Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory

/ M.P. Powers

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This picture came rolling onto my iPod just before I went to sleep last night. It was sent by my German friend Thomas who was drinking on the boat I go on every Wednesday night. The boat, named the Eastern Comfort but called and cristened The Motherfucking Boat, is also a hostel, and remains forever docked on the Spree near the Oberbaumbrüke. The drink on the right of the picture is a Rothaus, a pilsner-style beer that’s been around since Frederick William II held the Prussian court. The drink on the left is what we call a Thomas Special. Tequila and lime juice on ice. This picture was accompanied by a note saying that I was missed, and that C. says hi. C. is an ever-cheerful thirty-something South African. I’ve only known her for about a month, but she’s there every week, and when we first met she kept saying how I had ‘kind eyes.’ I liked hearing that. More often people have told me I have crazy eyes. They don’t say it when I’m sober. Something must come over me several drinks in.

I am good, but not an angel. I do sin, but I am not the devil. I am just a small girl in a big world trying to find someone to love.” ~ Marilyn Monroe.

I was telling Thomas the other night about an old pill-addict friend of mine, now nine years underground, who had these strangely hypnotic eyes, kind of like Rasputin’s. Thomas said I do too sometimes, which I tacitly took as a compliment, although I don’t know how serious he was or if it’s even remotely true, mostly because no one else has ever told me that, nor do I see it when I look in the mirror. Of course in the mirror I don’t animate myself as I must do in public. I stand there catatonic. We must miss a lot when we stand in the mirror, our perspectives being mossed-over by self-loathing, self-love, and laid flat by the immobility of our features and the lack of play in the eyes.

I’ve always considered a man’s eyes to be his essence, the portals to his soul. They are the most telling feature. And yet to the expressiveness of our own we are mostly blind. Half the time, we don’t know what rays they’re giving off or how those rays are being received. Which is why my interest is always piqued when someone says something about mine. Some things you can’t gauge by yourself. It’s like your own writing. You never really know what rays it gives off till you hear from someone else.

10 thoughts on “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory”

  1. Take it as a compliment that your meditation on eyes & mirrors is so evocative that it lures me to contribute again my two cents. …Now I know you keep saying that you haven’t bothered with films since the 90s, but I also know that you know the director Werner Herzog, because you mention his movie “Grizzly Man” (about the bear enthusiast Timothy Treadwell) in your novel “Fortuna Berlin”; and your thoughts about the way that we see (or fail to see, or skew the true sight of) ourselves in the mirror reminded me of something I recalled Herzog saying in an interview—I thought that he made the comment in Les Blank’s “Burden of Dreams,” the 1982 documentary about the making of Herzog’s 1982 film “Fitzcarraldo”; but I don’t own a copy of that title, so I did an online search for what I remembered of the quote: I thought Herzog said something like: “I don’t even know the color of my own eyes, because I have never looked at myself in the mirror.” Yet I couldn’t find the exact source, but I DID find a sort of questionnaire that Herzog filled out for “The Independent Online” where he asserted something similar: they gave him a series of phrases followed by ellipses, which he was expected to complete (by the way, I’ll probably forge my own answers to this “survey” in the future, and I urge you to do the same if you feel the whim); here’s the prompt that the publication offered:

    When I look in the mirror I see…

    And here’s Herzog’s answer:

    I do not see myself, I do not want to see myself. I only know the colour of my eyes from my passport.

    I just thought that was half humorous half admirable. (I don’t think he’s telling the truth, but I like to suspend my disbelief.) …And I swear I’m not trying to hard-sell you on John Ashbery, but I’m obsessed with him, so he’s on my mind even when he doesn’t recently die, so my CENT #2 OF 2 is a quote from his poem “Wet Casements,” which, to my mind, deals with just the type of thing that you’re getting at in your entry here—the desire to perceive one’s own true image, and the notion that this image is reflected (or refracted) via others’ perception of oneself. Here’s the beginning of Ashbery’s poem (I hope the line breaks aren’t too abused by the online auto-formatting):

    The concept is interesting: to see, as though reflected
    In streaming windowpanes, the look of others through
    Their own eyes. A digest of their correct impressions of
    Their self-analytical attitudes overlaid by your
    Ghostly transparent face. [ . . . ]

    And I hope it’s not too indulgent if I give this other passage towards the end of the poem (the full piece, when encountered in non-electronic reality, is less than a page long; but words seem so much wordier when copied online)—the mention of “anger” below sums the poet’s reaction to being naturally barred from knowing what others have made with his name (his identity, image, etc.):

    I shall use my anger to build a bridge like that
    Of Avignon, on which people may dance for the feeling
    Of dancing on a bridge. I shall at last see my complete face
    Reflected not in the water but in the worn stone floor of my bridge.

    I feel that we writers attempt this type of bridge-making nonstop with all our compositions. “Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” (Ecclesiastes 12:12) Although it kills me slightly, I also love the idea, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

    Also I love your use of that Monroe quotation.

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    • Herr Ray, I love that little tidbit about Herzog. Never heard it before. Good memory re: the passage in Fortuna Berlin. I forgot about Herzog when I said I have been out of touch with films since the early 90s. I’ve seen a ton of Herzog’s stuff, not only because I love it, but it’s good for my German. Just watched Aguirre a few weeks ago, and I’m always watching Klaus Kinski stuff. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard him read poetry, but he did very early in his career, and I’ve never heard someone put so much emotion into a reading. He does a lot of Villon and Goethe, auf Deutsch of course, but you don’t have to understand German to see what I mean. BTW, in my last blog, my line about the human face being the most fascinating landscape was pilfered from Kinski. Herzog mentioned that he said it (I believe) in the Mein Liebster Feind docu which I’m sure you’ve seen. There’s a snippet of Kinski reading Villon in there come to think of it.

      I just read the above Ashbery poem in full and it’s great. It’s the kind of poem you have to read several times to absorb. I will be searching out more of his stuff for sure. Thanks!

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      • AH!! I’m so glad that you know Herzog’s other work – I love him even more than Lynch – and I’ve met a few people who know him from “Grizzly Man,” which is popular because of its subject matter, but then I rarely meet anyone who’s appreciative of Herzog’s vast, sublime output beyond that movie. …Oh god, “Aguirre” is one of my all-time favorites: I’ve seen that countless times – that’s a holy film for me. If written text ever really does go extinct and humankind thus needs to construct a new Bible out of strictly audiovisual material, “Aguirre” is the first film I’ll urge our council to canonize. I think that’s maybe Kinski’s best performance. …Yes I’m familiar with and fanatical about Kinski; I own a box set of Herzog/Kinski movies which contains “My Best Fiend” (the English title): purest love. But besides what is contained in that film, I haven’t heard any of Kinski’s readings – but it’s not hard to imagine how strong he would sound: that man is not a man but a force of nature. …Ah but I didn’t even catch that you got your landscape line from him! …When I think of “Fiend” what pops into my mind first is that part at the very beginning where he’s shouting fervently and identifying himself with Jesus! Yeah I really admire his gusto. We actually watched that film a couple months ago – I return to Herzog’s stuff frequently; there’s no one I know who is as deep, true, human-centered as him, and yet also totally zany and surreal in the best way. I’m still amazed at the high level of quality that he’s able to maintain amid such an enormous body of work.

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      • Yes, quite possibly. I always remember that song by The Eagles “you just can’t hide those lieing eyes”, about a young woman in a relationship of convenience with a much older man. She doesn’t love him and this comes through in the expression of her eyes, hence “you just can’t hide those lieing eyes”.

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