Today I went to work and explained that I was not feeling well and wanted to use 5 days of my vacation for this week. I don't think I looked particularly great after I slept for 2 1/2 hours, and given that one or the other eye was deviating to the side. I don't think I am able to work at the moment anyway. I want to see things, and I would prefer to build up my newly formed 3d-visual memory from beautiful things, not from various junk...
St. Patrick's Cathedral on my way looked majestic because of being so vertical and going straight into the sky - this is probably characteristic for gothic and neo-gothic styles in general. It was also very interesting inside. I did not feel like I was in a holy place; in fact, I did not feel like I was anywhere, since the place was so unusual. One thing I noticed is that I was able to connect the sounds that I heard inside to the feeling that the building was very tall. That is, the sounds somehow conveyed the height and volume in the building, so that now I can tell more about the shape of a building even with my eyes closed.
The Zoo is, of course, fascinating. It is difficult to start explaining what is fascinating there, because I don't know, what is not. Almost everything I saw there is more beautiful than almost any of my past visual experiences. I was noticing birds on the branches. I saw lots of bats flying in space very quickly in all kinds of directions. I saw volumes of water and how it is possible to swim inside this water in many different directions. I was waiting in the bushes and then noticing when there was a sudden movement and then I immediately saw some small animal.
However, just as fascinating were the children. I could see the curious look on their faces. Furthermore, I sensed the binocular focus, and I understood their experience. Literally, I understood their experience.
- It's a mouse! It's a mouse! And this is a mouse!
- No, said an older girl, - this one is too big for a mouse. This is the size of a cat.
Indeed, - I thought, - this one is too big for a mouse, but is it really the size of a cat? Not sure what the size of a cat is. She probably knows better.
I watched children look, and then I started copying them. I started copying their use of the eyes. In order to do that I had to copy their way of walking and, furthermore, their mental state. The mental state of fascination. You look left, and there is something fascinating there. You look right, and there is something fascinating there.
I was standing near a little girl, we were both watching a section of tropical forest with various birds, when suddenly a large bird flew right near our faces. I think I felt almost the same way as the little girl.
As I kept copying the children, I started to get into a different way of being. The children were not shifting their gaze on purpose just because they had to shift their gaze. They were looking at landscape, at people, at creatures, and so did I. I could pick it up because I felt their binocular focus so well. Most of the children also had an amazing eye-body connection. They noticed something fascinating, and they led their eyes lead them there - so did I. It did not matter, what was in the way. The eyes just led. The children did not conceptualize if this bird or this pig was 2- or 3-dimensional, if they were seeing the surface or something else. Their eyes just focused on something fascinating, and there they went.
The fundamental difference between a child's and an adult's way of shifting the gaze
A child goes and sees something, and pursues it for some time. Then he or she (1) turns the head and/or the eyes, (2) focuses on something else, and (3) goes there. What does an adult do? The adult (1) decides to look at a certain thing or in a certain direction, (2) disconnects from the previous picture, (3) refocuses the eyes, and after that or even later (4) turns the head and/or moves the eyes to another object or direction.
Not all adults are like that, but many are. There were some that were engaged in what they saw, but most were not. I saw two children playing, and I enjoyed watching their engagement. Then I lifted my eyes to a woman near them. She looked at her cellphone. Then looked in some direction. Tensed her face. Moved her eyes somewhat to the side. Moved a little back. Jumped more to the side. All in unsmooth, ungraceful, unnatural movements. She felt absolutely disconnected from everything; compared to the children, she felt dead.
As I was getting more and more into the children's way of being, I noticed that I was letting go even of my newly formed 3d patterns of looking such as looking on the surface of an object so I could keep the stereopsis and feel surrounded by all those 3d objects, like in a computer game. Instead, I was more and more able to look at things or people that were interesting, that were fascinating. There were a couple of moments when I regretted I did not experience it in my own childhood, but otherwise the experience was quite deep, even though I couldn't stop verbalizing it in my head at an amazing pace. The verbalizing was telling me what exactly I was experiencing.
As I was walking on and on, I started to feel like a little girl or a little boy inside a fair tale, perhaps like Alice in Wonderland when she finally got into that garden. I couldn't comprehend, do children really grow up and lose all that? Is it what people always talk about? In the past I had never understood this curious look (=binocular focus), nor experienced it in my own childhood, but now suddenly I was able to comprehend this idea, that children grow up and lose something as adults. Of course, world is not only visual, but children surely need to be able to see to have a curious look, and I am not sure if many blind children are particularly curious...
When I was walking once again through Manhattan, I abandoned the idea of carefully picking my new visual memories, and instead continued to get fascinated with everything that I saw. I did not succeed all the time, but I still had an entirely new experience. I continued the same thing in my ballet class - looking at the room, my hand, other dancers out of fascination, not merely because I need to look at something.
You know, where there is one of the place where children are first losing this eye-body connection? Crossing the road. This about it: "look left, look right, look left again". It is not that there were no dangers in the jungle, but there is something about this protocol of left and right that is not organic.
As a sidenote, I also saw a short 3d-movie in the zoo (for some reason, they called it 4d). I expected something special, but it simply worked. I simply saw 3d, and I cannot say that it was particularly inspiring. Not nearly as interesting as the 3d outside. Also, there was something wrong about this 3d. There was the stereoeffect, and possibly enhanced movement detection. However, when I focused my eyes on animals in the 3d-movie, those animals were not highlighted, and everything else was not blurred. Also, the depth perception was somewhat limited. Only when the camera was looking from above, did I feel there was a lot of space in front of me where I could fall. Otherwise, there was space near animals in the movie, but not between me and the animals, and I couldn't really tell the distance to them.
