On Looking: Eleven Walks With Eyes Part 10

It rained. This struck me as a deterrent to a walk, but then I brightened: umbrella sound! I stepped outside, experimenting with how sound was changed with an umbrella raised above my head. A satisfying pitter-plitter of light raindrops on the skin of the umbrella should have made things louder, but the umbrella seemed to slightly temper the noises of the street. Everything was just as loud, but the local noise of the rain predominated my experience. I pulled up the hood of my raincoat. This blocked nearly all street noise and introduced me to my noisy breathing. The sounds of my movement-a foot landing on the concrete, the press of my leg against my rain jacket, the rustle of the fabric between arm and body-was translated up to my ears.

I decided to forsake both hood and umbrella and simply get wet. Taking the posture of someone coming out of her apartment and greeting the day (only with a notebook in hand), I began to walk.

A sudden wave of panic overtook me. This all looked very familiar. There, the cherry tree; this, the neighboring bricked building; that, the fence, the ivy, the street, the street traffic. It looked just as it always did, on every one of my daily walks. The scene was not cinematic. I did not have the eyes of a child, nor an artist. I smelled nothing.

As I stood reflecting on this unfortunate situation, my gaze idled at the building. Its bottom story was covered in-could it be limestone? I stepped closer. The stone looked raked, corduroyed, and resembled concrete more than limestone. Then I saw the O. And a flamboyantly big C. I peered closer, my eyes adjusting. The surface was entirely made of sea sediment: sh.e.l.ls, ancient fossils. The O, looking capital, was accompanied by many lower-case o's: each probably a disk of an ancient crinoid. The C was serifed with an abundance of small spongelike vessels. Scattered broken sh.e.l.ls and feathery spines lay around them. The closer I looked, the more the surface revealed itself to be fractally patterned-from unbroken sh.e.l.ls, to pieces of sh.e.l.ls, to imprints where pieces may have laid.

Now this was more like it. I'd lived in this building for six years and never had noticed the population of sea creatures resting by the entryway.

The limestone face was decorated with patches of moisture from the rain. They ran horizontally, spreading toward each other from the edges between stones. A splotchier wet spot was definitely contributed by a dog. I could see where a windowsill plant had been overwatered, the streaks of dirt-laden water spreading south.

Behind me sounds registered: I heard tires, a sticky-wet slipping over the surface of the asphalt like tape being unpeeled from its roll. A series of birds whistled, one twittering, another sending a declarative, six-whistle message.

It was a new street.

My eye caught sight of something a few yards down the street. I nearly leapt toward it, rudely lunging right in front of someone happening to walk by and not antic.i.p.ating nearly-leapers. The object of my lungely leaping was a gaping sidewalk crack, unfilled with mortar. I kneeled and peered in. Inside lived dozens of tiny, hopeful two-leafed plants pus.h.i.+ng up toward the light. None bore the mark of an insect. Between them were stuffed uncountable elm seeds, dried and colorless, limp with dampness. The slit between sidewalks told the story of the season: late spring, the plants cycling through their frenzied growth and reproduction. The lack of detritus-cigarette b.u.t.ts, bits of paper-within it told the story of the block: well tended.

Above my head, a flurry of birds seemed to fly right into the brick wall of a tall apartment building. Another chased them in, and I realized that they had flown directly into the small s.p.a.ce, maybe two inches wide, between adjacent buildings. Heads poked out, tails were vainly ruffled. Occasionally a bird sprang forth into the air like a brick come alive. Gra.s.s and twigs and pieces of paper were packed into the s.p.a.ce, forming an apartment building of nests. A row of overhanging brick served as a balcony, where a male, resplendent in black and bright brown feathers, seemed to sharpen his beak like a knife on a whetstone.

A door was propped open on a nearby building; a gaggle of men stood around, apparently a.s.signed to bring in a handful of was.h.i.+ng machines glumly waiting on the sidewalk. One of the men followed my gaze and smiled. "There's gotta be a nest in there!" he offered, happily. Oh yes, it's a building's full, I said. Maybe the birds were moving in their own appliances. "Bird refrigerators!" he said. We exchanged greetings and I walked on, not ready to leave the sight of these crafty birds but pushed by awareness of the perfection of a pleasant, and not over-long, exchange with a stranger to leave the scene.

