Johnny E. Mahaffey
March 20, 2013

To: Nicki

I wanted to thank you for your comment; it gives me more purpose when I see that people are actually reading what I post, and especially if they've somehow taken my words to heart or been entertained by them in some way.

As for the subject of "The Wizard's Feet" in the newest issue of Poets and Writers March/April 2013 (pw.org), there is an article "The Literary Life: Open Your Eyes, Seeing Like A Writer." By Tony Eprile, pages 35-44. And Eprile's words hit pretty close to my January 15th posting.

I agree with many of the things he presented:

"We see with our brains; our eyes are only the conduit to that seeing. Brain damage of various kinds can cause a person with undamaged eyes and optic nerves to suffer blindness. This is an uncommon condition, but all of us, to some extent, can be 'blind' due to our brain's selecting out phenomena and becoming habituated to seeing only certain things. Take the famous man-in-the-gorilla-suit experiment conducted at Harvard: Its subjects were asked to watch a group of people - some dressed in white, some in black - passing a basketball around. Their task was to count the number of passes made by the people of white, ignoring those made by the ones in black. At some point, a man in a gorilla suit ran into the middle of the court and stood, beating his chest. When asked afterward, about half the subjects simply did not see the 'gorilla' and had no recollection of this event. Their attention had been selective, and their brain did not register something irrelevant to the task they had been assigned."

Personally, I'm glad I see the Wizard's feet, he can put on a gorilla suit if he wants, but once you've seen him and learned his tricks, there's no fooling you. Ignorance really is bliss for most, but not me. Never. I know what the stars are made of, and to me it's much more important what actress was caught where and with who's husband. Eprile went on to say that: "Seeing sharply and accurately is part of the contract the author makes with the reader." But I think this extends much further than writers and readers - each generation owes it to the next, this "seeing sharply."

We can't rightfully leave our children to stand before a curtain, when we don't know quite what lurks behind its folds. Under the playful gorilla suit... could be a vest made of explosives.

The truths of life can be painful; but informative, and useful.

I plan to write more about this in a later essay, and hope you'll enjoy it as well...