The Eye of the World

I am at Boxx Coffee Roasters, recently opened by three Turks as an extension of their coffee shop in Istanbul. Tucked into a warehouse district just south of downtown Los Angeles, the well-appointed shop is surrounded by art galleries, restaurants and apartments. SCI-Arc, an innovative architecture school, is just down the street. 

The lights in the roasting room are on today, though I have never seen, or smelled, the big roaster being used. Music from the 1970’s is playing on the overhead speakers and I am drinking my favorite bao zhong tea, with, yes, a chocolate cookie. The tea is a green oolong, made with boiling water poured over a little basket of leaves. On my way here, I spotted a few yellow maidenhair leaves fallen from a row of ginkgo trees. Just a few. It will be a couple of months before the trees lose all their leaves.

I am here to see if I can see myself in the eye of the world. I’ve been working on what is called “witness meditation,” an attempt to find oneself beyond sensations, emotions, thoughts or experiences. The ritualized meditation goes, “listen to your thoughts as they move and flow. When you place your attention on them, they change. And yet, there must be a part of you that is not your thoughts. So allow the question to be asked within you, who am I amidst this stream of thoughts?”

I have worked with this in the past and very occasionally have been able to see myself, walking under trees, for instance, from the outside. I think of it as if from the eye of the world. From a biological standpoint, we are small mammals walking around in the world, infinite in our variety and full of gifts. We try, for the most part, to better ourselves and our surroundings, try to realize how intricately things fit together, how much beauty there is in the world.

The world sees us in this vast context, taking up more or less space, contributing to the total picture. It is the opposite of a “selfie,” in which we loom large. Witnessing ourselves from the world’s point of view, in context, in the vast interplay of reality, we see how small we are, but also what a privilege it is to be here, and that is, I think, the point.

In a coffee shop you can see yourself as the world does. It is all the things the world is. And it is full of eyes. If you don’t come daily, they probably aren’t trained on you, but they allow you the space to be, to enjoy the smells, the sights, the music. The eye of the world is certainly uncaring, promiscuous, even rapacious. It scans for excellence, but it is also compassionate. Sunlight and shadow fall on all of us equally. And “it must be the case that you are more than the never-ending stream of your sensations, emotions, thoughts and experiences.”

The sense of double-ness, of seeing oneself from the outside, is elusive and hard to sustain for long. But many activities veer into the realm of witnessing. When by accident, we catch a glimpse of ourselves in a mirror, before we recognize ourselves, for instance. Or when we review the happenings of the day before going to sleep. My own incessant journaling, in which I try to describe the world, takes the form of notebooks which I can go back to, again watching things change.

And we watch each other with the eye of the world, foregrounding our loved ones and friends. I am reminded of an evening long after midnight at the San Francisco airport when I stumbled down the corridor, having missed one of my three flights home from England, when, against the milling crowd I saw only the tall form of my husband Don, come to get me. We see our friends, their marvelous uniqueness, their particularities, as the world does.

It is helpful to get there, to “witness” ourselves in context, in reality, in the vast interplay of time and objects in space. Here, at Boxx Coffee, they are broadcasting music from my early days in California: George Harrison, I kid you not! “Really want to see you, but it takes so long, my Lord. Hallelujah.” I have been given what I need from the world right here, compassion, space, sunlight, liquids, music.

And, once again about coffee shops, there is this: a part of a longer poem entitled “Vacillation,” published in 1953, in which W. B. Yeats questioned joy and considered his long life. In London, he could escape the weight of the cultural and political mantle he wore in Dublin.

   “My fiftieth year had come and gone,

   I sat, a solitary man,

   In a crowded London shop,

   An open book and empty cup

   On the marble table-top.

   While on the shop and street I gazed 

   My body of a sudden blazed,

  And twenty minutes more or less

   It seemed, so great my happiness,

   That I was blessed and could bless.”