My people are strong gazers at the world. They can see a blade of grass quivering in a distant field, or the minutest grain of wood on a granary door. With a single gaze at warriors on horseback they can tell whether victory or defeat awaits them. Seeing clearly has been our strength. Those who see best become masters among us.
From childhood we learnt to see the world as it is. Those who see things as they are can see things as they will become. This is what we thought.
I too learnt to be a gazer at the world. Many times I won the seeing contests. From a thousand steps I could tell the difference between two grains of rice, or distinguish between identical twins.
Maybe we saw the world too well and could not see how it could be different. We came to think that the world we see is all there is.
But even with our clear seeing we began to be surprised by things that happened to us that our clear seeing could not foresee. Unexpected changes came upon us. The world eluded us in the new forms it took. People that we trusted betrayed us. The works of our hands no longer satisfied the depths of our souls. A new hunger came amongst us. We didn’t know what we hungered for.
We who saw so clearly found that we had never really been seeing so well after all. The way we saw the world determined how the world revealed itself to us. The world had all along mirrored our seeing.
Then something changed our seeing. That changed the world we saw. I have no idea how it began.
One day I discovered that by gazing into the distance, without thought or focus, I could see things people only glimpsed in dreams. Often something happens in the world which I understand before it happens.
I became a gazer into distances. I peer into open spaces as if into another world. Then time dissolves. In the stillness of all things, I enter a place of simple happiness.
This is the place that my people have sought, a paradise among simple things. Sometimes the shape of events makes no sense till they hover on the rim of fulfilment.
I cannot tell what happens in this gazing place. But I have many beautiful experiences, many magical encounters. They seem to leave no impression on me except what is visible in my art.
When people ask where my ideas come from, I have no answers for them. I am of the tribe of artists. My happiest moments are spent gazing into a dream.