Seeing is Believing

by Cayden Fürst

I was led there by the dog who always knows exactly where she’s going even when she doesn’t. She always picks up scents I can’t smell and sounds I can’t make out even when I try and focus.

I get the feeling though that I can see a little better than she can and last week when we were out in the Grunewald woods, I thought I might be finally catching on to what she’s looking at.

We got to a clearing and she barked, growled and dug and even though I couldn’t see anything at first, I noticed something unusual about the place. It just wasn’t the same as anywhere else.

I watched Avatar again the other day because it’s one of my favorite movies and I don’t know if I realized it before or if someone told me or if I really just got it now, but the “seeing” each other thing is all over the place.

So whenever the Na’vi say I see you, it actually means a bunch of different things – mostly to understand or know someone but also to like someone and sometimes even to believe someone.  I thought about that and then the last scene hit me in a totally new way (it’s the coolest movie ending ever by the way) because…, well actually, you know what? It would really suck if I told you how the movie ends before you saw it for yourself. So, forget it.

My point anyway, is that since we can’t hear or smell things like a dog, seeing is pretty much believing for us. We just trust it.

Afterward, she led me to a log covered with ivy and barked at the hollow space underneath, and I bent down to look but of course, saw nothing but dirt and leaves and a few spider webs. She started digging – there was definitely something there I couldn’t see. I stood up and looked around, staring into the green woods. It seemed to glow then, like something from a dream.

The V-Shaped Tree

I called the dog away and we hurried on. We came to a place where a V-shaped tree stood across from a U-shaped tree. I doubt the dog got the thing about the letters but she seemed to find the trees interesting anyway. She looked at me with her head cocked to one side and her eyebrows raised, like she had a big question mark in a thought bubble above her head.

I also doubt she noticed that the sun came through the V-shaped tree in an illogical angle and the U-shaped tree made an open door. She might have realized that each tree was actually two, huddled close together at the bottom to look like one. I thought this was cool but it disturbed her after a while and I pulled her away because she wouldn’t stop barking.

But I wondered if she sensed something else I couldn’t see.

The U-Shaped Tree

We walked on along the path and I remembered what my science teacher had said about how we see stuff – that our brains just fill in the spaces we’re not looking directly at because it has a copy of it stored in “cache”, so-to-speak. If that’s true then who knows what we’re really seeing and what we’re not and if we’re ever seeing the same things as another person. I raised my hand to say this in class, but then changed my mind.

I decided I’d let the dog show me something again and this time try to notice it more. Focus. I mean, I do look at stuff sometimes without noticing much about it.

But what happened after staring at something a while, was that it got all warped and strange. Like the way a word sounds totally bizarre when you repeat it over and over again, as if you’ve never heard it before in your entire life.

That’s when the dog took me to the sparkly trunk lying flat across the path,

and then the tall glowing fairy tree,

and finally, the bright green ivy wings.

Everything sparkled and fluttered around and even had some magic to it, though I’m not sure I actually believe everything I saw. Maybe we’re just supposed to scan over things without thinking or focusing, like we do most of the time, everyday. Or maybe we’re not.

Then when the dog cocked her head to the side at me she seemed to say I know what you mean or even better, I see you.

I threw her a stick, and we went home.

© Della D. Marinis, 2009-2011

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