A Call To Chalk

With all the stories in the news lately about people being arrested for sidewalk chalking I had a realization. The reason it makes the news and spreads around Facebook so well is because everyone thinks it is ridiculous. Everyone has fond memories of making art on the ground in a state of freedom that no adult really understands. Evidently. Because side walk chalking your most passionate deepest feelings is now an arrestable offense. Or even a serious vandalism charge. 

As we all know sidewalk chalk washes off with water. That is why you are allowed to do it. Well if you are a good parent you leave it until the rain washes it away because you love your child's artistic side and you are glad at least kids still get to experience that for a little while with as much as we try and control them. 

Sidewalk chalk is the answer. We all need to connect to the child inside of us who just wants to draw on the earth. Whether it be a stick in the sand on the beach or drawings on the walls. I believe children communicate in many ways adults overlook. If we can't understand what they say we act like they are not developed enough instead of seeing Our inability to connect with them.

When they draw they are writing. They are telling a story. Our language is the language of children. Words use to BE art. They were drawings. The people who could write were the most important, those of knowledge and skill who could communicate to future generations what we had learned. 

There are some shapes and symbols that occur in children's drawings that are universal. Did we teach them that or do they have the images inside them from our collective knowledge?

We teach them how to hold a pen. We teach them how to communicate in a more uniform manner assuming that makes it easier to really know how another person feels or sees. 

Even the most handicapped of bodies and minds can create somehow. I have an aunt who has taught art to handicapped adults for most of her adult life. Their life has meaning because art exists. I believe that is true for all of us, it is just more obvious to those who have lost all their money or their health and can see that all we have is art. 

Art is about communication. Everything that is not for the sake of profit is for the sake of art. Games even are an overlooked form or art. Someone created the rules and the apparatus for all games. Just because we take basketball hoops for granted doesn't make them any less of a beautiful universal invention. 

Who was the first person brave enough to fall forward flipping over towards the water and point their hands and feet so that there is no splash? Art. You have to choose to see it. You have to choose to create it. 

So grab some sidewalk chalk. In the event you don't have sidewalk chalk, any medium will do. Garbage makes great art, and in the land of consumption there is plenty of that. 

You need the world to understand how You feel and sometimes text and technology just don't have the same feel as sidewalk chalk. Sometimes they do. Sometimes I feel my Facebook is a complex modern art piece. That's why they call me insane. 

If you are too afraid to make art alone, as it can be frightening to face the demons inside, our unbridled connection to everything, and the emotion that comes with it. Befriend a child. They will be excited to teach you how to sidewalk chalk and thrilled someone is listening.

Occupy Vision

How do we see? Do we see with our eyes? What do we see? When do we see it? Do we see with our minds? Is what we see our minds interpretation of what our eye balls see? Is what our eyeballs see really refracted light through a lense detecting color with cones, projecting images into our consciousness? Some who are blind see very well and some with clear vision can't see anything at all. 

I started out thinking. What did people like me do before the last hundred years where even the poor can have glasses? What did people like me do before we could be a part of the living working world? Did we know we could not see before someone told us? Were we considered handicapped before? Or did we used to know how to practice seeing? How can vision be entirely degenerative in every case of someone needing glasses in the history of eye exams? Do we chose not to see somehow? These are big questions. 

Personal struggles have come up in my quest for understanding how the mind interprets what the eyes see. "Was there a traumatic event before you first started not seeing well?" "Was there something or someone you were afraid of or afraid because of?" ("I'll beat you with this belt if you don't clean your room." "Don't ever talk to strangers. They might kidnap you.") Probably. Stranger danger. Worst marketing scheme in history. "No. No reason to be afraid." "Did you experience a divorce?" Wow. This is disturbingly accurate. 

If you can see near and not far you may fear the outside world. If you see far and not near you may be full of hidden rage. Do you have this nagging feeling something is wrong with you? 

"Do you ever take your glasses off?" I put them on from the moment I open my eyes in the morning. Only take them off for showers and swimming. I used to wear contacts from first waking up to moments before sleep. "Do you feel huge overwhelming anxiety when you don't have them on or try and do simple things without them on?"

Yes.

Why? I can see. I will admit when I wake up and don't put them on it is far easier to see than when I wear them for any time at all and take them off. Once I have them on I can not part with them.
I can see colors quite well. Well enough friends and I have wondered if we are those rare females who have extra cones. It is not as rare as we think for females to have an extra set of cones or males to lack a set of red-green cones. Maybe empathy and reading skin tones has to do with how much color you can see. I'd like to find out. 

