How
rude! Yes, but it's best to be honest about these things.
Things,
such as unspoken rules. And the breaking of them. In public.
Mind
you, those I break seem slight compared to those I've seen broken.
And I don't break them deliberately, consciously; my focus – gaze
and concentration – splits, drifts away. Three-quarters on whomever
I'm with, one-quarter fixed on those around us. Human behaviour is so
interesting! Where the rules I hold aren't held by these.
So
if I'm appearing to be impolite I don't mean to be. Public places are
like zoos to me.
And
it takes a lot of will to direct my gaze back to you fully. I may not
be able to avoid commenting on something I've seen either, although I
will of course apologise for the interruption.
On
occasion I have tried to seat or position myself where I won't be
distracted but that just makes me fidgety and uncomfortable, like I
have an itch I can't scratch or am in desperate need of the lavatory,
and that I think is worse, for it poses a question: when can I leave?
Or chants: out, out, out! Out of here! And not only that, it suggests
boredom, too. That is not the impression I wish to give, for although
there might be a smidgeon of truth in it it's not true. I
am interested. I
am engaged. It's just
my eyes and mind need something other, other than the persons I'm
with, to work upon. They need background life, not a wall, a pillar
or a plant.
I
wonder that I don't take myself out and just sit. But doing that is
somehow self-conscious making. I then feel as if I might be watched
and I grow more and more awkward as that feeling increases. I fiddle
with my clothing, I rummage in my handbag, I study something, a piece
of paper, my hand. I cannot eat or drink in an open space, designed
for that purpose, alone. Could I sit in the dark, in the cinema? I
don't know. At home those concerns don't exist; they melt away.
Has
my own compulsion made me this way?
I
can't resist the impulse to observe but to be, to feel
myself, observed unnerves me. Have I made myself so sensitive to
these tendrils of observation that I'm aware of it where others
aren't?
Observation,
like any study, raises questions. For the examiner and the subject.
The two cannot be divorced. Animal examines man; man examines animal.
Animal examines animal; man examines man. Animal and man examine the
world: all the objects they see and sense in it. It's what makes us
so similar.
So,
at home, unexamined and not examining, I scratch my head, I stroke my
leg, I push my glasses back up my nose to rest on its bridge; I sit
at ease, unconscious of self, whereas at a table in the forest of
humans I know the observer is also being observed. A woman adjacent
just flicked her eyes over me; the man standing behind the deli
counter with a smile plastered on his face did the same an instant
ago. Both knew I knew; both knew I saw. For I am forensic-like. I
miss nothing.
I
don't miss the mother, her arms round a child of two or three on her
knee, smashing, smashing with a fork a jacket potato; the father, at
a different table, feeding his baby, licking the underside of the
spoon before propelling it towards his son's gaping mouth; and that
same father then demolishing a substantial plate of food: shovel and
swallow, shovel and swallow. Finished, he looks at his wife with a
hopeful dog-like expression: more? but she is not in accord with him.
She's still picking and chewing, picking and chewing with an
expression of disgust, almost of horror. Her face registering every
mouthful; his stomach nothing. He hunts.
I
need no binoculars; no land vehicle, to follow at a safe distance; no
bushes or trees to further camouflage me; no specialist equipment at
all. Just plain sight.
Picture credit: Garden Restaurant, 1912, August Macke (source: WikiArt).
This post was penned in 2019.