After that the sights came fast and furious. Caterpillars of soft green seeds lay sodden on the ground, accompanied by small, green . . . caterpillars. A truck grumbled by, advertising its business in cacophonous yellow lettering. It banged over a metal plate put down by someone working under the street. Three orange cones nearby had all fainted dead away. I remembered walking with my son on this street looking for orange things when orange had been an early word that he liked to get his mouth around. (Purple things, so much fun to say, are especially hard to find; but orange was surprisingly common.) On the corner, a long tree limb, stripped of branches, stood upright in a trash can. I looked up at a nearby tree, half expecting to see its glow of satisfaction on having finally cleaned house. A large brown dog, waist high, peered at the stick as it rounded the corner. He was walked by a woman hidden underneath an umbrella; as she pa.s.sed, a waft of shampoo told me she had recently washed her hair. The dog turned to me with deep full eyes; I smiled. As if in response, he nosed me right on my elbow, leaving a wet smudge. Behind her, a young fellow, umbrella-less, leaning deeply to his right as he thumbed a message on a phone, swerved right off the sidewalk.

A gate was ajar. It opened onto the private parking behind a building. A wall within was lined with ivy curlicuing up and out. No one was inside. I took a quick look around me, and I ducked in.

That was only the first half-block of my final walk around the block. A simple walk had become unrecognizably richer. In the nineteenth century, skilled anatomists might boast of being able to identify an animal-and even reconstruct it-from the evidence of a single bone. The animal that is the city is similarly traceable from small bits of evidence. Part of seeing what is on an ordinary block is seeing that everything visible has a history. It arrived at the spot where you found it at some time, was crafted or whittled or forged at some time, filled a certain role or existed for a particular function. It was touched by someone (or no one), and touches someone (or no one) now. It is evidence.

The other part of seeing what is on the block is appreciating how limited our own view is. We are limited by our sensory abilities, by our species members.h.i.+p, by our narrow attention-at least the last of which can be overcome. We walk the same block as dogs yet see different things. We walk alongside rats though each of us lives in the dusk of the other. We walk by other people and do not see what each of us knows, what each of us is doing-captured instead by the inside of our own heads.

My original block-and every block-is impossibly dense with sights and sounds. What allowed me to see the bits that I would have otherwise missed was not the expertise of my walkers, per se; it was their simple interest in attending. I selected these walkers for their ability to boost my own selective attention. An expert can only indicate what she sees; it is up to your own head to tune your senses and your brain to see it. Once you catch that melody, and keep humming, you are forever changed.

My initial walk now felt like the imprimatura for an oil painting: the very first layer of paint on a canvas, which lends something to future layers but will eventually be obliterated by them. In some paintings, even heavy, Rembrandtian oil paintings, there are gaps where the base layer spread on the new canvas s.h.i.+nes through, where it has not yet been altered by layers of oils and inks and colors. Those peeks at the imprimatura are not moments of laziness; the meaning of the gaps changes because the context around them has changed. The bit left unpainted is now surrounded by smears of pinks and reds that form the nose, or the ear, or the eye of the subject of the portrait; the unpainted bit becomes the nostril, or the inner ear, or the corner of the eye-and will never be just a base layer again. My initial walk was this negative s.p.a.ce changed by layers of walks hence.

The result of these walks on my head is tangible: they refined what I can see. My mind can prepare my eyes to spontaneously find a leaf gall, to hear an air conditioner's hum, to smell the sickly sweet smell of garbage on a city street (or the fragrance of my own soap on my face, instead). It can tune to the sounds of my own breath, the feel of my heartbeat, or the s.h.i.+fts of my weight as I walk and negotiate sidewalk s.p.a.ce. I can feel my hip bones rotating in their sockets as I walk, my arms swinging in rhythm with my legs. I can hear the conversation behind me, in front of me, in a pa.s.sing car-or just the jingle of my dog's tags as he strides alongside me down the street. For me, walking has become less physical transit than mental transportation. It is engaging. I have become, I fear, a difficult walking companion, liable to slow down and point at things. I can turn this off, but I love to have it on: a sense of wonder that I, and we all, have a predisposition to but have forgotten to enjoy.

There could be an exhaustion in being told to look, to pay attention, to be here now: one might feel put upon, as though being chastised for being neglectful. Nearly all the people I walked with-some of whom were, in essence, professional attenders or lookers-reproached themselves for not paying good enough attention.

