Her Eyes Alone Are A 500 Page Novel

“The real voyage of discovery consists of not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” If I am recalling correctly, that’s a Proust line. I’ve always liked that formulation–it ties into both what I think one of the main points of travel isto help you see home properly, and into that Zen-ish notion of trying to always come to things with new eyes, with the ability to see the wonder that is always there.

Or, as Thoreau puts it, in a much pithier form: “The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”

I do make a bit of an effort to try to actually see what’s going on around me, but I suspect that I fall dreadfully short a lot of the time. That’s one of the reasons I love novels–they’re wonderful little packages of “seeing through different eyes”.

And the best novelists, of course, the ones that make stories that transcend their plots and show us something about life that leaves us changed, must also look at the world through eyes that see.

Which is a long build up leading to this: I think I actually love Jonathan Carroll’s blog. Every day there’s a little something there, and with a stunning regularity what’s there is something that makes me wish I could see the world around me with Carroll’s eyes. I’ve been reading it for at around five years now, and I am always excited when I see a new entry appear in my reader.

Take for example this recent posting (yes, this is the whole post):

The two women at lunch– mother and daughter, obviously. The girl is beautiful, tall, eighteen or so. She can’t sit still in her seat. She bounces around, tosses her hair, eats too fast, talks a mile a minute while looking all around just in case there is something interesting she hasn’t seen yet. The mother is also beautiful, perhaps fifty, her eyes alone are a 500 page novel. Serene and smiling she is a total contrast to the young woman sitting across the table. How happy she is to be here with her daughter, how proud. Not many years ago this is the same child who frequently tried every bit of patience she had. The difficult student, the one with dyslexia or ADHD, or just wildly impatient about anything that didn’t interest her. But now look at her– this wonder, this young woman who is moving way too quickly out of my life and into her own. She has already set sail and I can only watch. But today she’s generous enough to have lunch with Mom and talk about things that matter with her first, her greatest pal. She doesn’t even know it is a gift. But Mom does.

Damn.

I’ve been a fan of Carroll’s novels since before I was old enough to drive–more than 20 years now–and I am always excited when a new one comes out. I have inscribed copies of all of them, in swank editions where they were made. But you know, over the last 5 years, or however long it’s been that I’ve been reading this blog, the way I primarily think of Carroll has changed. I no longer think of him as the man who wrote those novels, but instead as the guy who looks at the world and sees the stories in itSome of which he has used as basic building material in crafting wonderful novels–an exercise that uses a very different set of talents from the seeing, of course.. And perhaps more importantly, can communicate that experience.

Or, to put it another way, add this feed to your RSS reader. You’ll thank me. You’ll never see moving vans, people on cell phones, Christmas contacts from old friends, or many other things the same way again.

And you’ll end up buying the novels, if you haven’t already.