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Ways of seeing - Magical Realist - Oct 11, 2026
"Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees."---Paul Valery
Seeing is a most miraculous experience. It entails the sudden instantiation of an apparition, an unmediated other, and a raw phenomenal presence to our otherwise empty and unlit minds. It is the ever on-the-fly and and spectral navigation thru the visible and the invisible---the manifest and the hidden.
We see when we look around ourselves. We see in our dreams. We see when we're reading. We see when we cease to think. We see thru, as in seeing thru the transparence of the air or the translucent mist. We see peripherally. We see shadows and silhouettes and blurs. We see stars thru telescopes that are no longer there. Animated film images on screens. We see patterns that are there and not there. We scan and pinpoint. We scrutinize and scry. We track and we aim. We gawk and we glare. We spy and we spectate. We see movement and stillness. We see the gradual and the instantaneous change. The contrast between shades and hues. We see colors and the colorless. We see ourselves thru our reflection. The form and the formless. The substantial and the insubstantial. Seeing is never just one thing. It is multi-modal, open-ended, and infinitely variable.
"In this state of absorbed contemplation, there is no longer any question of holding an object in view; the vision is such that seeing and seen are one; object and act of vision have become identical."--Plotinus