Looking back over my life, at least the first forty or so years of it, very clearly I saw very little very clearly; both literally and figuratively.
From an early age I wore very thick glasses. Some time in my early to mid-forties I had laser surgery and discovered what seeing clearly really meant. Tests had always shown that I had 20/20 vision via my glasses, but it never offered the clarity with which I saw the world after that surgery. I cried tears of joy the next morning when I realized that I could lie in bed and clearly see the trees outside my window without first needing to grope around on my bedside table for my glasses. Betsy had to walk round the block with me when I first left the house, I was so disoriented. Everything seemed to jump up to meet me; too clear and too big and too close.
Twenty-five or so years later, my eyesight is deteriorating a little, and recently I discovered I have glaucoma, so perhaps my days of seeing so very clearly will be disappearing. Already I wear drugstore glasses for reading. That's OK. I am just so grateful that I have not lived my entire life without ever knowing the real meaning of seeing clearly.
Oh, and how sincerely I mean that in the figurative sense as well. I could, I guess, have gone through my whole life without ever clearly seeing myself. Many have, many do, and many will in the future. And, yes, I am primarily talking about being GLBT but not that alone. Seeing yourself clearly, with all your complexities, is a serious life-long challenge. There's an old Robert Burns poem which wishes that we all might have the gift to see ourselves as others see us. Sorry, Robbie, but I don't see a solution there. Every one of you at this table sees me differently so I cannot imagine much more confusing than trying to see myself as every person I ever meet might see me. On the other hand, when I eventually came out to co-workers and friends there were a few who responded with well duh! looks or well I knew that kind of comments so if I'd seen myself as they saw me I might not have had to wait till my early forties to see it clearly for myself.
A good analogy of my coming-out-to-myself process I now see, looking back on it, as trying to see myself clearly via various visual depictions of myself. You know that famous Malevich painting, 'The Black Square'? One version of it sold for the equivalent of a million dollars and, with due apologies to all sincere fans of purely abstract works, to me it looks like nothing more than a black square. Well, the first twenty or so years of my life, I might as well have been trying to see myself in that black square. Or as that black square. The more I looked the less I saw of me; hadn't a clue. Or probably in fact the last thing I really wanted to see was me, and I was perfectly happy to see nothing more than a black square. By my late twenties I maybe had progressed to a vision of myself more akin to Suprematist Composition by the same artist, a jumble of confusion which I actually quite like, if not to the extent of the sixty million dollars for which it sold. I have always quite liked myself, but certainly saw myself as a jumbled confusion at this stage.
In my thirties I progressed to around the expressionism of Munch's 'The Scream'. Far from a realistic portrait but nevertheless clearly a scream - something I was feeling ready for about then. I was awash with frustration without knowing why. My life was good - no, it was great - so why wasn't I satisfied? By my late thirties I had reached impressionism. You know, Monet's water lilies etcetera, very clearly waterlilies but nevertheless a bit fuzzy.
And suddenly, in my early forties, I took one huge step for womankind; well - for me, anyway.
I saw myself as clearly as in any realist painting but more so. I saw the reality of my queerness with all the clarity of an award-winning National Geographic megapixel photograph.
But that, great breakthrough though it was, was all about being lesbian. I still had plenty more to look deeply into if I was truly to get a clear view of my whole self; all of me.
This group has been of immeasurable help in propelling me to dig really deep inside, to try to really see and understand what's there and to be at peace with all of it - the good, the bad, and the ugly. Perhaps it explains the lack of appeal which purely abstract art has for me, and at the same time why I love photography. A photo can be so terrible it makes me cry or so beautiful it makes me cry, but I don't have to wonder what it is, just as I no longer have to wonder who and what I am. I am here, I am queer, and I'm perfectly clear!
© November 2017
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