Perspective

In high school art class, I was taught the definition of perspective:

“Two seemingly parallel lines meet at a vanishing point on the horizon.”

And, to get a more tactile lesson in that definition, my art teacher had us students draw our high school hallway, capturing that perspective.

So, there we were, a bunch of ninth and tenth graders, perched at various points of the hallway, our 18 X 24- inch sheets of paper taped to gigantic drawing boards that could be used to bludgeon someone.

And, from there, with our pencils and rulers, we endeavored to capture that illusive perspective line. No easy feat. I learned an art class lesson very early; draw LIGHTLY. It was hard to thoroughly obliterate a mistake of a dark line, even with the thickest of pink gum erasers.

Furthermore, the challenge of capturing perspective’s line, on the first attempt, was usually incorrect, meaning, what was supposed to resemble the flow of a long hallway, quickly became the row of lockers colliding into the opposite wall.

Two seemingly parallels lines meeting at a vanishing point on the horizon?

Hardly.

It was more like you’re never going to be able to open your locker again.

For the few weeks we students were doing our artsy sit-in, probably, while being fire/safety hazards. And, I have found myself learning a few lessons, beyond the drawing of a hallway, ever since.

The Seemingly Never-ending Row of Lockers:

They seemed to stretch for miles.

With my trusty-dusty ruler, I had to carve out several of these sliced buggers while, again, making sure that they, somehow, met at a vanishing point on the infernal horizon. These drawn slivers of locker had to be spaced accurately. You couldn’t just have a three-inch block of locker next to a two- millimeter slice. They had to TAPER!

TAPER!

As I was lightly drawing with my ruler and pencil, I kept thinking about the school lockers. How many instances of bullying, getting shoved into them and getting sexually harassed near them have occurred, since the dawn of high school time? I know I experienced a little of my own hashtag Me Too back in the day.

As I was sitting in the exact same spot on the hallway floor, day after day, I started realizing how much lockers were a metaphor for life.

Each locker was a contained space. Each locker held something: unique, personal expressions of its master. An athletic calendar of upcoming events, a photo of a boyfriend or girlfriend tacked on the inside of the door, books, lettermen’s jackets, gym clothes, maybe an unwieldly instrument like a trombone for band practice. Each locker was a representation of a life, positioned next to another locker, representing another life.

And so on, and so on…

But, as I was vexed with the task of drawing locker slice, after locker slice, it also occurred to me how much lockers represent something more universal and philosophical.

Uncertainty? Monotony? Tediousness?

Life going on, regardless? Yay.

Who, in their adolescent mind, really thinks about boredom, the disappointment, the loss, beyond that of high school experiences? It can be further challenging as the “adults” force feed teenagers glimmering promises of pristine futures, limitless achievements, happily ever after, perhaps?

I know, I know, I know. You can’t break it to ‘em just what life actually is. Each person needs to find out for himself/herself.

These lockers just captivated my attention, way back when. If you focus on something for long periods of time, other thoughts show up.

And, no matter what age or stage we find ourselves in, past high school, there is still that row of clustered sliver blocks, lockers, representing us, veering toward some point, which, one can argue, is our mortality.

Decorate your locker with that!

The Floor:

You know the scene in the 1991 film, “Terminator 2?” There’s just endless road, lurching forward, ominously predicting how cyborgs were going to kill all of humanity? Well, that’s how I viewed the hallway floor as I went about my art project back in the day. It’s was smooth, polished green, and it seemed to keep going, always with the threat of tripping you up.

It appeared to be more menacing than the lineup of endless lockers. After all, there was no personalization here. To quote the band, REM’s lyric, just “three miles of bad road.”

Fantastic. Higher education.

I couldn’t quite get a handle on the hallway floor, this buffed, jade-green surface, for which many a times, I’d tripped and fallen, splat, onto it. Being uncoordinated didn’t help; slippery Minnesota winters, trudging in pools of melted ice further also created obstacle courses, en route to the lockers and classrooms.

But, overall, I suppose what got my attention was how the floor represented the path, life’s path. It just stretched before us, yes, tripping us up from time to time. There would be falls; there would be injuries. Graduating from high school would not- and could not change that.

So, hit the ground running, hit the polished hallway floor running, hit whatever pathway we encounter running, sooner or later, well, life happens.

Breast cancer, for me personally, was just one bit of evidence to support that theory. Although, yes, I was always uneasy with my breasts, no one ever told me, as a young person, that this experience would be part of my hallway floor, my path, the ongoing stretch of life set before me.

Sometimes, disease, illness, loss and death are the floors we must walk on.

Exit Sign:

As that high school student, drawing the hallway, my vantage point had an Exit sign within my sight line. Nothing extraordinary about it. You’ve seen one Exit Sign, you’ve seen them all.

It was positioned to my left, so, I proceeded to draw it in the top left corner of my paper. A simple, slightly rectangular box, with “Exit” written in it. Not much to write home about.

I thought my little sign was adorable. It made a statement. And it wasn’t just, “Go! Get out of here!”

No, rather, it was, “This is the way out.” Simple, less violent, no teenage stampeding, crushing bodies trying to escape the hell of high school.