Do not sag with exhaustion. There is no mandate; only opportunity. Our culture fosters inattention; we are all creatures of that culture. But by making your way through this book-by merely picking it up, perhaps-you, reader, are in a new culture, one that values looking. The unbelievable strata of trifling, tremendous things to observe are there for the observing. Look!

Sources.

CHAPTER EPIGRAPHS.

"You can observe a lot": Y. Berra, The Yogi Book (New York: Workman Publis.h.i.+ng Company, 2010).

"To find new things": This is widely attributed to Burroughs, but I have yet to find the original source. An early variant published in Nature, vol. 42, 1949, goes "If you would see new things under the sun, the way to go today is the way you went yesterday." The sentiment is the same, but which words he said remain a mystery.

"To see is to forget": via L. Weschler, Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: Over Thirty Years of Conversations with Robert Irwin (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008).

"The world is full of obvious things": A. C. Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles (Ontario, Canada: Broadview, 2006), p. 75.

"' tis very pregnant": W. Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, act II, scene I.

"It matters not where or how far you travel": H. D. Th.o.r.eau, The Journal, 18371861 (New York: New York Review of Books, 2009), entry on May 6, 1854.

"We must always say what we see": Le Corbusier, Le Corbusier Talks with Students From the Schools of Architecture, trans. P. Chase (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999).

"What is life but a form of motion": G. Santayana, "The Philosophy of Travel," in The Birth of Reason and Other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 5.

"look, with all your eyes, look!": J. Verne, Michael Strogoff (play) (New York: Samuel French & Son, 1881), p. 57.

"Sound comes to us": H. Schwartz, Making Noise: From Babel to the Big Bang & Beyond (New York: Zone Books, 2011), p. 50.

"The only true voyage": M. Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 5: The Captive (New York: Random House, 1993), p. 343.

"You know my method . . .": A. C. Doyle, "The Bos...o...b.. Valley Mystery," in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (New York: Penguin, 2001).

AMATEUR EYES.

Fechner and James on attention: W. James, Principles of Psychology, vol. 1, ch. 11, "Attention" (New York: Dover, 1890/1950).

"hold the image still as one would with a camera": S. Carson, M. s.h.i.+h, and E. Langer, "Sit Still and Pay Attention?", Journal of Adult Development 8 (2001): 183188.

"blooming, buzzing confusion": William James's famous words, in Principles of Psychology (p. 488). In his later Some Problems of Philosophy: A Beginning of an Introduction to Philosophy (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1916), though, he attributes them to someone else (unnamed).

on attention generally: R. Parasuraman, ed., The Attentive Brain (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998); and S. Kastner and L. G. Ungerleider, "Mechanisms of Visual Attention in the Human Cortex," Annual Review of Neuroscience 23 (2000): 315341.

selective attention: S. Yantis, "The Neural Basis of Selective Attention: Cortical Sources and Targets of Attentional Modulation," Current Directions in Psychological Science 17 (2008): 8690.

MUCHNESS.

on the experience of childhood: A great stab at imagining this is attempted by developmental psychologist Charles Fernyhough, in A Thousand Days of Wonder: A Scientist's Chronicle of His Daughter's Developing Mind (New York: Avery, 2009).

synesthesia: R. E. Cytowic, Synesthesia: A Union of the Senses (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1989) and The Man Who Tasted Shapes (New York: Putnam, 1993).

"gloomy" 3: A. R. Luria, The Mind of a Mnemonist (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).

"drab shoelace" of h, "weathered wood" a: V. Nabokov, Speak, Memory (New York: Putnam, 1966).

sensorium commune: U. Mueller, "The Context of the Formation of Heinz Werner's Ideas," in J. Valsiner, ed., Heinz Werner and Developmental Science (New York: Plenum, 2005), pp. 2555.

curly lines as happy: J. Valsiner, ed., Heinz Werner and Developmental Science (New York: Kluver Academic, 2005).

theory of synesthesia: Since individual synesthetes' subjective experiences are rarely identical (Nabokov thought the colored alphabet blocks he was given to play with were colored "all wrong"), some researchers think that the notion of loss of differentiation is insufficient to explain synesthesia. Cytowic, for instance, suggests "polymodal combination" in the limbic system.

on natural synesthesia: F. Gonzalez-Crussi, The Five Senses (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989).

aboriginal sensible muchness: James, Some Problems of Philosophy: A Beginning of an Introduction to Philosophy (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1916), p. 50.