St. Patrick's Cathedral on my way looked majestic because of being so vertical and going straight into the sky - this is probably characteristic for gothic and neo-gothic styles in general. It was also very interesting inside. I did not feel like I was in a holy place; in fact, I did not feel like I was anywhere, since the place was so unusual. One thing I noticed is that I was able to connect the sounds that I heard inside to the feeling that the building was very tall. That is, the sounds somehow conveyed the height and volume in the building, so that now I can tell more about the shape of a building even with my eyes closed.
The Zoo is, of course, fascinating. It is difficult to start explaining what is fascinating there, because I don't know, what is not. Almost everything I saw there is more beautiful than almost any of my past visual experiences. I was noticing birds on the branches. I saw lots of bats flying in space very quickly in all kinds of directions. I saw volumes of water and how it is possible to swim inside this water in many different directions. I was waiting in the bushes and then noticing when there was a sudden movement and then I immediately saw some small animal.
However, just as fascinating were the children. I could see the curious look on their faces. Furthermore, I sensed the binocular focus, and I understood their experience. Literally, I understood their experience.
- It's a mouse! It's a mouse! And this is a mouse!
- No, said an older girl, - this one is too big for a mouse. This is the size of a cat.
Indeed, - I thought, - this one is too big for a mouse, but is it really the size of a cat? Not sure what the size of a cat is. She probably knows better.
I watched children look, and then I started copying them. I started copying their use of the eyes. In order to do that I had to copy their way of walking and, furthermore, their mental state. The mental state of fascination. You look left, and there is something fascinating there. You look right, and there is something fascinating there.
I was standing near a little girl, we were both watching a section of tropical forest with various birds, when suddenly a large bird flew right near our faces. I think I felt almost the same way as the little girl.
As I kept copying the children, I started to get into a different way of being. The children were not shifting their gaze on purpose just because they had to shift their gaze. They were looking at landscape, at people, at creatures, and so did I. I could pick it up because I felt their binocular focus so well. Most of the children also had an amazing eye-body connection. They noticed something fascinating, and they led their eyes lead them there - so did I. It did not matter, what was in the way. The eyes just led. The children did not conceptualize if this bird or this pig was 2- or 3-dimensional, if they were seeing the surface or something else. Their eyes just focused on something fascinating, and there they went.
The fundamental difference between a child's and an adult's way of shifting the gaze
A child goes and sees something, and pursues it for some time. Then he or she (1) turns the head and/or the eyes, (2) focuses on something else, and (3) goes there. What does an adult do? The adult (1) decides to look at a certain thing or in a certain direction, (2) disconnects from the previous picture, (3) refocuses the eyes, and after that or even later (4) turns the head and/or moves the eyes to another object or direction.
Not all adults are like that, but many are. There were some that were engaged in what they saw, but most were not. I saw two children playing, and I enjoyed watching their engagement. Then I lifted my eyes to a woman near them. She looked at her cellphone. Then looked in some direction. Tensed her face. Moved her eyes somewhat to the side. Moved a little back. Jumped more to the side. All in unsmooth, ungraceful, unnatural movements. She felt absolutely disconnected from everything; compared to the children, she felt dead.
As I was getting more and more into the children's way of being, I noticed that I was letting go even of my newly formed 3d patterns of looking such as looking on the surface of an object so I could keep the stereopsis and feel surrounded by all those 3d objects, like in a computer game. Instead, I was more and more able to look at things or people that were interesting, that were fascinating. There were a couple of moments when I regretted I did not experience it in my own childhood, but otherwise the experience was quite deep, even though I couldn't stop verbalizing it in my head at an amazing pace. The verbalizing was telling me what exactly I was experiencing.
As I was walking on and on, I started to feel like a little girl or a little boy inside a fair tale, perhaps like Alice in Wonderland when she finally got into that garden. I couldn't comprehend, do children really grow up and lose all that? Is it what people always talk about? In the past I had never understood this curious look (=binocular focus), nor experienced it in my own childhood, but now suddenly I was able to comprehend this idea, that children grow up and lose something as adults. Of course, world is not only visual, but children surely need to be able to see to have a curious look, and I am not sure if many blind children are particularly curious...
When I was walking once again through Manhattan, I abandoned the idea of carefully picking my new visual memories, and instead continued to get fascinated with everything that I saw. I did not succeed all the time, but I still had an entirely new experience. I continued the same thing in my ballet class - looking at the room, my hand, other dancers out of fascination, not merely because I need to look at something.
You know, where there is one of the place where children are first losing this eye-body connection? Crossing the road. This about it: "look left, look right, look left again". It is not that there were no dangers in the jungle, but there is something about this protocol of left and right that is not organic.
As a sidenote, I also saw a short 3d-movie in the zoo (for some reason, they called it 4d). I expected something special, but it simply worked. I simply saw 3d, and I cannot say that it was particularly inspiring. Not nearly as interesting as the 3d outside. Also, there was something wrong about this 3d. There was the stereoeffect, and possibly enhanced movement detection. However, when I focused my eyes on animals in the 3d-movie, those animals were not highlighted, and everything else was not blurred. Also, the depth perception was somewhat limited. Only when the camera was looking from above, did I feel there was a lot of space in front of me where I could fall. Otherwise, there was space near animals in the movie, but not between me and the animals, and I couldn't really tell the distance to them.
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