HIDE AND SEEK
LOOK AND SEE
Earlier this year, I created a self-portrait collage for a creative vitality class that I enrolled in. On the day it was due, I felt compelled to black out the irises and pupils in an infant photo of me. I am learning to trust my creative spirit, so I did it—then spent months wondering why.
The pupil is the dark opening at the center of the iris. Working with the lens, it admits light to the retina: widening in dimness, narrowing in brightness. Emotion and certain drugs can also change it. Once light enters the eye, it usually stays—except when the light of a camera’s flash in photography bounces off blood vessels and produces red eyes.
The infant’s black eyes demand attention. They have held mine, too, as I searched for the meaning behind that creative gesture and the words to express it.
This simple reminder of how the eye works deepens the familiar proverb, “the eyes are the windows to the soul.”
Eyes can reveal another person’s emotions and well-being—and they can reveal yours. We may try to guard them, but they resist concealment. Perhaps that is why some people avoid eye contact: they do not want to be known.
Why did I black out my eyes? The eye alone receives light and turns it into an image. A hand can touch, feel, and absorb light, but it cannot see. I came to believe those blacked-out eyes symbolize how I try to live: beyond what I can see. As an infant, I did not know what I would become. I still don’t. I know only where I have been, where I am, and that each day invites me to step forward in faith.
Those eyes still make me pause. Sometimes they suggest a deeper transparency—a longing for others to see my soul and heart more clearly. Yet when pupils open fully, the flood of light brings extreme glare and discomfort. Focus becomes difficult, and I must close my eyes. I am drawn into stillness. Maybe that is what the blacked-out eyes are saying: Be still and know…
FOOD FOR THOUGHT----Ralph Waldo Emerson… “Eyes…they speak all languages.”
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