seeing the whole
blossom contained
in a seed
I look up to the sky
with all the stars
bottle rockets, 25, August 2011
Kala Ramesh
Commentary: There are two kinds of seeing -- with the mind's eyes (Ls 2&3) and with the naked eye (Ls 4&5) -- explored in Kala's visually evocative and thought-provoking tanka. The two parts of the tanka mutually enhance each other's tone and mood (Ls 1&5), and at the same time challenge readers to see with news eyes
The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. -- Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past
To quote more fully from the original citation source, 'La Prisonnière,' fifth volume of "Remembrance of Things Past:"
ReplyDeleteA pair of wings, a different respiratory system, which enabled us to travel through space, would in no way help us, for if we visited Mars or Venus while keeping the same senses, they would clothe everything we could see in the same aspect as the things of the Earth. The only true voyage, the only bath in the Fountain of Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees, that each of them is; and this we do, with great artists; with artists like these we do really fly from star to star...
And Ls 1-3 of Kala's tanka remind me of the following remark (on seeing with new eyes):
Faith sees a beautiful blossom in a bulb, a lovely garden in a seed, and a giant oak in an acorn.
-- William Arthur Ward