During my time in India studying with international meditation and healing practitioners I took a course where a photographer came to take our pictures. These images were divided down the middle and split to create a triptych. On the left was the mirrored image of the left side of our faces, the centre was the actual photograph, and the right was a mirrored image of our right sides. I wish I had kept that strange representation.
Myself as left-sided showed a waif, a sorrowful, a lost child. The right-sided me, when given full command of my face, was an arrogant, judgmental, well okay, bitch.
Strangely, when put properly together with the left and the right, I appeared quite normal—neither pitiful nor cruel.
Since I no longer have mine, here’s Ryan Gosling’s. He doesn’t look cruel, but you have to admit, the guy on our left does seem rather shrewd, whereas on the right (A flip of his left side) he looks kinda lonely.
I'd like to know who decided to arrange our faces like this since everyone in the course had the same response. We spent an entire morning shoving our triptychs under each other’s wondering full faces, exclaiming, “Look how sad.” “I look so callous.” “Look.” “Look.” And we would look, then look up to the flesh and blood face and say, “I don't see you like that,” or “You look fine to me,” or “Good god, I never saw you that way.”
The next phase in the course involved the application of eye patches—first over the left eye, then the right. Each of the patches were worn for a week. “Pay attention,” our teacher said. “Notice how you react. But watch the traffic. You could easily wander into the street.”
At first, I didn't notice much save for a tendency not to walk in a straight line. I was diligent about watching the road’s edge. I felt confident, attentive, and quite comfortable seeing only from one eye. Nothing so out of the ordinary, I thought.
Class was over. I was on my way to dinner when I saw one of the course’s assistants. “Hey Kavita,” I said coming right up to her. “Will we be doing this with the left eye, as well?”
She turned away toward the dining hall and said with a half-smile, “It's five o’clock.”
I was well aware of the time. “I know,” I said, moving in front of her. “But will we be wearing the patch over the other eye?
“It's five o’clock,” she repeated.
Did she think I hadn't heard? “Right, but what about the patch?”
My husband bumped my hip. I ignored him. He could be such a nuisance.
“Ask me tomorrow in class,” Kavita said. “I'm going to dinner now.”
My husband was staring at me as though I'd lost my mind.
“What?”
He indicated Kavita’s retreating figure. “She was trying to tell you she didn't want to talk about the course outside of class.”
I shook my head. “Then why didn't she say so?”
That was me seeing the world through the lens of my right eye, with my left brain. Logical, ala Spock or Data.
Covering the right eye was an utterly different experience. Frangipani’s deliriously sweet fragrance. The sheen on banana leaves. The creak of bamboo in a light breeze. The kindness of the coconut wallah who tapped the hard shells to find the perfect eating/drinking one for me, how he waited until I’d drunk it all so he could crack it open, fashion a spoon from the shell, and how his gentle smile when he presented the succulent insides made me cry. I also cried when my husband suggested I change my dress. Such was the way I encountered the world through the left eye. Vulnerable and attuned to beauty.
The teaching of this experiment included the advice that when confidence was required to shift one’s focus to the right eye. In confrontation, one might find an advantage in appealing to the other by focusing on their left one. Look out through the right, look in to the left. Funny how my right eye requires a stronger lens prescription.
From different angles in my writing, I’ve been exploring the question, Who the hell are we? And examining how easily and/or dramatically the answer can shift or transform.
After reading stories about children who have perfect recall of documented previous lives, I wrote the story, “Speaking With The Dead.” Because who wouldn’t be intrigued by a two-year-old who believes a thirty-something widow is his wife? I’ve written about someone whose personality is dramatically altered by a brain injury. I’m so fascinated by the fact that however we identify ourselves, the personality we believe is “us”, can be swiped away in an instant.
So now, after reading Clare Sylvia’s memoir, A Change of Heart, I’m writing a novel about a woman who receives the heart and lungs of a younger man. I’m taking the true-life stories of transplant recipients who find their tastes and inclinations dramatically altered a few steps deeper. I’m asking, “What if…” What if the organs retain so much of their previous owner that they want to take over the recipient’s life? Who is she then?
From the simple shifting of focus from one eye to the other changing our perception, our attitude, and even our personality, to a complete about-turn from a kind person to a cold person via aneurism or dementia, our identities are on shifting sand. Or, let’s say when someone you trusted rips off your skin, leaving you bleeding on the doorstep. You’re different then.
The question remains, who do you think you are? And if it can be taken away or flipped on its head just like that, are you any ONE at all?
Wow, fascinating. My friend died of an aneurysm and his heart was received in a transplant. At his funeral his brother in law suggested the recipient might wake up with a craving for Canadian and Rothmans. But seriously, who are we? Thanks for this. I love the questions it raises.