6. Eye Contact: Write about two people seeing each other for the first time.

i'm not one for eye contact.  i think looking into someone's eyes is like staring at the sun.  there is something precariously dangerous about it.  at times, it has to do with the other person; and at other times, it has to do with me.

there is a book that i loved called "till we have faces" by c.s. lewis.  yes, while he is most well-known for his children's books, and secondarily for being a christian apologist, he was also someone fascinated with, and i daresay in love with, the pantheistic traditions of the greeks.  in any case, "twhf" was a reinterpretation of the myth of cupid and psyche.  the title comes from a statement by the protagonist and narrator, orual, who asks, "how can we meet them [the gods] face to face, till we have faces?"  this statement somewhat captures my problem, the problem of confronting others when one does not have a face of one's own.

some think that the inability to hold eye contact arises from some sort of falseness.  in one sense, i think this is true.  but it is not "lying", in the sense of speaking a specific falsehood.  it is rather (for me at least) the sense that ALL is insubstantial, that any claim i make of myself is smoke and mirrors...  and that there is the attendant fear, ever present, that someone will see right through me.

i find it easier to speak by looking at some obscure corner of the ground, and tracing the patterns with my eyes, as my words summon structure from the void within me.

***

it is nevertheless a special thing when people's eyes meet, in seeking to create a bond.  there have been times in the past when, despite myself, my eyes have been drawn to another, like compass needles helpless to swing, under invisible direction.  just before being caught, my eyes would always turn away, perhaps playing the game of looking in the complete opposite direction, as if by pretending a sort of symmetry of observation, i were absolving myself of the crime of my preferential gaze...

it would be a dream of mine, a flutter of the heart, to be caught, and for the glance to be returned in kind...  sort of like a hand reaching out across a void, and fingers brushing for an instant in the heart of that emptiness...  and then for the hands to reach out, to hold each other, to form a bridge across that nothingness...

but i don't think it really happened much in real life.  and if it did, i probably just "made it up."