SEEING THINGS – Meeting the Invisible Halfway

Seeing this grimy sawtooth snowbank this morning reminds me how many
things in this wondrous world we can “see” only because of their effects on
something else.

Upwelling, wave-dampening “fluke prints” evincing a whale swimming out of sight below the surface. The jostling of larger subatomic particles by otherwise invisible “ghost particles,” or neutrinos. Tiny puffs of air on one's face from bat wings deep inside a pitch-black cave.

And this, a mound of snow poked by the invisible rays of a quickening late-
winter sun.

Though there's surely more to life than meets the eye, what a miracle how much more of it we can behold if our seeing is generous enough to meet it halfway.

THE SPACES BETWEEN – Learning to See Both Everything and Nothing

In Nature, as in life, we can see more if we notice not just things, but the spaces between things; not just sounds, but the silences they frame.

Far from empty, these inhalations in the song of creation are what make each note so clear, so sweet.
From Under the Wild Ginger – A Simple Guide to the Wisdom of Wonder, by Jeffrey Willius

                                                            —//—         —//—          —//—

Once again, it’s Australian Open time. For me this winter tennis tournament is a welcome escape from the cabin fever that’s so often hanging, cold, damp and gray, around my shoulders this time of year.

Besides watching the greats—Djokovic, Williams, Nadal, The Screamer (Sharapova)—alternately pick and beat each other’s games apart with astounding skill and endurance, there’s another pleasure for me in the Australian Open.

       Most of the impression comes from what
       we read, as it were, between the lines.

For the past several years, one of the event’s main sponsors has been ANZ, a banking conglomerate serving Australia and New Zealand—thus the initials. Its logo appears somewhere in the background of about half the camera angles.

I’m a former marketing communications guy and brand designer, and I think ANZ’s logo is, at least design-wise, among the finest corporate marks I’ve ever seen.

A POSITIVE-NEGATIVE ATTITUDE
The main reason I love this graphic so much is that it engages the eye in a most effective interplay between positive and negative space. The positive forms—essentially just two light blue circles, one cut in half; the other with a light-bulb-shaped bite taken out of it—are laid onto a dark blue background. The negative space is just that background area flowing between and into the circular elements.

And it’s so simple; that’s what makes it so elegant. With just those three basic forms the designer’s created both an interesting arrangement of the shapes, and, with the spaces between, a unmistakable human form.

More than that, in the way that little being’s arms and torso flare out around the blue circles, it becomes a dynamic, playful expression. It spreads, and reaches, and grows. It seems the arms are reaching out toward you, welcoming you, perhaps blessing you in some way. It’s friendly, exuberant, simultaneously humble and confident.

Just what you want in a bank, right? And most of the impression comes from what we read, as it were, between the lines.

     In western society…we’re taught to see 
     what’s there, and completely miss what’s not.

SEEING WHAT ISN’T THERE
I’ve written occasionally about this interplay between positive and negative space. As I’ve tried to capture in that quote from my book, Under the Wild Ginger, it can have a profound effect on how we see the world and life.

It’s knowing the whale’s down there without even seeing it. It’s the void, the potential, in the human experience an entrepreneur or inventor sees and then fills. It’s the powerful meaning in someone’s hesitation when you ask them what they think of something you’re just nuts about.

Seeing and appreciating the spaces between is one of the great little secrets of being truly aware and in the moment. And it doesn’t come naturally to everyone. At least in western society, we’re often raised and educated quite literally. We’re taught to see what’s there, and completely miss what’s not.

            To twist an old axiom a bit, 
            you have to believe it to see it.

NATURE THE TEACHER
Allowing existence to something most people would say isn’t there takes a little practice. What’s perhaps most difficult for many folks is the irony that, the harder you try to do this, the less likely you are to succeed.

My best teacher has been Nature, with a dash of faith, instilled by my parents, thrown in. If you can simply BE in Nature—no agenda, no schedule, no expectation, just pure, simple presence—Nature will eventually show you both what is and what exists right next to that, behind it, even in the space it now occupies, but once didn’t.

Sounds a bit metaphysical, a little new-agey, right? That’s where the faith comes in. To twist an old axiom a bit, you have to believe it to see it. And how does one unaccustomed to it come by that faith? It helps if you want to—something which I’m not sure many milennials do, addicted, I fear, to all the pre-digested information and virtual experiences available to them at arm’s length.

The other key to hearing and believing in Nature’s counsel lies in what I like to call seeing generously. It’s the attitude, the belief, that truly seeing—even what may not seem at first to be there—is more like giving than receiving. Far from the competitive, materialistic fervor our culture seems to believe drives our economy and makes us all happy, it is not an act of acquisition. It’s an act of surrender.

WHAT WHALE? Observing the Invisible

Nano-scientists are studying and even making things out of sub-atomic particles too small to see, even with a microscope. A little closer to home, I can tell there’s a big carp darting away from the bow of my canoe or a hungry smallmouth hunting for supper even when the water’s too murky to see them.

How? The same way those scientists keep track of those quarks and fermions; the same way you know about the wind even though it’s invisible and you’re inside your house where you can’t even feel it.

 Often the best—sometimes the only—way of seeing something is by the effects it has on something else. In the case of the wind, I get my clues from the trees, a flag or a leaf tumbling across the yard. With the carp, the giveaway is the subtle bulging of the surface where the water’s displaced by the fish’s movement. And you know bass are hunting when you see schools of shiner minnows breaking the water’s surface in flight.

This method of “indirect observation” has worked well for me in locating sloths in Costa Rican forests and tracking whales in the Sea of Cortez. Again, the animal may be all but invisible, so the trick is not to look for it directly. You look for the other things that give it away.

     With this expectation, it’s like the 
     mother of all Where’s Waldo pictures.

For sloths, it's the distinctive cecropia trees whose leaves and resting places they seem to prefer. And I try to find subtle breaks in the pattern of dark, narrow branches and the light spaces between them.

For the whale, the giveaway might be its “fluke prints,” the surprising, wave- canceling circles caused by the upflow of water from the creature’s up-and-down tail movements.

Indirect observation involves a subtle shift in one’s mindset. If you’re looking for a sloth, you’ve set your unconscious visual filter to rule out anything that doesn’t have brown, shaggy fur and four legs. With this expectation, it’s like the mother of all Where’s Waldo pictures; let’s say it’ll take you a while.

But if you switch the filter to a coarser mesh, that is one set to look for more generalized information, like breaks in patterns, you improve your odds considerably. If you’re bird watching, this means adjusting your eye-brain filter to focus not so much on spotting the birds themselves, but on noticing movement. It’s a pretty fine distinction, but it works.

"I believe only in what I do not see." Gustave Moreau (French, 1826-1898)