Seeing and Looking

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Today I did some writing about the prompt we were given.  Here is the quote from Thoreau.

I must walk more with free senses. It is as bad to

study stars and clouds as flowers and stones. I must

let my senses wander as my thoughts, my eyes see with-

out looking. Carlyle said that how to observe was to

look, but I say that it is rather to see, and the more

you, look the less you will observe. I have the habit of

attention to such excess that my senses get no rest, but

suffer from a constant strain. Be not preoccupied with

looking. Go not to the object; let it come to you.

When I have found myself ever looking down and con-

fining my gaze to the flowers, I have thought it might

be well to get into the habit of observing the clouds as

a corrective; but no! that study would be just as bad.

What I need is not to look at all, but a true sauntering

of the eye.

-Henry David Thoreau, Journal September 13, 1853 

The next several days I will explore the notion “Be not preoccupied with

looking. Go not to the object; let it come to you”. In my art process I will wander through the universes of “seeing” and “looking”, how there is a way one can look through the eyes and invite the world to touch the eyeballs, how one can take a little elevator down into the chest, come right behind the heart, and see through the eyes of the heart. How does the world change when seen through the eyes of the heart? Or Gut? Genitals or Spine?