lundi 9 mars 2009

People watching

I love people-watching.

People do feel it when someone is staring at them, every time I get too caught up in watching, always the person would turn and look at me. They don’t just raise their eyes, look around and come across my gaze; no, they look up and bam! they’re on to me straight away. The cliché is true, a stare weights.

...or so I thought, until I noticed myself automatically glancing at persons whose faces were turned my way, and concluded our brains were wired for it: oh, there’s this pale blob at the edge of my vision, may be a face looking my way, let’s look, and the eyes obey and 19 times out of 20 there’s a person and that person’s face is turned your way but s/he is not looking at you. And on the 20th time, there's that embarrased jolt that comes with meeting a stranger's eyes full on.

I like to look at people, but to have them look back at me is another matter entirely, so I developed this technique of quick glances. I figured I was okay as long as I didn’t trigger the face-looking-my-way reflex, so I pretend to look around when all the while I’m staring at what I’m interested in.

But since my glasses broke, I keep crossing glance with everyone. It’s much easier to hide a shifty gaze behind glasses, I discovered when I did not have the glasses anymore. That must be why I feel bolder when I wear contacts ---> it’s a side-effect, a survival adaptation to not having a partition between me and the world.

Now, I have to develop a new technique for people-watching. Squint maybe. Or glances from the corner of my eyes (blergh, I hate that expression). Or wear sunglasses the whole day long.

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