The Space Between

I am looking at a plum. I like looking at things. I think that’s why I became an artist. For me, there is this pure pleasure sometimes in just sitting and staring at an object, a scene, a person, a patch of light on the wall. I’m like a cat. Or I can be. Because most of the time, when we are looking at things, we are not really looking. We are seeing it, but we are preoccupied with our thoughts and our internal vision. Our construct of time is telling us what we have done, or what we are going to be doing in the future. Our thoughts might attach layers of meaning to the thing, whether or not that meaning needs to be there. But we hardly ever take the time to engage ourselves purely within the act of seeing.

And as I look at this tiny plum, I realize I never saw before how, even though it is more red on one side, fading to a light green on the other, there are these green-gold speckles all over the skin that are the same throughout. Have all plums always been like this? The seem like marks of the sun, carriers of its energy. They even have little dark borders that set them off from the rest of the skin. But they are not any bumpier than the skin. They are part of it. Smooth, unbroken. Only in that rift from top to bottom do those speckles merge into streaks of color. The line is smooth, but there are streaks. Green, green, and one shot of red. It is the fruit’s center line. It is its scar. It is its badge of authenticity and existence. It means it’s real.

As hold, it, I am captivated by the place where the plum’s red skin rests against my thumb. I see the deep flesh-colored shadow, and the reflection of my thumb on its surface. I see how the light defines the lines on my fingertip. I close one eye. Then the other. Getting the different perspectives. I close both eyes, and open them again, comparing the vision. With each eye, I can see that there are three dimensions, but those dimensions don’t assert themselves until both eyes are open. I think about hologram images and how the superimposition of two slightly different points of view gives us our sense of existing in space. How brilliant to have that every day, without even thinking about it. And by concentrating with both eyes open, I can see that it is in fact the slight discrepancy between each eye that makes the thing look more real. It is not where the visions match but where they don't that gives it depth. It makes the plum's roundness and colors pop. It gives my thumb a sense of life. It’s exciting. I think, an artist who can capture that would be a brilliant artist indeed.

That is what art is after, is it not? But what is it that really needs to be captured? It’s not the image itself. That would be flat. Rather it would be the space between, the missing thing, the discrepancy - that is what would give it life. That disjointed, flexible image created by the space between our eyes. The subtle jarring of two images coming together but not quite matching. And the space between it and you. It and everything else. The negative creates the positive.

This is true in so many ways.

And at the Tikkun Leyl Shavuot that I went to at the beginning of June, there was a teaching on the mystery of the giving of the Torah. And the teacher spoke of three Rabbis who all gave their opinion on how and why and what it was about Moses’ encounter with G-d that gave his face that special radiance as he came down from the mountain. One of the Rabbis said that Moses held the tablets with his two hands and it took up one third of the space to hold the tablets. And G-d held the tablets with His Two Hands, and it took up a third of the space. And the shining that flowed through Moses, the Rabbi said, came from the space between them, that extra third space.

It sounds bizarre, but why couldn't it be true? It seems to me, it is true about the plum. because it is like the space between our eyes. The space between one person and another, one thing and something else. It is the thing we don't see that makes the seen possible. The negative gives us life, breadth and depth, and separation yields connectedness.