Now you see me
Now you don’t
Does that mean you no longer exist?
Not only could I see, but I could also touch and hear you.
Then when you turned the corner
you were no longer there.
Or if you were there, you were invisible.
Is that any different from the tree I see outside my window which is there as long as I am looking at it? Without my gaze, the tree no longer exists for others, or for me. If a tree falls in a forest and no one sees it, or no one hears it, how do we know there was a tree that fell.
Since I saw you shortly, my mind tells me you exist, or did exist but a moment ago.
I can only hear the tree as long as the wind is blowing through its branches. I can only hear you if you are moving or speaking, even if you remain invisible.
The tree is too far away for touch, but you are just around the corner where I can theoretically touch you even if I can’t see you.
Is seeing the equivalent of believing? Or perhaps touch means believing as shown by Thomas who had to touch Christ’s wound to believe.
Would touch tell us you were there? The softness of your skin. The bristles of a beard if you are a man, or if you are a woman, your hair bleached almost silver-white as it cascades down over your shoulders. If before moving around the corner you had reached out to touch us and we had shivered at the touch of your icy white fingers.
Or if we heard you?
The fall and rising of a voice. The harshness of a vowel, the melody of a song that brings to mind a love of years past. They would be enough to tell us you were there. A footstep on the tiles or on the parquet flooring just recently waxed (somehow we know that a young man had spent hours polishing the new-laid wooden laths), or the muffled sound of a shoe on a Persian carpet. A discreet cough or sniffle. The flutter of a page of a book in English encouraging young people to read, recently lent by a friend, or is it in Italian (by and on a favorite author?).
Bard, radio teller, early TV, color TV. Movies.
Once it was hearing that helped us visualize things that were not there. The bard singing of past valiant deeds and battles, of the hero’s skill in wielding his sword. Reciting a poem. The women at some community work narrated the romantic tales of imaginary lovers as they made quilts or husked corn. Later it was the radio that transmitted stories of ordinary people.
And then with early black and white TV the images were presented to us, their aspects no longer left to our imagination. Eventually color took over. We hear, and then we see. Figures now are real and sometimes leave little to the imagination. The knight has to be tall and noble, his lady slim and enchanting. Monsters rise up from the screen. I much prefer a book where the details can be created in our minds.
As we say in Italian: in somma, I prefer a book.
Erika Bizzarri 