Dec 12, 2006
“Creo que su modo es mirar con los oidos y escuchar con la mirada.”
“I believe that our way is to see our ears and listen with our eyes.”
“Yo camino contigo de la mano y te muestro lo que ve mi oido y escucha mi mirada. Y veo y escucho un caracol, el ‘pu’y’…”
“I walk with you hand in hand, and I show you what my ears see and my eyes hear. I see and hear a snail, a ‘pu’y’…”
--La Treceava estela, 2003, El Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
I was wrong. I wrote one time that the Subcomandante speaks with his eyes, rather than with his words. I didn’t consider that his look was an act of listening, rather than speaking.
This isn’t just a case of nonverbal communication. This is an example of conversation on a profoundly human level. Marcos’ eyes search not only for information or understanding, but for soul—for the humanity behind the gaze that encounters his own.
We are all involved in this act of discovery, although many of us do not know it, or forget. We are dynamic and interconnected beings. Some prefer to see the self as individuated, but I do not know how they go about living. What does it mean to live when your senses are already dead? What is a life without a soul?
For now, I think that it’s enough to live, to listen and, at times, to speak. And perhaps I’ll let this great teacher of a Zapatista bring me along for a while longer, hand in hand. It sounds like a good start. About this caracol…
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