visual hello

It was one of the very few times I was actually supposed to be on the stage.

I recently enrolled in a literature and theater class, which is a sort of experimental curriculum, I guess, since the state hasn't ever done it before. The class is filled with actors and writers, all embarrassingly stoked to be there. It was my first acting lesson, all these strangers standing in a circle on the black and empty stage I had spent so much stolen time with.

All we had to do was look the person next to us in the eyes, and clap in unison. They would then turn, look the other person next to them in the eyes, and clap again. The single clap would move wordlessly down the circle, passed from gaze to gaze, one intense moment after another.

It was about rhythm, reaction, and connection. Connection among strangers.

And it all hung upon the look.

Cautious, careful eye contact passed itself around the circle, voiced in a four-handed clap. The walls people live behind were noticed as if for the first time, these papery things we fold over our faces so as not to see, not to perceive. People often forgot to look. Their eyes were there, open, staring, but they did not see. They did not reflect the movement of the Other, this delicate and dangerous dance played out in milliseconds of survival reflex. It was clumsy, off, separate. Hesitant and disconnected. I watched it grow as it moved towards Charlotte and me.

Charlotte is the kind of beautiful to make a heart afraid. There isn't much else to describe. She's the designated driver of the friend group we share, the junior who mostly just hangs with the sophomores and never has to explain why. Her rhythm is like the wind ripples on the surface of a smooth and slow-moving river: flawless grace with a shattered screen. A sort of silent poetry in the ancient fluidity of her movement, layered beneath a childish giddiness and inability to keep still. She held her focus there beside me, caught it, stood and turned and looked and clapped, right, exactly when we were supposed to.

Eyes are frightfully beautiful things when the walls go down. When you look, really look, look at someone who knows you are looking, trying to memorize them and react to them as quickly as possible. Time slows then. You both internalize the pulse of the stage, thankful to be standing beside someone who knows music, and you're waiting there with your hands apart but you're not waiting for the hands, you're waiting for the eyes.

They linger and connect like a time-bending landline telephone dialer, like a lightning-fast morse code telegraph. Indecipherable little beeps and buttons, waiting for you to answer. The eyes then hold each other softly and firmly, like hands on the shoulders before a solemn compliment or concern.

It isn't the eyes that touch you, though. Some part of the invisible person must reach out while you are distracted by the richness of the iris, a color so deep and so terrifyingly blue, like the color of the sky when you'd lean your head back on the swings as a kid and feel your heart stop with fear of falling in. But it is not the color that touches you. No, it is something else, some power exchange through the dark depths of the pupil, where all the light gets lost.

The presense of another person there, in the moment when you stare, feels sort of like how a car would feel getting jump-started, or jump-starting another car. Connected.

Locking eyes is one of the surest ways to connect with others without the bothersomeness of speech getting in the way. You tap into each other's ancient rhythmic heartbeat and beat back, like scared and voiceless animals who do not always want to be alone. You look and you listen and run your fingers over the surface of the water and, for only a moment, give and get a decent hello.