I take away my visual sight to explore awareness, to see new things that I didn’t know was there. Here.
I blindfold myself to expand my experience of space.
I blindfold myself to expand my experience of time.
In the darkness I meet sounds and textures, vibrations and formations:
Actions and reactions, interactions and moments of silence.
Colours, temperature, volume and cracks.
In the darkness I meet you. Through dance, greetings, laughter, coincidence, presence.
My eyes are in the way when they distract and control me, when they filter the world and leave me with nothing but surface and fragments of meaning. Like a half made puzzle that can no longer be solved because the eyes have eaten half of the bricks. It is so rare to see the picture in itself. To experience a whole.
The (W)hole kisses me when I’m blindfolded.
I eat the world amazingly fast with my eyes. I don’t know how to measure the speed.
I eat the world more carefully when I take away my visual sight. I taste before I sink.
The experience of being full. Satisfaction. When have I had enough?
It’s so tempting to go on eating if I don’t feel that I’ve had any food yet.
It’s like the food goes right through me like gamma rays without touching anything, really.
Sometimes.
Seeing is a sense. A sense that it should make sense to sense –
or to use in order to increase the understanding of the world.
When I wanted to join the choir class the other day I entered the space and started to walk around singing a tune like the rest of the group. Some students started to giggle next to me and I had the feeling that I missed some information … they were walking in a way that I couldn’t decode when blindfolded without desturbing too much. I took off the blindfold and realized that they were all clustered in groups and walked around with sticks.
I found a purpose in seeing with my eyes that increased my understanding of what was going on in the world.
When I have been blindfolded for a long time and start to use my visual sight again, I have the feeling that I use my eyes more actively –
I like to see the act of blindfolding myself as an active choice and to see the act of seeing with my eyes open as an active choice as well.
What a privelege to be in a space and a situation to explore senses and awareness.
If you as a student or teacher at Sisters Academy in Simrishamn are interested in seeing in new ways, here is an open invitation to go on a journey. I can offer to be your guide or extra eyes for some time. You can contact me both with or without eyes.
//Flow