Eye to the Future

The eye to the future.

I’m a weird person with occasionally odd insights or thoughts. I readily admit this, but it took a while for me to realize that the things I thought about and how I viewed reality did not necessarily jive with the rest of humanity. It’s hard to know this, of course, because each of us only has our own individual perceptions and view of the world. By definition it is all we ever really know, and the obvious assumption is that what one thinks and feels is how everyone thinks and feels. 

I thought my view of time brought on by my time-space synesthesia, for example, was how everyone viewed reality: days of the week and months of the year having a specific color, and sort of “out there” in three-dimensional space in a physical order. It wasn’t until I learned about synesthesia in one of my psych courses in college that I realized that this wasn’t how everyone viewed the world. 

Etc.

Another one of my observations that evidently is odd, strange, and weird is how I view cameras, or rather camera lenses. At some point I realized that the camera lens pointed at you, the one that you’re asked to smile at and say cheese, is an eye. An actual, real eye from the future. That round two or three-inch circle is a large unblinking eye that is someone looking at you *right now* from some distant time in the future. As you look at that eye with its all-black iris and allow yourself be photographed, your future spouse is l looking at you, viewing you in that instant years or decades from now in some distant time and place. Your yet-to-be-born grandchildren are looking at you through that long temporal lens. That eye may be a conduit to an even more distant time where your grandchildren’s grandchildren are looking at you.

And you are looking at them. Right now. Right then. Truly connected by that mechanical temporal eye that can span the enormous gulf of years.

I thought of that when I photographed or videoed Adrianna, that my eye was standing in for a future eye, and it thrilled me to think of what they’d think and see one day. 

I have never verbalized any of this until the other day because while part of me thought it was normal, another part of me realized that perhaps it wasn’t. But I’ve been thinking about it all the time since the event.

The boys and Stephen were over for The Fourth of July a couple of days ago, and we watched some old videos I took of Adri from over 30 years ago. She was playing at Discovery Zone much like her boys play now, and several times she looked right at the camera, that eye from the future, her eyes smiling and so full of life. She was looking at all of us *now*, and we all could feel it. It was of course sad, seeing her full of love of life and promise and hope, knowing she’s not here now… but at the same time there was some happiness at the connection that was felt at that instant: two moments connected, somehow, over the span of a lifetime. 

My heart quickened. She could see us, and we could see her. 

And I know that someday her grandchildren will see her and she will, somehow, have seen them. 

All of this is a bit lessened with the advent of cellphone photography, where the all-seeing temporal eye to the future is small, but its there none the less. So next time when you look into that eye, realize what is really happening and give a mental wave to all of those in the future. They’re watching you.