Do you look or do you see?

[ms.read]

It really depends on what I'm viewing. If it's something I find compelling, I see it totally and in great, fine detail. If it's something I find banal, I look right through it usually.

ditto

 

[NoJo]

I try not to look at my poo, but sometimes I see it, or rather, catch a glimpse of it as it disappears down the drain after I flush. But I both smell and hear my poo as it lands in the toliet bowl. Not sure what that makes me. A thinker, mostly.

 

[Stella_Omega]

That is where the good writing comes from. When you see what you are looking at. When you find original in the commonplace.

Yes, and it's true even in fantasy writing. It's the commonplace details that make a fantasy world believable....

Non-stoi grandiosity rates yawns.

(yes, I've been beta'ing the clueless.)

I try not to look at my poo, but sometimes I see it, or rather, catch a glimpse of it as it disappears down the drain after I flush. But I both smell and hear my poo as it lands in the toliet bowl. Not sure what that makes me. A thinker, mostly.

Give me a minute, I'll think of something funny.

 

[NoJo]

I make jokes in this thread because I detect the arrogance of poets in this thread.

Pop-culture is full of Yoda-like mages and sages entreating their proteges to "see, observe", etc. But we all know that the football-lover sees, "reads" the game differently than someone who doesnt really care. And an anthropologist may notice facial signs and hand-gestures that we miss. And a naturalist will see fifteen species of bird by the lake where we see only two.

All it means is that if you know and care about a subject, you notice more stuff.

You can't turn it into some general principle about "looking" and "seeing" types, as though you can become a better person by "opening your eyes" in some way. That's the arrogance of the poets.

 

[SeaCat]

I make jokes in this thread because I detect the arrogance of poets in this thread.

Pop-culture is full of Yoda-like mages and sages entreating their proteges to "see, observe", etc. But we all know that the football-lover sees, "reads" the game differently than someone who doesnt really care. And an anthropologist may notice facial signs and hand-gestures that we miss. And a naturalist will see fifteen species of bird by the lake where we see only two.

All it means is that if you know and care about a subject, you notice more stuff.

You can't turn it into some general principle about "looking" and "seeing" types, as though you can become a better person by "opening your eyes" in some way. That's the arrogance of the poets.

Joe in some ways I understand what you are saying and yet in others I don't.

I did not intend it to sound as though I am better than others because I tend to notice things.

I notice things in the environment around me, and yet I can't pick up a hint worth shit. (Only when said hint is given in an obvious manner, usually applied with a large blunt object.)

My noticing things around me started when I was a kid hunting and trapping. You learned to notice things. Now this noticing cmes in handy in several ways. One of the most important is my motorcycle riding.

Seeing, actual seeing and not just looking is a skill that is learned.

Cat

 

[SeaCat]

I try not to look at my poo, but sometimes I see it, or rather, catch a glimpse of it as it disappears down the drain after I flush. But I both smell and hear my poo as it lands in the toliet bowl. Not sure what that makes me. A thinker, mostly.

As long as you don't try to follow it. That would make you a spelunker.

Cat

 

[xssve]

I get your drift, but it is true that culturally, we have a few issues that the looking/seeing thing addresses - for instance when a White person looks at a Black person, do they see a person or a Black person? Do you see an insect as a threat, or as an important part of of a wholistic ecosystem that happens to be very handy in keeping you alive?

How we see things has a lot to do with how we classify things, we tend to assign things to categories, reduce them to symbols, and them make judgments based on this categorical assignment, and you can tell a lot about how a persons mind works by what they see when they look at something - and we all know that some minds work better than others.

i.e., it can be very subjective, as you correctly note. Most police know that eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable, and to some extent, we see what we want to see.

Australian aborigines score low on Stanford-Binet IQ tests, but they can identify a single pebble out of thousands.

Anyway, I too was trained to some degree to "see", FOD walkdowns among other things, very handy training for money-on-the-ground spotting, but I've had some memorable experiences.

Now, do you really see your poo, or are you merely looking?

 

[jomar]

I make jokes in this thread because I detect the arrogance of poets in this thread.

Pop-culture is full of Yoda-like mages and sages entreating their proteges to "see, observe", etc. But we all know that the football-lover sees, "reads" the game differently than someone who doesnt really care. And an anthropologist may notice facial signs and hand-gestures that we miss. And a naturalist will see fifteen species of bird by the lake where we see only two.

All it means is that if you know and care about a subject, you notice more stuff.

You can't turn it into some general principle about "looking" and "seeing" types, as though you can become a better person by "opening your eyes" in some way. That's the arrogance of the poets.

You're right. People with certain interests and trained in certain professions see the world differently. I took a drawing class once upon a time and I have 'seen' light differently ever since.

But I do think some folks have a knack for noticing things others don't. Maybe their pattern recognition is more developed or more alert and they see the details and anomalies better than others.

I mentioned some factors I think influence awareness a few posts back. Mindfulness, for example (kind of trendy) does teach one to be in the moment. And if you can be in the moment you notice more stuff.

As for the arrogance of poets - I'll pay good money for a 5.

 

[Vermilion]

Also... I see better in unfamiliar surroundings. If I'm in a place I've not been before I'll notice every tiny little detail, but in my home I'll be damned if I can find my keys or the ketchup, even if they're *right* in front of my nose!
x
V

 

[SlickTony]

If for any reason you have to focus on something, you will focus on it.

One day my husband's company observed a C****** Cares day--a day when the company does community service of some kind or another. This last year they decided to clean up the trash in a local park. We went there, were issued a plastic bag, a pair of gloves and a picker-upper each, and told to work one of the hiking or bike trails. So we did. Once I had started focusing on trash, it was amazing how much stuff I found. It was at least an hour before my husband started noticing stuff that seemed to leap right out at me.

I even found a truck bumper, of which maybe 18" was sticking up out of the ground, 20 feet away from the path. God knows how it got there.