foggy morning:
a figure approaches...
nope, just a shrub!
Foggy Morning [Senryū]
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Tag Archives: Sight
Rocky Outcrop [Tanka]
the rocky tip
of grass-coiffed outcrop
is all I see,
but the sound of a crow's "CAW!"
comes through loud & clear.
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Vanishing Hills [Haiku]
rows of hills, each new ridge fades more into nothingness.
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BOOK REVIEW: Ways of Seeing by John Berger
Ways of Seeing by John BergerMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Amazon.in Page
This book challenges one to not just look at what’s in a picture, but to reflect upon the nature of seeing and what it tells one about the deeper meaning of a painting or photograph. For example, who is seeing – i.e. whose perspective would the picture be from and what might the artist be saying about such a person? Also, what are the subjects looking at, and what does that convey (e.g. come-hither, lost in thought, etc.)
The book’s seven chapters alternate text + picture chapters (the odd chapters) with ones that are only pictorial (i.e. the even chapters.) The first chapter lays out the concept of ways of seeing, and subsequent chapters consider how those ideas can be applied to specific questions. Chapter three, for example, discusses what the differences between how men and women are depicted says about inherent societal biases. Chapter five explores the relationship between possessing and seeing, and also how everyday people begin to be rendered in art. Chapter seven investigates what the author calls “publicity” and how pictures are used to evoke dissatisfaction with what is and desire to be something else. Here one sees how advertising and marketing exploits these concepts.
The picture-only chapters are intriguing. One can see the commonality in the pictures and practice discerning what the author is trying to convey. One of the book’s central ideas is that seeing precedes reading, and that we learned to extract information from images before we did so from words.
The book has strange formatting, employing bold text and thumbnail art. The font didn’t bother me. I don’t know whether it was used to raise the page count on a thin book, or what. I will say that the thumbnail art can be a little hard to make out, even in the Kindle edition where it can be magnified somewhat. Most of the paintings can be internet searched quite easily, but the advertisements that are used to show how art is applied to marketing, not so much.
I found this book to provide excellent food-for-thought, and would recommend seeing / reading it.
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POEM: An Exercise in Walking Blindly
I walked up to the window — eyes closed.
The explosions of irregular shapes settled into an even sheet of orange — a warm and comforting hue. It became more yellow as I continued to stand before that unseen sunny day.
When I turned my back on the window, light blues boiled up from a dark and even metallic blue — until the inside of my eyelids settled into shifting Rorschach mosaics of dark colors, mostly purple and black.
Walking blindly,
-every step is an adventure,
-every sound matters,
-there is no wandering mind.
I wonder how long my brain would take to rewire if I kept my eyes sealed shut.
I suspect a blind person can take a mundane walk, but there is nothing mundane in my walk. There’s no mind left to wander after one piece keeps me on balance, another piece takes note of other sensory input, and yet another bit positions my hands for maximum gentleness of collisions.
I have no yearning to be blind, but it does wake up something within one what one never knew lie dormant. And in those moments I experience life anew.
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Mysterious Sight Haiku
shaman staring
out into the distance
a world away
hawk on the roof
twists its head, pointing
one eye groundward
cow head fixed
as a raucous world screams —
blind or unmoved?
what’s it like
to have one’s blind spot
to the front?
the sad moment
when baby’s smile is found
to be fart fueled
Tiger Riding for Beginners 