Islands in the Stream

I bought a loaf of sourdough bread this morning at our local bakery.  I love sourdough bread and theirs is good…for Southern California.  Let’s face it:  the best sourdough in the world comes from the San Francisco Bay Area.  Absolutely no doubt.  Don’t even try to tell me otherwise.  If you disagree, you are entitled to your wrong opinion.  Good bread is like fine wine.  Either you have the taste for it, or you don’t.  End of story.

The young woman behind the counter smiled and said “Hello. How are you today? What can I do for you?”  We hear this greeting all the time when we shop.  Most of the time it is obvious that it is just a greeting…signifying nothing, communicating nothing, meaning nothing.  But the smile accompanying this greeting was different.  This woman had one of the most open and beautiful smiles I’ve ever seen.  And the eyes behind this smile shone with happiness and goodwill so transparent and glittering with delight that I was “blown away”… to cop a hippie phrase.  You know that old cliché “The eyes are windows into the soul.”?  Of course you do.  And during my walk home I thought about that smile and my reaction to it….obsessively.

After my lunch of this bread and a little pepper-jack cheese…. nothing else on it…delicious!  I rushed to my computer and found that the origination of this phrase is debatable and can be attributed to many.  Here is one I liked:

"The eye is the window of the soul, the mouth the door. The intellect, the will, are seen in the eye; the emotions, sensibilities, and affections, in the mouth. The animals look for man's intentions right into his eyes. Even a rat, when you hunt him and bring him to bay, looks you in the eye."  -Hiram Powers, American sculptor (1805 - 1873) 

I looked Hiram Powers up on Wikipedia.  Here is a picture of one of his sculptures: 

Well done!  He studied for a while in Florence.  Looks like it.

And here is an interesting little factoid on him, again from Wikipedia:

“After leaving school he found employment superintending a reading-room in connection with the chief hotel of the town, but being, in his own words, forced at last to leave that place as his clothes and shoes were fast leaving him, he became a clerk in a general store.”

Love that.  But I digress.

How is it that we can be so attuned to each other?  And I’m not just talking about human beings here. Don’t forget Hiram Powers rat. How is it we immediately recognize honesty, integrity, happiness, and yes…sadness, grief, and despair; soul reflected in the eyes and mouths on any face, of any person, anywhere in this world, any race, any sex, any age.  What is it that we all share?  If we can understand each other so well in a glance, how is it that we can feel so disconnected?  Are we just bobbing aimlessly in the waters of life, occasionally colliding into another poor bobber... just islands in the stream?  Really?  See next rock.

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By the way, if you have enjoyed books by Ernest Hemingway and haven't read this one, try Islands in the Stream.  This was the last book he wrote before his death in 1961 and in my opinion, a great story- and his best writing.

© Steve Stewart and See Next Rock, 2013