Cezanne on spheres, cones, and cylinders: L. Birch, How to Draw and Paint Animals (London: David & Charles UK, 1997).

Froebel on spheres, cones, and cylinders: Pratt Inst.i.tute Monthly, 1904.

on the coherence of the natural world: D. L. Ruderman, "The Statistics of Natural Images," Network: Computation in Neural Systems 5 (1994): 517548.

neophilia: J. S. Bruner, "Nature and Uses of Immaturity," American Psychologist 27 (1972): 687708.

"whelp(ing) whole litters of new objects": L. Halprin, Cities (New York: Reinhold Publis.h.i.+ng Corporation, 1963), p. 51.

standpipes: C. Delafuente, "It's no hydrant, but this hardware plays a critical role in fires," New York Times, August 26, 2007.

on animism: J. Piaget, The Child's Conception of the World (London: R. & K. Paul, 1926/1951).

on animate-inanimate distinction in childhood: G. Hatano, "Animism," in R. A. Wilson and F. Keil, eds., The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), pp. 2829.

keeping flowers company: Piaget, The Child's Conception of the World.

MINERALS AND BIOMa.s.s.

hexagonal Roman roads: M. G. Lay, Ways of the World: A History of the World's Roads and of the Vehicles That Used Them (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992).

Clochn na bhFmharach: http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/giants-causeway/history/.

weathering of buildings: M. Mostafavi and D. Leatherbarrow, On Weathering: The Life of Buildings in Time (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993).

stair erosion: J. Templer, The Staircase: Studies of Hazards, Falls, and Safer Design (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992).

on gingko: "Introduction to the Ginkgoales," http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/seedplants/ginkgoales/ginkgo.html.

horticulture books: e.g., P. Henderson, Handbook of Plants and General Horticulture (New York: Peter Henderson & Company, 1910).

on Central Park: R. Rosenzweig and E. Blackmar, The Park and the People: A History of Central Park (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992).

on Manhattan schist: C. Merguerian and C. J. Moss, "Structural Implications of Walloomsac and Hartland Rocks Displayed by Borings in Southern Manhattan," in G. N. Hanson, ed., Thirteenth Annual Conference on Geology of Long Island and Metropolitan New York, 1996, p. 12.

on expertise: A. Diderjean and F. Gibet, "Sherlock Holmes-An Expert's View of Expertise," British Journal of Psychology 99 (2008): 109125.

brains of dancers watching dancers: B. Calvo-Merino, D. E. Glaser, J. Grezes, R. E. Pa.s.singham, and P. Haggard, "Action Observation and Acquired Motor Skills: An fMRI Study with Expert Dancers," Cerebral Cortex 15 (2005): 12431249.

on chessmasters' recall: F. Gobet and H. A. Simon, "Recall of Random and Distorted Positions: Implications for the Theory of Expertise," Memory & Cognition 24 (1996): 493503; and P. Cha.s.sy and F. Gobet, "Measuring Chess Experts' Single-Use Sequence Knowledge: An Archival Study of Departure from 'Theoretical' Openings," PLoS One 6 (2011): e26692.

fusiform face area: M. Bilalic, R. Langner, R. Ulrich, and W. Grodd, "Many Faces of Expertise: Fusiform Face Area in Chess Experts and Novices," Journal of Neuroscience 31 (2011): 1020610214.

Sacks and prosopagnosia: O. Sacks, The Mind's Eye (New York: Knopf, 2010).

on schist: D. C. Roberts, A Field Guide to Geology-Eastern North America (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001).

geology in NYC: J. Kiernan, A Natural History of New York City: A Book for Sidewalk Naturalists Everywhere (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1959).

limestone: information on limestone and its residents retrieved from http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/geology/powell/613webpage/NYCbuilding/India.n.a.limestone/India.n.a.limestone.htm.

MINDING OUR Qs

children learn a word every two hours: M. Tomasello, Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), p. 50; and L. Fenson, et al., "Variability in Early Communicative Development," Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 59 (1994): 1185.

inscriptions in Pompeii: W. S. Davis, Readings in Ancient History: Ill.u.s.trative Extracts from the Sources (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1913).