Seeing, Looking, and the Onion

Alan Watts “The Book” pg 32–33 “We also speak of attention as noticing. To notice is to select, to regard some bits of perception, or some features of the world, as more noteworthy, more significant, than others. To these we attend, and the rest we ignore-for which reason conscious attention is at the same time ignore-ance (i.e., ignorance) despite the fact that it gives us a vividly clear picture of whatever we choose to notice. Physically, we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch innumerable features that we never notice. You can drive thirty miles, talking all the time to a friend. What you noticed, and remembered, was the conversation, but somehow you responded to the road, the other cars, the traffic lights, and heaven knows what else, without really noticing, or focusing your mental spotlight upon them. So too, you can talk to someone at a party without remembering, for immediate recall, what clothes he or she was wearing, because they were not noteworthy or significant to you. Yet certainly your eyes and nerves responded to those clothes. You saw, but you did not really look.”

I quoted the entire paragraph to put it in context, but the part that is of the most interest to me is the finally sentence. “You saw, but you did not really look.” I posted the drawing to illustrate this very point. If I asked you what colors were in the drawing, without looking at it many people would not be able to tell me half of the colors in it. The same would be true of the major shapes which make up the drawing. Still less would notice the same pattern is repeated 2x in the drawing and is a variant of the drawing originally done at Rhoda’s Yoga + Art class 2 weeks ago. This is a pattern that I have repeated and built from in each of my past 4 drawings, but could anyone other than me, the artist who designed it pick it out? I am as guilty of this as everyone else. How many times have I seen a certain piece of art without actually looking at it and paying close attention to what I was seeing?

I mention this not to lecture at others about what they pay attention to, although in this day of being glued to our cell phones I could easily do that. Instead I mention this because I have begun to notice as I get further along in the process of peeling the onion that I never really noticed many things before I began peeling the onion. I never paid attention to the songs the birds were singing when I would go outside with my dogs, in spite of the fact that I had a 50 foot tall oak tree next door to my house that was full of song birds! The same is true the day I moved out of my old house and into my new one. I was not happy with the circumstances behind the move and was so upset that I didn’t even notice the double and half rainbows that were over the edge of the hill that I lived on until my then girlfriend pointed them out to me! This is why peeling the layers of the onion are so important to me. With each layer that is peeled back I find myself noticing more things, connecting with more people and seeing life much more clearly than ever before! And this is exactly why it is all worth it, so that I can live life to the fullest and be the most creative person that I can be!