The Awakened Eye

"Ross Parmenter was a music reviewer for The New York Times for many years. I first met him at a mutual friend's house in Vermont in 1953. He was a delightful conversationalist and always took an unusual approach to whatever we were talking about. After he retired he spent half his year in Japan and the other half in a tiny village in Mexico. His book, one of three, "The Awakened Eye" is a series of thoughtful and wide ranging essays on how we see, or possibly how we mostly do not. On a long weekend visit to New York we toured the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At one point we were in the Egyptian room looking at a wall of hieroglyphics, the Egyptian pictographic language. We'd been silent for awhile in fascination and some awe at being able to look at exquisite carvings made millenia ago. "Look at all the birds" I said to Ross. He looked at me looking very puzzled. "What birds?" he replied. This incident made its way into the book. He then paused and looked very surprised. The wall had dozens of birds on it, ibises, storks, owls and many others. In an age where we are in much too big a hurry, this book will enable you to stop and see the world afresh. Most people apparently miss at least half the detail in front of their eyes. Eye witness accounts in courtrooms are overwhelming evidence that two people do not usually see the same event. "The Awakened Eye" will change the way you use your eyes every day. The world will become a more interesting place. No artist, photographer or graphics artist should miss the wisdom Ross Parmenter's volume offers." "I teach a class on Photoshop and Seeing and after many years of trying to find the right dialog and starting point I came across this book. Read it with a cold adult beverage of choice and take the required time to do the exercises he describes. It will help you to open you eyes and see not just look. There are mental exercises in the book to help you understand what he is teaching you." " A riddle in Proust (""Do you know why the king of diamonds was turned out of the army?"") leads to scrutiny of the face cards and study of the characteristics of each; watching a fire in a portable grate affects perception of a candle, a lantern and an electric light; after a harrowing drive through the mountains, a small town in New Mexico, stroked by the afternoon sun, becomes a scene of timeless significance: the first is an instance of sharpened vision, the second of heightened vision, the last of transfigured vision-how to induce such moments of illumination is the subject of this book, an enlargement of concepts broached in The Plant In My Window (1949). There are habits (reading rather than observing) and misconceptions (that seeing is objective) and cultural pressures (against long or random looking) to overcome; here there are also ""practical aids for better seeing""-writing descriptive letters or keeping a journal; drawing plants in detail; visiting museums or studying art books purposefully; playing visual games; allotting part of each day for idle looking. Each of these approaches is soundly based-drawing plants, for example, involves exact observing of parts, complete observing of wholes-and they add up to more than the quick course in self-improvement they resemble in outline. If there's a major flaw it's that passage through Mr. Parmenter's visual adventures is not quick enough. But he is an effective advocate of better living through better looking-we found ourselves fixing on a bandy-legged posture chair as Object of the Day."