“I like a view but I like to sit with my back turned to it.”
–Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Let’s suppose that Alice who is really Gertrude but not really Gertrude for such would be a matter of conjecture , let’s suppose that before turning her back on the view, whatever it was, she, Alice, saw something and for the sake of argument we shall say that she witnessed the tawny haycocks looming in the field above the sea.
Then she turned away. She leaned toward a lit match with her cigar. The fine, topiary haycocks were in her head alongside Matisse and swathes of fabric and the delight she must have experienced was thatof “in loco cogito”–not an idea nor a memory nor a photograph in mind, but the freedom to take from the words “haycock” “field” “ocean” whatever she fancied.
I like a view but always have my blind eye to it. I like a view but always read it in translation. I get my news from strangers who purport to see and whose neuro-plasticity of language is fair or excellent or doubtful. I take up their words like a bundle of dry brush and carry them away to the house.
But this you see is all that anyone can do. Alice saw the field and turned away and immediately it was another thing, a transmogrification of a preliminary impression.
I listen to what others say about the field. They’re crazy. Inarticulate or better… But they didn’t see the field without the bulky garments of languages and imprinted associations and so they’re at a disadvantage when finally they turn away and talk about what they imagine they’ve seen.
“How do you describe the world if you can’t see it?” someone asks. “Because I love language and I’m not a journalist,” I say. “There are animal instincts in the field,” I say. “They’re like amethysts, and that’s how the world of living things knows who is out there.”
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 
Steve, that’s just beautiful. I love the way you think. Thanks for giving ME something to ponder today.
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