thoughts, words, deeds

mirrors to the soul

Prompt: “What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.”
Walt Whitman
Do you sometimes look in other people’s eyes and imagine who they may be and what they may have done with their lives? Also, do you think this is what most poets and writers do?

I do watch eyes. You can tell a lot about a person by how they meet your eyes. In fact, with my siblings, I’ve always told them that they think very loudly—I know them so well that I can tell from their look and their body language and our shared experience what they would say if they could.

When I people watch, I think I spend more time considering body language than I do the eyes. For one thing, meeting a stranger’s eye across a crowded room or a bus stop or a party is actually difficult. People think you’re strange when you do that, and you get the “why are you staring at me” thing. I’ve had to explain to people before (only slightly lying) that I wasn’t looking at them. I was looking through them at something else that existed solely in my head. And it was true (more than slightly) because sometimes I was imagining what their lives might be like, but I wasn’t seeing them. I was seeing a character I was creating in my head.

What’s more interesting are snatches of conversation. Body language. Sitting behind a couple in a theatre and watching their hands—his thumb running over the back of her hand over and over. As though he was reminding her that he was there. Or reminding himself that she was real. Unconscious leaning. The smile that brightens someone’s face when her husband comes into the room. Unconscious shrinking away Secret exchanges. The things that we do because that other person holds a place for us that no one else does. That’s more important for me to write than a meeting of eyes.

I think that all poets and writers should spend time watching people. Thinking about eyes as windows and mirrors. Trying to figure out why people work so that their words ring truer. And yes, part of that is the eye. But it’s not the only thing. Nor even the most important thing.