E is for Eyes

We ALL have the same biology for vision. Light comes in the gooey front part of the eye. It hits the retina which is a light-sensitive layer of tissue at the back of the eye. Cells called photoreceptors turn the light into electrical signals. The electrical signals travel from the retina through the optic nerve to the brain where your clever brain turns the signals into - the images you see.

This is the system for all humans, and as far as I know, most animals. Light comes in, hits the back of the eye, turns into miniscule lightning bolts that swoosh to the brain on optic nerves - and now you see! Some of us have degrees of blindness or color blindness. Some of us are born with or develop impairments to the operating system. Yet all Eight Billion of us see the same world the same way. What’s out there stays out there while what we think we are seeing happens inside our brains. 

And that’s the catch. Our brains are massively, unstoppably, individually bongo bozo nuts. How we interpret what we see depends on our culture, what our parents said, the goodness and trauma we experienced along the way. We all see the same world so differently.

Len knows what color our living room is because sometimes; to amuse myself, I’ll ask him. In his own defense he has learned to say “sort of grayish yellow.” Len really doesn’t really “see” decorating.” Then again, if he starts discussing our house’s infrastructure, I’m the one who has no clue where the water cut-off valve is. Probably in the basement? I bet I’ve seen it every day I’ve lived here. 

It’s not always a joke.

Is that child a brat having a tantrum - or is that a neurodivergent kid scared out of his wits?

Is that a Dolphins star football player driving too fast or is that a Black man in a pricey car so cops “get” to harass and threaten him?

Am I plump, weak, and creaky old woman past her prime? Or am I a griffon in disguise? Because the lion was traditionally considered the king of the beasts, and the eagle the king of the birds, by the Middle Ages, the griffin was thought to be an especially powerful and majestic creature that were known for guarding treasures and priceless possessions. (I mean, seriously, what do we old people do best? Guard children, pets, and our olden stories?) 

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In 2021 I wrote a review of Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. The subtitle of Braiding Sweetgrass tells you the theme of Kimmerer’s book of essays. “Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.” Kimmerer is an enrolled member of the Anishinaabe nation; she belongs to Potawatomi people. She also has a PhD in botany and has studied plants all her life. Her book is interconnected essays about interacting with plants both as a scientist and as an indigenous person. 

The essay that astonished me most is “Learning the Grammar of Animacy.” She describes the revelation it is to learn the native Ojibwe language her grandfather spoke before boarding schools stripped him of his mother language. Kimmerer has spent years working to learn her own language. 

She says this: We know ourselves via the language that we speak. English is mostly nouns, with about 30% verbs. Ojibwe is 70% verbs. Much of English is about delineating gender. Anishinaabe doesn’t divide the world into sex.” 

Anishinaabe DOES describe the world according to the nature and properties of how things are changing, moving, growing, or interconnecting to something else. The example she uses is that a bay of water is not a bay. The Ojibwe word for bay is translated to a VERB meaning “to be a bay.” As if it might be something else tomorrow, which since a bay is filled with water, it might be. The bay is not the static noun where three sides of land are filled with water. A bay is the ‘always-moving’ interconnection of trees, water entering from streams and springs, water moving outward to the lake or river.

Ojibwe language not about what things appear to us right now, but about how things are connected. One does not own things. One is in a relationship for a day or a lifetime and the language speaks to that. 

Her scientific PhD is important to her and she values it. She explains that much of western science is about breaking entities down to see and understand the parts. Indigenous language is about seeing the connections. Both are needed to build a path for all of earth. 

I’d just read her book when Len and I traveled to northern Wisconsin for a few days. It was powerful to hike the Houghton Falls Trail which ends at a spectacular rocky promontory overlooking Lake Superior. The lake that day was all diamonds with sunshine, sailing mauve clouds, wind, and waves. It was not a scene, it was movement, action, history, geology, power, and beauty. I couldn’t “capture it” with a photo but I could stand there and see it and be part of it.

Of course, being me, I DID take photos. This is one of them.

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Photography made its way into everyday culture in the mid-1800’s and it changed the way we see.

A photograph puts a frame around a scene. Over the past 170 years photography has taught us what is interesting or beautiful or important – and what is background and therefore distracting and dull. I take pretty good photographs of my family, one of my kids calls me the family paparazzi. Makes me laugh but I know the reason I’m okay at this is because I snap a lot of photos with my phone and then later I spend time deleting the dumbest ones and cropping the others. By which I mean I focus in one face of interaction and frame that. (I always ask my grands if it’s okay to take their pix and who I’m going to share them with which is usually their parents.) 

I know what I’m doing is a particular way of seeing. I’m editing out as much as I’m including in. I’m telling the story I choose to tell, mostly of my (adorable) grandkids and their various personalities. I’m letting the camera and my editing skills become my eyes – and in the process I am possibly telling lies. Or at least emphasizing cute moments instead of honoring everything that hits my retina.

We all do this now. Art – painting, sculpture, photography – they all capture moments which are ways of seeing. At the same time, when the artist teaches us what’s worthy to look and admire, we are at risk for losing our vision of the interconnections we are not seeing.

Unfettered vision can reveal the interconnections happening all around us all the time.

Framing and cropping bring us close into what we care about.

The eyes have it. 

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Jackson Browne / Doctor My Eyes / Song Around the World

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQPD17v6eLU