What Does It Feel Like to Be Looked At?

[Jack of Hearts]

The backseat of my car was filled with college ruled notebooks. Four or five of them, bent and shoestamped, abused, etc. When I got it into my fool head to write, and had nothing handy, I’d rush out and buy a goddamn notebook. But the impulses were unkind, lightning at first and devolving into a dull, far away roar of thunder, so nothing got finished and through chance or circumstances the notebooks ended up back there, where sometimes I couldn’t get to them anyway. That’s why I ended up buying a leatherbound journal. I carried it everywhere. Usually I had a pocket it could fit into. It worked great, other than the ample amounts of ridicule that go along with carrying that thing and being observed while writing in it. Think about that for a minute. I’m asking you to think about what it feels like to be observed.

One night, when the journal was half full, I was having dinner with my parents at a restaurant. They didn’t know that I wrote; no one did anyways, no one that mattered to me. I always was hidden in plain sight. After dinner, as I was about to step into the parking lot. A man’s voice called from behind me: Excuse me. The tone was just like that. The tone was ‘time to beat ***’. So I turned around and looked at the guy. I was way bigger and thought he was about to make a terrible mistake. Then he said, “I think you dropped a book.”

Like a left hook to my world, everything inside of me sagged over and weighted down. The gears locked up.

And when I went back inside, there it was on the table. My mind on the table. There were so many people in there. It was so vulnerable. It wasn’t just a journal in the sense of daily records. It didn’t know the past, or the future, or time. It was poetry, fiction, my thoughts on philosophy books I had read. It was the most honest interpretation of me that existed.

I wondered how long I had left it. Was there enough time to… Who had been in it? Had they skimmed, or felt outrage, or found the print indecipherable? But more than that, had I been ‘looked at’, I wondered. Had somebody thumbed the pages and saw where no verbal footwork or social parlor tricks could misdirect? Some people are born masters of the covert. Not to imply there was anything worth hiding- that’s at best a subjective answer- but there was always the instinct to hide the true and show the fake, the stand-in that can be whacked at like a pinata or a strawman.

The pages grew eyes and there were chills down my spine, and nevermind the journal; any flash memory of it begs the question was I looked at, was I seen and by a stranger no less. No matter what I’m doing or how physically alone I am when I think of it, always comes the sensation of being looked at, gazed upon by a pair of eyes I can’t indentify or escape.

What does it feel like to be looked at?

[Vonny]

Ooooh, I know what you're going through. It's happened to me several times. I have mental lapses that result in my leaving things here and there. My entire being is always in writing.

[Paulclem]

I have cultivated an indecipherable writing hand - or as my wife says - scruffy. So i have no problem.

Why don't you put your stuff online? Pseudonym, and, anyway, where's the best place to hide, but in a crowd of anonymous blogs?

[MystyrMystyry]

This:

It wasn’t just a journal in the sense of daily records


I know the sensation - but wait until you actually do lose one, never to be retrieved

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

As someone disabled, usually not good.

And, I'm sure no one read your journal. The chances of a stranger actually reading another stranger's journal are slim in the first place, but once it's opened and it's seen that you're writing thoughts on literature, the chance of it being read drops to near zero, most like.

[MystyrMystyry]

I have a friend who to be honest is notoriously known around town for being not so easy on the eyes as, say, a bowl of maggots, and after a late night he had to board a bus to college. He described the experience as

'You know you're in for a bad day when you get on the bus and feel everyone is looking at you...'

[qimissung]

Your writing is good, Jack, I could almost feel the prying eyes. Reminds me of that song by Roberta Flack, "Killing Me Softly..with his song..telling my whole life, with his words..."
So to answer your question, in the sense of prying, then, kind of creepy...

But if you want someone to read what you wrote, how would that feel?

[prendrelemick]

I know what you mean. How do writers cope with it ?

[AuntShecky]

Hey, Jack, sometimes I think I'd almost kill to get somebody to read my work. In the increasingly narrow circle in which yours fooly resides, everyone I know prefers anything on the tube or the newspaper or on the Web to any scribblings this too-many-decades-a-wouldbe-writer may make. (I suppose I should take the damn hint!)

Look on the bright side-- someday, when you least expect it, a stranger might stumble upon your efforts and offer you a big publishing contract!

As the good book says, "Don't hide your light under a bushel."

[Emil Miller]

It reminds me of that Wodehouse story where Gussie Finknottle was terrified of burly Roderick Spode, leader of the fascist blackshorts, and was told by Bertie Wooster that he should keep a notebook and write down any demeaning thoughts about his persecutor so that each time he read it he would bolster his confidence. So having written things like 'Spode has a face like a dead fish and probably wears fancy underwear', etc etc., he then mislays the book and is scared witless that Spode might find it.

[The Atheist]

What does it feel like to be looked at?

I think anyone can be unnerved by being actually looked at, but if you're feeling watched when you're alone, then you probably need to talk to your doctor about it.

[DocHeart]

It's painful.

I don't think anyone I wouldn't want to has ever read my writing (and that would have been in my twenties -- I'm all grown up now and I don't hide my writing any more). But I *have* been looked at, in other ways. A secret of mine that I didn't want ever to be discovered, was. I have seen a person standing opposite me, confronting me by holding the evidence in front of my face.

I mostly try not to think about it.

Regards
DH

[Buh4Bee]

This is nicely written.

This line is revealing:

"It was so vulnerable."

In a strange way, it seems like the writer has a relationship with her/his stories, poetry, or ideas. In the notebook, they become something separate. They are representative of who the writer is. So if, the private suddenly becomes public without permission, there is a sense of violation. Even if, one does not know or suspects a possibility of violation, the feeling of vulnerability is still real. This can be a very uncomfortable feeling.

[jajdude]

Have lived in Asia for most of the past 14 years. I'm a regular-looking white guy. Have been stared at countless times. I know you meant something else, but I sure have seen a lot of stares directed at me just for being a foreigner in some homogenous places in Asia.

[JuniperWoolf]

I've heard friends and family say that they've "felt like they're being watched" when clearly no one was watching them. I've never felt like that before, I'm not sure what it "feels like" to be watched. It seems strange, the idea is similar to "feeling" when someone else is thinking about you, or talking about you when you're not around (ie. the "my ears are burning" wives' tale).