Powers of Observation

I like this idea of looking simply for the sake of looking. I do it often, sometimes appearing aloof or disinterested to dinner guests. Sometimes I just can't help it. It is really pleasurable to simply look at the matter of the world.

The following excerpt reminds me a little of a Neruda line about how words give that glass quality to glass. However, these few lines are more about the "inarticulate gaze", as Barthes-or was it Foucault- would say.

I came across this poem in a collection called The Unswept Room by Sharon Olds.

"...I just look,

an animal looking into the
liquid inside the other's head,

or through a tappered peephole into
the diorama of another dimension,
cloud, sky, pelagic water, the
sea of Eden, I am looking deap
across it, as if without knowledge, without use."

-Sharon Olds
from "Sunday In An Empty Nest"