Tuned To A Lower Frequency

"Her stare is louder than your voice
  because truth doesn’t make a noise…"

Small town eyes tend to gape, shamelessly, at everything…there’s no primal danger in locking eyes with people you don’t know in a small town because they’re all racially and culturally the same. There is also less to look at, in general, so the practice of eagerly absorbing everything that one can with their eyes becomes an intrinsic part of life. It is a method of observation that I left behind in childhood, and I wanted to mention how I did so, and why I did so…and then share a little something that pertains to the new method of observation that I adapted, that I just experienced a moment ago.

Unlike the small towns, the City has far too much to look at. The practice of greedily trying to soak up as much visual input as possible works against you, forcing me into a sort of tense paralysis of over-stimulation. It took me a while to narrow it down, but after one to many pleas for change from the homeless, and one or two "the fuck you lookin at?"s from angry minority groups, I figured out that the dominant cause of the over-stimulation wasn’t the architecture, scenery, or billboards…but rather just other people, and things directly associated with them (like traffic). My brain, using what strengths it already had beyond my conscious knowledge, re-wired a few neural paths and provided me with a suitable solution– blindness. But not exactly blindness…for there is a difference between seeing things, and seeing things. I abandoned the practice of noticing people, all together at first, but later filtered for priority, and I found myself once again at harmony with my surroundings, no matter how chaotic….I can walk into a crowded bar, and feel completely alone. As far as I’m concerned, beyond the lack of chairs to sit in, it’s usually only me and the bartender in there. The rest of the crowd just takes on these vague spectral forms, and the noise they omit just becomes this distant inaudible rumble. Unless there is someone in there who escapes my blinders (a friend, or perhaps an extraordinary stranger), and stands out in a way that catches my interest completely, I just don’t notice.

This afternoon I wandered into my favorite coffee shop for my solitary coffee and newspaper ritual, only to be greeted by the usual throngs of wall to wall screaming 14-18 year old kids, and a few scattered adults. I have my visual frequency tuned to block any one who’s younger than me, period, and the few adults remaining that I could see fell under other categories of blockage (familiar face, boring, soccer moms, etc), so despite the social carnage I felt quite alone with Joe the barista, who gave me my coffee for free, me being such a nice guy and all. While I was debating on whether or not to have a bowl of home made spicy potato Parmesan soup, I realized that I was not as alone as I thought. Someone suddenly caught my eye, for a much darker reason than why people usually catch my attention– something about this person was dreadfully wrong. It wasn’t apparent on the surface. Sitting alone with a cup of coffee at a table in the center of the pandemonium, quietly looking around, nothing about him would seem unusual to the passing eye. He was unassuming, overweight, middle aged, mediocrely dressed, balding, and wearing small glasses….but as I shrewdly kept a perpetually glancing eye on him after fetching my soup, and sitting across the restaurant in a place that I could see him without turning my head, it became clear just what was so wrong with this gentleman– he was there for the children. He fancied the rampant noise and confusion of people as adequate cover…he had no book, no newspaper, no coffee left in his cup, nobody coming to meet him…and I watched as his eyes went from one spring clad 14 year old female shape to the next, pausing periodically to scan the room for people who might be noticing what he was up to. I was seated in such a way as to be able to dip my eyes down and avert detection whenever he would start to swing his eyes across the room, but after watching where his eyes were landing in between sweeping for threats, I decided to act…in a way. I left my eyes on him when he next began his sweep, and we met, momentarily, in eye contact…something which caused me to begin laughing, for some reason, while we remained locked. He broke gaze first, and I followed suit, returning to my comic spread…and after a calculated one minute wait exactly, he got up and quickly walked out the door.