May 20, 2008--Snowbirding: Letter From Home (Concluded)
This is what I have been seeing with greater clarity during our first days back from Florida. All that aspiring and self-confident getting and posturing and spending masking the simultaneous and complementary efforts of all the others who have gravitated here. What used to make our hearts beat faster when we were pursuing similar things. I’m now feeling like a spectator at someone else’s party. It’s an exciting party, to be sure, but it also feels a little empty. And it makes me wonder what I had then been about. There were things that I could have rationalized to explain away my own relentless striving, if I had either the time or the inclination, though I suppose I did, but now I’ve been wondering about all that I let slip by.
A clue to this, to what I might have missed, came at breakfast the other morning when we were having coffee with Jonathan Miller, a friend from London who was in town to direct an opera at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In addition to all the many other interest he pursues, he roams whatever city he might be in to take photos of abstract slices of otherwise overlooked and undistinguished buildings. He showed us one of his recent favorites. From right down the street. The huge Donna Karan billboard painted on the side of a building at the intersection of Broadway and Houston Street.
It was an image of the downtown skyscape over which was imposed her familiar DKNY logo. What made the photo special, Jonathan said, from his studies of neurobiology and the related psychology of perception, is that it is impossible to take in both images at the same time—you can see either the skyline or the DKNY. But not, in one glance, both.
As I peered at the picture on the screen of his digital camera, I tested his assertion. And yes, I could see just one image at a time. As he had said.
But still, in spite of this phenomenon clearly being beyond human resistance, I felt frustrated. Though having to acknowledge that it is biologically determined, I perversely pushed myself to overcome that imperative. So I might, uniquely, be able to see both images simultaneously. I even jokingly asked Jonathan that if I were schizophrenic might it be possible to see both, “You know, each personality would take in one image.”
To Jonathan this did not warrant even a snicker of response, and so he reached across the table to retrieve his camera. And at the same time, with a sneer, dismissed me as someone not worthy of any more of his attention.
Yet, as he pulled the camera from my hand and rose to leave, though I chose not to say anything further to him, I was certain that for a brief moment, I was in fact able to take in both images.
Perhaps it was my hyperactive imagination, perhaps a rebellious spirit that has never been comfortable accepting the impossible or the forbidden; but even now, a week later, I am convinced that I had see at the same time both the Wall Street skyline and Donna Karan’s corporate logo.
Could there be any acceptable explanation for this? Whatever its source.
Only that, while snowbirding, after whatever I needed to do in the city to filter out the daily load of sensations—I suspect especially a literal narrowing of what I would allow to be taken in through my eyes and ears—down there along the ocean margins, I slowly reawakened those capacities so that I would not miss the smallest details--tracks in the sand the residue of the scuttling Sandpipers, the timed-to-the-minute morning and evening migration of the Pelicans, the smallest disturbance of the sea’s surface that revealed the hidden presence of bait fish and the inevitable feeding frenzies that foretold, the plaintive midnight sound from across the Intracoastal of the freight trains pushing north, the swelling of the spring Hibiscus and the promise of the next day’s lurid blooms, being lulled toward an intoxicating afternoon nap by the slap of rain on the roof of the day room.
I have no other explanation.
But enough of this. I must be making you weary as I rattle on. I know you are busy juggling so many things.
But please Christian, say hello to everyone at the Owl. To Tracie and Dave and Megan and Troy and Ken and Fatch and Jodi and Jen and Tom and Harvey and Joe and Charlotte and of course Jack. Tell them please how much I miss them and my Spinner Sharks and Wahoo salad and those lazy walks along the beach as the sun settles and the evening breeze begins to quicken.
But we’ll see you again in December. That’s a promise.
Steven
A clue to this, to what I might have missed, came at breakfast the other morning when we were having coffee with Jonathan Miller, a friend from London who was in town to direct an opera at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In addition to all the many other interest he pursues, he roams whatever city he might be in to take photos of abstract slices of otherwise overlooked and undistinguished buildings. He showed us one of his recent favorites. From right down the street. The huge Donna Karan billboard painted on the side of a building at the intersection of Broadway and Houston Street.
It was an image of the downtown skyscape over which was imposed her familiar DKNY logo. What made the photo special, Jonathan said, from his studies of neurobiology and the related psychology of perception, is that it is impossible to take in both images at the same time—you can see either the skyline or the DKNY. But not, in one glance, both.
As I peered at the picture on the screen of his digital camera, I tested his assertion. And yes, I could see just one image at a time. As he had said.
But still, in spite of this phenomenon clearly being beyond human resistance, I felt frustrated. Though having to acknowledge that it is biologically determined, I perversely pushed myself to overcome that imperative. So I might, uniquely, be able to see both images simultaneously. I even jokingly asked Jonathan that if I were schizophrenic might it be possible to see both, “You know, each personality would take in one image.”
To Jonathan this did not warrant even a snicker of response, and so he reached across the table to retrieve his camera. And at the same time, with a sneer, dismissed me as someone not worthy of any more of his attention.
Yet, as he pulled the camera from my hand and rose to leave, though I chose not to say anything further to him, I was certain that for a brief moment, I was in fact able to take in both images.
Perhaps it was my hyperactive imagination, perhaps a rebellious spirit that has never been comfortable accepting the impossible or the forbidden; but even now, a week later, I am convinced that I had see at the same time both the Wall Street skyline and Donna Karan’s corporate logo.
Could there be any acceptable explanation for this? Whatever its source.
Only that, while snowbirding, after whatever I needed to do in the city to filter out the daily load of sensations—I suspect especially a literal narrowing of what I would allow to be taken in through my eyes and ears—down there along the ocean margins, I slowly reawakened those capacities so that I would not miss the smallest details--tracks in the sand the residue of the scuttling Sandpipers, the timed-to-the-minute morning and evening migration of the Pelicans, the smallest disturbance of the sea’s surface that revealed the hidden presence of bait fish and the inevitable feeding frenzies that foretold, the plaintive midnight sound from across the Intracoastal of the freight trains pushing north, the swelling of the spring Hibiscus and the promise of the next day’s lurid blooms, being lulled toward an intoxicating afternoon nap by the slap of rain on the roof of the day room.
I have no other explanation.
But enough of this. I must be making you weary as I rattle on. I know you are busy juggling so many things.
But please Christian, say hello to everyone at the Owl. To Tracie and Dave and Megan and Troy and Ken and Fatch and Jodi and Jen and Tom and Harvey and Joe and Charlotte and of course Jack. Tell them please how much I miss them and my Spinner Sharks and Wahoo salad and those lazy walks along the beach as the sun settles and the evening breeze begins to quicken.
But we’ll see you again in December. That’s a promise.
Steven
posted by Steven Zwerling at
3:08 PM
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