. My feelings about straight/gay/bi would be a different blog. Anyway, the thought passes because it’s just that–a passing thought. (Except that I’m writing about it instead of just letting it pass. Shut up. I know. It’s not the same thing) I don’t worry that I have these thoughts. I know that most of us do sometimes. Someone with more compulsive tendencies would worry about what the thoughts meant, worry about being suicidal or gay or violent, and generally magnify the thoughts and let them take over.
Today I was walking to a meeting, and the sun was coming up. I hate 0700 meetings, unless the sun is already coming up. I still hate the 0700 meetings, but I do enjoy the sunrise and the birds singing. On the way there, I could see the sunrise through an ugly chain link fence around a shitty industrial parking lot strewn with broken bottles. It made me think about how layered everything we see and hear is.
Stopped in traffic, we look out the car window at the river, and the city lights, the mountains beyond. There are bug splatters on the window. Streaks from the windshield wipers. Telephone poles, trees, electrical wires. Con trails from jets that passed overhead. There’s a rearview mirror right in the middle of the window. The freeway, and all of the cars in front of us. Maybe our hair is in our eyes. We don’t see any of that. We focus, if we choose to, on the sun coming up behind Mt. Hood. Or the fog over the Willamette. We don’t even see the rest of it.
If we took a picture, we might wonder why it looks so different from what we see in our head.
In your mind, you only really see the thing that you want to see.
But the ability to focus, which is such a positive in some ways, can be a disaster if you can’t turn it off.
Most of us can see the sun through the chain link fence without having to worry about not being able to look away soon enough and maybe scorching our retinas. We can control the amount of focus.
Brains are our biggest blessing and our bane.
For the record, I’m not really so sure about the fork thing. There are times when it is REALLY hard not to poke certain people. Maybe not in the eye, but in the arm. Not all the way through, but enough to make myself understood.