I guess I should tell the story of the first day I woke up and tried the leaving off my glasses experiment. I did fine. I can see my phone and talk to my social networking world. I can write in my journal. My eyes have a hard time focusing. But it happens if I wake up and relax and don't put my glasses on. Sometimes there are intense moments of clarity. I can see the sun and shadow reflecting on the sides of leaves blowing in the breeze 10 yards away at the top of a tree. So how come I can't see all the time? 

I read 50 pages of a book. And fast. I sat in the yard with my son writing while he drew. He was excited to know I could see him on my own. I noticed that no matter how far away my son always looks clear. What a thing to figure out. 

Sometimes when I wear them all day I can't see at all when I take them off for test runs. When I first got this most recent pair I had very bad headaches for a few days. I didn't realize until the week after that's what it was from. Because I liked them from day 1, they did feel clearer, but primarily I felt more secure. I got giant lenses because I wanted to see as much periphery as possible. Perhaps I was already on this path before I knew it. They are giant and pink and the more I think about it, I do feel very much so more secure with my glasses on. They feel like a part of me. We have had a long tumultuous relationship. From forgetting them all the time in Kindergarten and getting in trouble for it. To not wearing them to school for 6 years of middle school and high school while I religiously wore contact lenses. If I really needed them so badly to see, how did I not remember to wear them for so long until I was programmed to? You'd think if they really made the world so much better all the time I'd always want them. You'd think.  

Unless they were somehow not for aiding my eyes but protecting me from harsh realities I didn't want to face at 5 years old. Younger than my son is now. We are so honest with him. He can tell us anything, and he is not afraid of people. No one was honest with me. No one treated me like a tiny human. I feel I am not alone, that many little girls suffer the fate of being treated like little girls instead of tiny humans. 

I was raised in a world of looks. What do you look like? What is your skin like? Is your hair the right color? Do you have too much hair? Your nails are not long enough; they are the wrong color. Oh and don't forget to cover those lips. Your eyelashes couldn't possibly be dark enough, curly enough, or long enough. Paint your face with this flat color, your cheeks the appropriate amount of pink. Wouldn't want anyone to see your actual health and emotions like master artwork painted on canvas. Why would I possibly want to see myself or the world when none of it was good enough anyway? 

I road in the passenger seat all the way to the western mountains of Maryland. It is certainly a world away from New Jersey. I did the entire drive there without my glasses. It was very sunny. I wrote in my journal a bit. I saw so many things. I could read signs. In a moving car flying down the highway at 70mph. How can that be? It was a beautiful drive. I had to wear them to meet people. I couldn't meet all those new people without being able to see. A bonfire is dark. Was I afraid I would fall in the fire? Well it was on a mountainside. So the glasses were probably a good idea. Probably. I couldn't take them off in the hotel room. Bad lighting, maybe, feeling totally out of place, maybe. 

I went swimming. I remember being able to see well in the pool as a kid. I was a competition swimmer. Typing that out makes me laugh. Me competing at a sport? It feels like another lifetime. 

I was a very good swimmer. Never the fastest. But I was made for water. I could swim forever. I was terribly anxious in this strange pool. It had been years since I swam. In a room full of people and yet alone. "Never swim alone, swim at your own risk. You could drown." 

You can't hear underwater. You can't see the same, but you can see. This time I couldn't see in the pool. I was terrified. What it someone stole my stuff, or it was gross, or I can't anymore. All irrational. I have to take off my glasses in public without contacts in a bathing suit. At first it was awful trying to see. Squinting like hell, didn't make a difference. But as I relaxed and remembered how natural it feels for me to be in water I could see better and better. I think had I not worn my glasses all morning in the hotel I'd have seen fine. 

Back to seeing people. Out of the pool, to the wedding, to the brunch, all the way back to New Jersey I wore the glasses. The light bothered my eyes so much more on the ride home than they had on the way there. They watered and I just wanted to close them and go to sleep. 

I didn't want to write about it either. I skipped my pages this morning. Always a sign I'm avoiding some feelings. I want to take my glasses off and see. But there is still so much in the world to fear. Letting go of fear is the answer to finding the path of Love. 

I wore them again today. Out to lunch with my mom and out to a movie. I will continue to try and live more time without outside influence on my vision. Less sunglasses to hide behind, less lenses in general. We judge people by their eyes. Hiding them is definitely a successful defense mechanism. 

Perhaps some of our vision problems are just psychological problems left unresolved to fester. Just a theory. 


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