the shape of your eyes

rene magritte
le faux miroir, 1928


the first eyes i would have seen would have been my mother's. crystal blue like her own mothers. with the sound of her voice would have come the first understanding of how comfort, security and the eyes are linked. a connection that extends through all other like circumstances, where the intimacy of connection that includes the considerations of need, have arisen in my life.

you have heard the phrase, "the eyes tell stories".

stories hover in and around the eyes, as paul eluard's 1926 poem "the shape of your eyes" attests . . .

the shape of your eyes goes round my heart,

a round of dance and sweetness.

halo of time, cradle nightly and sure

no longer do I know what I've lived,

your eyes have not always seen me.

leaves of day and moss of dew,

reeds of wind and scented smiles,

wings lighting up the world,

boats laden with sky and sea,

hunters of sound and sources of colour,

scents the echoes of a covey of dawns

recumbent on the straw of stars,

as the day depends on innocence

the world relies on your pure sight

all my blood courses in its glance.

there are even greater stories . . .

the eyes are like the waistline of an hourglass. at either end of the narrowing there is an infinite perceptual opening. each moment, each atom is similarly constructed.

though the worlds are eighteen thousand and more,
not every eye can see them.
every atom is indeed a place of the vision of God,
but so long as it is unopened,
who says, "there is a door"?
[I, 3756; 3766] rumi

and so it is that other stories the eyes can tell are deeper, richer. in the telling of these stories, the eyes are like alice in wonderland's tunnel: "the rabbit hole went on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very deep well.

either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what was going to happen next."

when the mirror of your heart becomes clear and pure,
you'll behold images which are outside this world.
you will see the image and the image-maker,
both the carpet of the spiritual expanse
and the one who spreads it.
[II, 72-3] rumi



kristine schomaker
"down the rabbit hole"

at the end of the tunnel, "alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. how she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head through the doorway;"

it is in being available to the moment, to the door that presents itself, to the intuition that unfurls into insight that awakening takes place.

the door to freedom

when rene magritte painted "the door to freedom" in 1936, he might have been describing the shattering instant in which the distance between who a person is and who they are to be becoming is laid bare.

on the one side of the shattered window is a comfortable room.
on the other side, a grassy hill.
in the distance - the sea.

the glass shards contain elements of the image beyond the room.
the glass shards have fallen inwards creating discomfort in my room.
i am drawn to see the view beyond the window - the world beyond myself - and the shattered fragments of my understanding of that world . . . lying on the floor.

the air blows in . . . i imagine it warm and scented with grasses and wildflowers. sounds - the breeze, the rustling grasses, birds.

the light passes through the glassless window - clear and bright. it illuminates a dusty floor, the old paint on the walls. shabby curtains.

the opening in the window - like a star - pulls me through.
are those paths in the meadows?
does one lead to the sea?
i hope so.

it's a destination.
a formless destination.
broad . . . expansive . . . the opposite of this room i have lived in for all this time.

i have lived in rooms like this for most of my life. i have sought them out when paths to the ocean lay before me. those paths drew me like a moth to a light but they also frightened me. that expanse. that great unknown. so many fears, so many questions.
what is there when i arrive?
where do my rules fit? where do they go?
what happens to my expectations? what are they replaced by?

the not known often has greater power than the known.

the little rooms i have lived my life in are all labelled "what i know".

the oceans are all labelled "what i have been afraid to know".

the distance between what i know and what i am afraid to know is a measure of the suffering i have endured.

to cross the space between the two is to pass through the door to freedom.