This is me being reflective. Seriously. I'm on my lunch break, hoovering rabbit soup and WTF cheese. (My greengrocer has issues. I'll order potato salad, and get "roasted root vegetables." Or I'll ask for sausage rolls, and get a string of breakfast links. Green peppers become jalapeno peppers. Olives become artichoke hearts. And sometimes, just sometimes, something shows up, and I have no idea what it is. But, as long as it's not expired, and not fish, I'll eat it anyway. And that's the story of the mystery cheese. I think it might be Gouda.)

Anyway, this is the part where I give some serious* thought to my artistic foibles. Only, I haven't got time to think about all of them at once, so I guess it's the part where I talk about not being able to see.

Brief recap, for those who didn't subject themselves to my original, and decidedly not serious, look at my habits: first on the list was a preference for closed eyes, as illustrated here:



Now, what's up with that?

Popular wisdom (and second-rate fiction) characterises eyes as great, gaping bay Windows to the Vista of the soul. (See what I did, there? Windows Vista? Ba-dum-bum-TSS! Yeah, sorry about that.) But, assuming I subscribe to that fancy, and knowing I have a tendency to draw faces that resemble mine over and over again, the obvious conclusion would be that I don't want Peeping Toms admiring my inner vistas. (Ooooh.)

Of course, I don't subscribe. I've never seen much (beyond reflected light, and the odd burst blood vessel) in even the loveliest set of peepers.

Would I want the general public getting a peek at my inner workings? Really, I'd rather they didn't. Especially anything involving intestinal functions--that's just gross. However, I don't think that's the root of my fondness for closed eyes.

Here's another theory: I'm bloody tired. Wait a second--that's not a theory; that's fact. The theory bit is as follows: being tired, I'm liable to have sleep on the brain. It wouldn't be much of a stretch, to suggest I'm alluding to sleep. Getting some shuteye, what? There are six pictures of snoozing creatures on my site--one's even called "The Snooze."

That would wrap up the issue in a nice little bow, if it weren't for one thing: sleep isn't the only condition associated with closed eyes. Among others, and represented frequently on my site, there's death. Not including the living dead, I count twelve corpses or soon-to-be-corpses, making dirt naps twice as prevalent as regular naps.

Furthermore, sleep is often a euphemism for death. Perhaps I'm expressing my fervent hope that by the time I get round to croaking, I'll be good and spent, and content to moulder tranquilly away. (Though, I have the feeling it'll never be enough, no matter how much time I get. There's never time enough. (Not even in my favourite "Twilight Zone" episode, Time Enough at Last.)

There's yet another possibility: what if, rather than sleep, or death, or hiding oneself from the world, I'm thinking about not being able to see? I hate not being able to see. I sleep with the lights on--all of them. I used to explain this as fear of the dark, but it isn't. It's a desire for constant visual stimulation, even as I drift off to sleep.

Not being able to see implies helplessness: most people rely heavily on vision, when navigating the world. Nobody likes to be helpless. I don't like to be helpless.

Why would I represent something I don't like, over and over again? Why does the horror genre exist, in the first place? The answer to both questions is the same, I think: because people like picking scabs, tonguing rotten teeth, popping zits, and so forth. You know you shouldn't. You know it'll only make matters worse. But you do it anyway. I'm no different: when my friends get gastroenteritis, I quiz them mercilessly about their symptoms, despite my rampant emetophobia--or, more likely, because of it. When Gossip Girl's on the telly, I watch it. When the grocer sends me a mystery cheese, I eat it.

So, are the closed eyes simply another means of poking the monster? In some cases, it's a distinct possibility**. In others, almost certainly not.

I'd like to wrap this up with a foolish anecdote about not being able to see, from my art school days:

In my third or fourth year, I was short a few social science credits, so I signed up for something I thought was cultural anthropology, of some stripe. It turned out to be a walking-around-in-blindfolds class. No, I'm not joking. Yes, I wish I was. Week one, we walked around Granville Island in blindfolds. I got separated from the group, fell, and bonked my head. Week two, we rode the bus in blindfolds, and smelled a forest. It took me an hour to get a taxi back to the city, and I was late for work. Week three, we explored the False Creek area in blindfolds, and kids followed us around, yelling "Losers!" And so it went on.

I hated the walking-around-in-blindfolds class.

I wish this anecdote had a punchline. I wish I'd been left with a lesson to pass on, or at least an amusing one-liner. But all I walked away with was a bruised noggin, a black mark on my work record, and a lingering sense of perplexity. Or maybe that was nausea. The bruise wore off, in time. I got a new job, where they didn't know I had once, many moons ago, been tardy. All I have left is confusion.

Story of my life.

There--wasn't that fun? (Should I tackle the rest of my habits, in like fashion? Or was that completely insufferable? Perhaps the Internet would prefer my rabbit soup recipe. But the soup recipe is sort of...part of a stew recipe. You have to eat the stew, to get the soup, and that takes a while, unless you use a really small rabbit. See, you make the stew, then you simmer the rest of the carcass, minus feet and head, to make soup stock. That way, the meat you couldn't scrape off the bones isn't wasted. Why am I talking about cooking? I'm so tired....)




* (Probably. Possibly. Don't count on it.)
** If I'd thought about this before, I mightn't have drawn a trapped, sightless woman, for the 2006 RAINN calendar. Not quite the right message to be sending, in that context.