I was enduring high school. Most of us do. It’s a time fraught with angst, bullying, rejection, awkwardness and lonely insecurity. So, naturally, we’d probably do anything we could to escape that.

All things are subject to change. It’s a universal truth, Inevitably, life does change, some way, somehow. Signposts, signaling an Exit here or there, prompt us to acknowledge and remember we will move on a have different experiences.

For me, personally, high school would end and an era of eating disorders, in their full expression, would begin throughout college into my young adulthood. And then other transitions arrived: marriage, my writing career, loss of one parent, caregiving to another… and cancer.

No one could prep me with a big enough Exit Sign for THAT one.

Yet, here I am, supposedly, in Survivorship mode, navigating the uncertain reality of what the ultimate Exit may mean. Yes, I think about how I once so innocently drew that little sign on the top left side of my paper, never entertaining how much thought I’d give it later.

But eventually, you and I do give our personal Exit Signs a lot of thought, don’t we? Something ends, something “phases out.”

And we need to start over again.

Vanishing Point on the Horizon:

Back during that high school art project, as we sat at the end of the long hallway, there was the destination apex, where, supposedly, our two seemingly, parallel lines met at a vanishing point on the horizon.

When it came to the literal high school hallway I drew, that was represented by a large window at the end of the smoothly polished jade-green floor.

A window- well, there’s a metaphor, huh? Let’s look outside. What’s beyond it? What does the world look like, from here?

The trick, in drawing the beast, was that, on sunny mornings, blinding sunlight would stream through. You had to be careful, looking directly at it. No one here was a wise Native American elder, practicing the ritual of staring at the sun until his/her retinas burned out, while simultaneously, achieving an enlightened vision.

Hardly. Remember, we’re a bunch of teenagers. One needs to lower that expectation a bit.

Still, as I averted my eyes, trying to capture the window, noting how the entire end of the hallway was Madonna’s white-hot set in the “Lucky Star” video, I couldn’t avoid one simple truth:

There is more.

Perspective.

We don’t always see everything when we think we should see it. That, I guess, is what hindsight is for. When you and I are finally mature, wise, compassionate enough to handle the deeper truth in life, then, the vision revelation often comes…

“Oh, so that’s what that was.”

If we try to force things, before we’re ready, we can burn ourselves out. Our retinas may be intact, but something else can be destroyed, if not seriously damaged.

We’re not ready for “it” yet.

Hopefully, we will be someday. But today- now- is not that day.

And, until we are, we need to keep learning the lessons our spirits were assigned, our cosmic homework.

We don’t get finished, actualized, enlightened, all, in one fell swoop. It’s a series of smaller vanishing points on the horizon, smaller, “Oh, so that’s what that was” revelations.

One after the other.

“Draw what you see, not what you know:”

This quote was uttered daily by my high school art teacher and it sticks with me, to this day.

In the drawing context, the point she was trying to hammer home with us was to not get ahead of ourselves. Yes, we may know there’s an ear or a flower in the still life’s vase, but are we actively experiencing drawing the shape and the line of what is before us?

No, we, instead, want to go full steam ahead and draw what we believe is that ear or flower. We’re not in the moment, experiencing it with our pencil. We are assuming instead. Assumption rarely leads to great art.

Going beyond art class, my teacher’s wisdom is the gentle reminder to experience what I’m going through, not make assumptions about what I may or may not encounter. I have yet to master this skill; I can be a bit of a control freak, wanting answers.

Cancer was a doozy for me, therefore, in that department. I don’t know, I REALLY don’t know, what the future will look like. Sometimes, I’m uncertain about my present.

And the past? Well, I’ve had to face it and challenge myself with what truly happened. That’s more painful than just assuming the tale I’d like to believe.

So, yes, I’m currently in a state of challenging the past, present and the future. Although I’d like the tidy, fairytale, “happily ever after,” I have to face and live “what IS.”

I need to draw WHAT I SEE, AND NOT WHAT I KNOW.

And, the irony in doing so is this: I discover, learn and know more from practicing the “what IS.” Truth over story.

Eventually, when you and I face what we see, we, inevitably, stumble upon something. Some personal revelation. Some lesson.

I’ve read some affirmation statements, encouraging us to rejoice, to make the best of things when we find ourselves stuck in a hallway, known as our life circumstances.

Don’t worry. Soon, a door will open and ta-dah. Chin up. That kind of thing.

I don’t know how realistic that advice is. Some hallways are quite brutal. Waiting is the equivalent to agony.

Perspective: “two seemingly parallel lines meet at a vanishing point on the horizon:”

Not all of us draw our high school hallways, trying to get the accurate look of 3-D dimensions from lockers, doors and floors.

But ALL of us can achieve perspective. What do the issues, events, people and places mean to us?

What vanishes from prominence? What emerges as predominant?

No two perspectives are exactly alike. They are fingerprints; they are snowflakes.

A challenge, perhaps, is to recognize that, to find meaning from it. To face what intersects, what disappears and what remains visible.

Perspective. More than just an artistic term.

Copyright © 2020 by Sheryle Cruse