The Trouble With You
When I use the word you it is often not clear if I am talking about the actual physical you, or my perception of you, or whatever it is about me that I am projecting onto you. So you is a troublesome word.
If you are seven feet tall, and I say, “You are tall,” it is pretty obvious that I am talking about the actual physical you. But if I say something like, “You are cranky,” then things get muddled. Are you indeed cranky? Or do I perceive crankiness where there is really something else? Or am I cranky and projecting my crankiness onto you? Or am I denying my own crankiness, but still projecting it? Confusing, yes?
The Perils of Perception
This is how I see things:
I assume that you see things as I do because it is convenient for me to do so. But maybe you don’t. For example, if you are color-blind, you certainly don’t see things the way I do. I won’t know that unless you tell me or unless our difference becomes obvious in some way. If you are color-blind, I will think that you see things differently than I do, but some will think that there is something wrong with you.
Now imagine that this is how I see things:
Meaning-Making Is Both Blessing And Curse
…my mind often buzzes with questions about mundane events…
Red Mountain is in close-up view from a picnic area on the southern bank of the Salt River a few miles north of Mesa, Arizona, where the Bush Highway enters the south-west corner of the nearly three million acre Tonto National Forest. I sat there alone at a weathered and rickety picnic bench one day last week, my attention divided between the mountain and a narrow strip of river where a breeze rippled the surface and trout leaped. I had a notebook in front of me to record what I saw, thought and felt.
Making Weighty Matters Light And Light Matters Weighty
As it is with making photographs, so it is with the pictures we make of our lives…
That pictures should be balanced is another general compositional rule. Subject elements are weighted and assigned different degrees of importance depending on their size and their tone or color. (Patricia Caulfield in Capturing The Landscape With Your Camera)
I assigned weight to elements of the three pictures in this post by using color selectively. My choices about where to assign weight were deliberate, but in our lives we often assign weight to objects or events out of habit or predisposition, or because assigning weight in one way or another serves a purpose of which we are unaware. Thus we make weighty matters light and light matters weighty, and sometimes we know it and sometimes we don’t.
Is It Me, Or You, Or An Antelope?
The word “you” acts as a container. It holds the actual you, plus my perception of you, plus whatever parts of myself I project onto you. When I use the container–when I say or think “you”–I make no differentiation between those three, and so I am never aware of referring to one or the other. It is all just “you.” No wonder I become confused about who you are.
During a visit to Wildlife World in Phoenix, I found myself taking portraits of the animals rather than just snapping photos. I was looking for something in their faces, particularly in their eyes. What is in there that I can see, that is available to a human?
