“And now let us welcome the
New Year
Full of things that have never
been.” -Rainer Maria Rilke
Desperate for sleep after many false starts (“The plane is in the air! It’ll be here soon so we can bundle you up in tiny seats and get you right home—just sit tight! Aww…it was diverted again so we’re bringing in a plane from Azerbaijan and a crew from Cape Verde—stay in the gate area because I’m sure they’ll be here soon”), I bought a book and headed to the Marriott sitting on the runway, a veritable landing strip of a hotel.
The book? Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel, Middlesex,
a book that (parenthetically) I desperately wanted to have written by the
time I reached page 12.
A minor official in the city of Delft, van Leeuwenhoek had no
formal scientific training, but he did have a copy of Robert Hooke's Micrographia
and a passion for all things tiny.
Using his own
homemade single-lens microscope, an instrument so small it fit in the palm of his
hand, van Leeuwenhoek observed everything he could imagine and collaborated
with artists to produce exquisite illustrations of the marvels he saw, things
that had never been seen. Although his microscopes only used a single lens,
they were capable of magnifications of up to 200X while other microscopes of
the time were lucky to achieve 10X magnification.
He could see more
deeply, more closely, more fully. And after seeing at such depth, it was
impossible to not-know of the detail, the intricacy, the complexity. He
couldn’t not know once he knew; he couldn’t not see once he saw.
When observing
pepper (he assumed it had microscopic spikes to produce its effect on the
tongue—it doesn’t), van Leeuwenhoek made an accidental discovery: tiny
organisms known today as protozoa—becoming the first person to see a living
microbe. When the Royal Society was able to reproduce his experiment, van Leeuwenhoek
became a celebrity, finding little animals everywhere, including "many
very little living animacules, very prettily a-moving" in his own dental
plaque. He had, in effect, discovered life on another planet—and that planet
was “us.”
In our micro world
of iPod Nanos and laptops the size of fingernails, I’m unsure if we can
appreciate the magnitude (no pun intended) of van Leeuwenhoek’s work—no one had
ever seen what he saw, there was no knowledge of the fine structures of life
forms, no cause for this awe until then. Suddenly, different and inward worlds
presented themselves, revealing an infinite regress of magnification and
complexity and life within life. By measuring infinitesimal things, the whole
idea of measurement changed instantly and forever.
Seeing first
things, inward and infinitesimal complexity. That moment of seeing differently
and deeper, without our happy preconceptions—so hard to recapture as adults,
isn’t it?
When he saw a flea at such magnification, something
undoable happened. The miniscule dot of a pesty bug became an undeniably intricate,
complex creature with its own unique beauty—the flea was complex, not simple;
it was worthy of attention, not just the absentminded swat of a hand.
How is this true
of people? We see two-dimensional categories of people—groupings without
definition, big swatches of folks—“Them.” What would it take to see more
deeply, more closely, more fully, to move from seeing people as a “what” to
seeing them as a “who,” more individualized, more beautifully complex, more—well,
more human—more like us?
As my friend David watched whales in Alaska recently with his partner,
Lora, they were awe-struck, speechless at the enormity of the beauty and
sanctity of the creatures in front of them.
Why, David wondered afterwards to a group we were training—a
group that had just experienced an exercise about really seeing the Other—why,
he asked, do we reserve such awe for whales and not for other human beings?
Why
don’t we look to other humans (and ourselves) with the same eyes? That man beside you on the
plane? He’s miraculous—see it, acknowledge it.
Once, my husband John visited Emma’s fourth grade
class to teach about seeing. He used an enlarged poster of a dollar bill and
gave each student a dollar bill and piece of paper with a tiny hole in it. John
pointed to places on the poster and instructed the students to find that spot
on their dollar, looking only through the tiny hole in the piece of paper. The
smallness of the hole focused their attention on the “hidden” objects on a
dollar bill (like that tiny owl no bigger than three pinheads—can you find it?)
Now that you know those things are there, he told the class, they’re there all
the time.
Consider the
flea.
Just when I think you couldn't possibly write a post that would knock me out more than the previous ones... I can't even think of a comment other than: you have so beautifully distilled in a few paragraphs what many have needed volumes to convey. "Stop not seeing." I will.
As an aside, I'm delightfully surprised and pleased to see that you'll be doing The Artist's Way with us. Will look forward to reading your posts about that particular journey.
Posted by: Marilyn | 01 January 2006 at 14:39
Thank you.
I am new to your blog - just this past week and your words are a grace.
Good to meet you!
Happy year of attending.
Posted by: susan | 01 January 2006 at 15:34
Pearl, so happy to have found you in 2005. I can't wait to follow your story and absorb your wisdom in the new year.
Happy 2006!
Posted by: patry Francis | 01 January 2006 at 17:42
Patti, another gem... a wonderful start to this new year! I look forward to finding more here each week.
Posted by: Steve Sherlock | 02 January 2006 at 09:21
marilyn - what a nice way to start the new year, by reading your wonderful note - thank you.
susan - welcome! i appreciate your words - "grace" and "attending" - thank you for those good thoughts so well put.
patry - thank you for taking the time to write and i hope you'll come back often.
steve - as always, many thanks for your encouragement and insights.
Posted by: patti digh | 02 January 2006 at 10:56