Interlude: a slow gaze

I waited standing, still. Before me was a man, standing, foreign, dressed for travel; he filled squares with numbers while waiting, like me. Nothing was random, everything was thought out. The time he took was necessary to find the logic, the only possible one. It was a logic thought up by someone, another man or woman, who wanted others to discover the sequence, the logic, that one.

It had to be this way, it had to be discovered. That other man or woman couldn’t make that logic indecipherable. That would drive others away, those who would distract themselves finding it; would frustrate them to the point of suffering. Most likely they wouldn’t reach that point: the consequent disinterest and distance are an easier path than suffering. But only for the others. For that man or woman, disinterest would mean pain. It would also be great pressure, great presumption, to think others wouldn’t discover a logic, a sequence, that one, unique, thought up by us.

I was standing, still, waiting, when I noticed that family. The two girls must have been sisters, they looked alike, pretty. The adults accompanying them must have been their grandparents, judging by the age their white hair, wrinkles, and slow movements suggested. They had nothing in common with the girls, physically speaking, except for the brief conversations they shared and the geographic proximity that made clear they were together.

They were ugly, poorly dressed, poorly groomed. The clothes were outdated, didn’t match. However, anyone looking from outside would easily perceive they were a couple. The woman had greasy hair, without any cut; her body reflected self-inflicted abuses and poor care, from a life that hadn’t let her pay attention or had prevented her from caring about such things. The man had disheveled hair, with the patterns a pillow leaves on short, thin hair after after a night of sleep or a night without. Both their walks showed pain, difficulty.

I continued standing, still, waiting, now attentive. The grandfather, the man with “bed hair,” had captured my attention. It was his expression that intrigued me, that held me captive. “A slow gaze,” I thought. The eyelids took much longer to close than expected and much longer to open than they should. The eyes dragged as they changed direction and focused, with difficulty, on another point. They never opened completely, as if the man didn’t have the strength, will, or courage to keep them fully open. As if his life had left his eyes heavy, slow, with nothing to say.

But there was something else that intrigued me. Could it be sleep? Possibly. But his mouth never opened. Could it be tiredness? Perhaps, but it would be a tiredness older than the previous night. A tiredness from a life that had left him with a slow, mute gaze. This attention, this time I dedicated to him, led me to change, to feel different. I no longer felt so different, no longer felt superior, no longer saw him with pity, in the worst sense of the word. I put myself in my place, neither above nor below, just intrigued, trying to understand what I could never know: that life and how it left those eyes: small, slow, and mute.

But there was more. I saw in that gaze a desire to have seen more, a resignation, a conformity with the non-satisfaction of the desire to see more, to see better. Those eyes seemed to search for something they knew they would never find. It was already too late. Or perhaps not—perhaps they searched precisely because they knew time was short, that each look could be the last. As if there exists a slow urgency when we’re old, an unhurried hurry to absorb what remains of the world.

I put myself back in my place, seated, still, in motion, waiting, attentive. Irony of fate, the man sits one row ahead, on the other side of the aisle. I can see him falling asleep and waking. Perhaps it was just sleep. Maybe it was just tiredness.