Page 103 - Contribution To Phenomenology

96 MAXINE SHEETS'JOHNSTONE

lack of vision intensifies the whole of our tactile-kinesthetic body.^^ We
cannot either bracket our tactile-kinesthetic body. We cannot de-actualize
its presence. We are always, in Valery's words, "my body." No matter
that we pass over or ignore our actual tactile-kinesthetic connections with
things in the course of driving, eating, writing, walking, listening, or
sitting; we are in perpetual contact with the world. In motion or at rest,
being in touch is central to our aliveness. Indeed, as Aristotle long ago
noted, "touch . . . is the essential mark of life"; without it, "it is
impossible for an animal to be."^* What a lack of vision does in
AristoteUan terms is illuminate the heart of our soul. In closing our eyes,
we become aware of sightlessness as entrance to the primordial tactile-
kinesthetic world which is "my body."
I would like to ask you, the reader, to close your eyes and open your
eyes, alternating between the two acts and taking time in each case to
experience what is there. I ask you to do this in order to verify by your
own experience the brief description I will offer.

* • * • *

Eyes are mystic circles, mystic not in an occult sense but in the sense
of generating wonder, even of inspiring profound awe. Open them, and
a dazzling, bustUng world is present. Close them, and an opaque and
dense but sparsely-populated landscape appears. Open them, and
awareness not only meets with an expanse of objects but moves freely
within it, springing from one focal node to another. Close them, and the
field of possible attention contracts; wandering randomly within an
unmarked terrain, attention illuminates only the place it happens to be.
Open them, and the tactile-kinesthetic character of one's roving, active
glance is hardly felt. Close, them, and one's eyes are transformed into a
tactile-kinesthetic playground of sensations—pressures, pinchings,
flutterings, squintings: sightless eyes caught short of an object.
Eyes are mystic circles that open on otherness and open on inward-
ness. They are windows onto two worlds. To the degree they stay open

^^ Of course I can sleep, and in sleeping, dream. In this sense, I can nullify my
tactile-kinesthetic body and intensify vision. The "I can" here is, however, illusory
since any actual powers to enact sleep or dreams are fictional. The acts come—or
they do not come—^by themseh^es.
^* Aristotle On the Soul 435b 16-17.