I was the second to last person of the day. All afternoon, I was anxious that I wouldn’t get to sit at all. But then it was my turn, and I was walking towards her, and I was so excited I could barely keep myself from running to the chair. And when she looked up and met my gaze, my mind just went
THANK YOU, MARINA. THANK YOU, MARINA. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. OH, MY GOD, THANK YOU.
Oh my GOD! MARINA! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? WE’RE HERE, MARINA! WE’RE HERE! You and me! We’re HERE.
In my mind, I told her the whole story of how I’d first heard of her over a dozen years ago, and how it had blown me away.
I told her how glad I was to sit with her, how this was my last chance because I was leaving the country that week, and how very lucky all this made me feel.
And in my mind, as I told her these things, I was also aware that I was imagining her hearing them. And then I realized how crazy this was.
But how could I stop? My mind had gone totally logorrheic.
Like a first conversation with a long-lost friend, like prayer on amphetamines, a floodgate had opened, and the only thing that could staunch the senseless babble was the dimly heckling thought that the girl who had been waiting behind me in line all day was also leaving the country that week. It would be unfair to take a few extra minutes sitting with Marina at the expense of another person’s chance to sit with her at all. I felt keenly that she was giving, giving, giving all of us a precious gift, and that it would be wrong to prevent another person from receiving it.
This gift – what was it? And what was she receiving from us in return?
I thought of the meditation courses I’ve done: sitting for over ten hours a day, for ten days, full silence for the duration. I remembered the physical pain and the incessant mental chatter. I wondered whether Marina’s back hurt, if her legs were asleep, where her mind was wandering. And I considered the most noticeable difference between the work I did there and the work she was doing here: that her eyes were open, and constantly fixed on the eyes of whomever she sat opposite.
I felt myself desperately trying to send universal loving-kindness to her through my gaze, but there is only so much a gaze can do. And with this realization, there came another: that what was happening between us was just a stripped-down, purified version of what every interaction is. Whether we are talking or listening or touching, there is only so much that language or touch can do, in the service of communication. But talking and touching pose a potentially greater danger than looking does: they more easily create the delusional impression that given = received, that what I say to you is the same as what you hear. The reality, of course, is that we can never really know another person – the contents of a mind, the motives of a heart. A great divide is always there.
Exchanging and holding a gaze makes this clear: that communication is just made up of an intention and a perception. Trust and faith can mortar the gaps between them but cannot make them what they are not. They are not equal, and they are not the same.
What you intend ≠ what I perceive. Given ≠ received. It is not a direct exchange.
I took this realization itself as a precious gift. Even in the awareness that it was just my own perception.
But there was so much more that she was giving with her presence.
As in so much of her work, she gave us the space to observe ourselves – to see how we act and react, when presented with situations over which we finally have control – and the opportunity to recognize these actions and reactions as the self-portraits that they are.
By presenting us (in great and simple ways) with the important and universal and complicated things that we, as humans, are about, she helps us articulate our own humanity to ourselves.
That is my attempt to describe it, anyhow – but what are paltry, paltry words compared with the great and simple present of being present?
Because, of course, that is what she was giving us.
The artist is present. Of course.
What she gave us was something we long for, whether or not we acknowledge it.
“Be here for me.”
“I want your undivided attention.”
Dear humans! Be careful what you wish for!
Is it any wonder that finally receiving this gift drives so many of us to tears?
From the moment that I sat down with Marina until I got up, I could not stop smiling nor crying. The sheer force of gratitude was overwhelming, and there was simply no other way to let it out. She smiled and cried too.
