Behold; my gaze
My cell phone is filled with hundreds of images captured in moments of “absent focus” that may have been an intense response to the environment or circumstance, but otherwise seemingly random or unconnected. Only later, as I looked back at them, did I realize their significance in documenting my “gaze.”
Their very randomness presents an existential portrait: I exist as one with the surrounding moment yet separate from it as observer. I can look at the image and remember the feeling from inside it, but also the distancing from forever being outside, gazing (upon it.)
This awareness yields pleasure and pain. There is some sense of power and excitement in experiencing a moment in the gauze light of separation - where I need only observe and reflect. There is also pain in knowing there is something deeper I am not letting myself step into by not being fully present.
