Copyright, Bill Rhea, 2021
I have one green eye and one brown eye. The green eye always sees truth, but the brown eye sees much, much more. It’s first of all very odd for me to be telling you this. It’s something I vowed never to tell, but I did share it from the beginning with Fitful, my green and brown-eyed cat. It seemed that he must share the same secret that I thought only I knew. There’s something “knowing” in his eyes – not one eye or the other, but both of them together. They speak of something you can’t see and that you can’t put your finger on. Quite so. Except I can. Put my finger on it, that is. I know, I mean I know. It’s not something I can really explain, especially when I don’t speak that well.
My mom calls me “autistic.” She says that means that I have a “special gift,” a special way of being. Actually she’s right, although she doesn’t feel it like I do. And yeah – that’s it – it’s more about feeling than knowing, but they turn out to be pretty much the same thing. My uncle calls me “fascinatingly unique.” He likes to put big words together I think to sound smarter than he really is. He hates it if he can’t put some kind of a label on people. I think his label should be “bound-up.” He’s not free. He’s locked up in trying to describe the world. He doesn’t know how to be in it. It’s like he’s not really here, not really alive. I think he knows this somewhere inside, but he’ll do everything he can not to go there. I drive him crazy. I drive my mother crazy. Pretty much I drive everybody crazy. I know this because people squirm around trying to make it seem like I’m OK. It’s pretty silly because my OK is just my OK – it’s not anybody else’s and that’s alright with me.
So back to my eyes. When I say one is brown and one is green, I mean one is really brown and one is really green. People practically jump when they first look me in the eyes. Then after that, they try not to look me in the eyes unless they think I’m not looking, but I’m always looking. They don’t know that either. They think I’m in my own little world and not aware of a thing. But I’m aware of everything. Is that the secret of my one brown eye? Maybe. Enter my world if you can and find out. If I let you in and if you have special eyes (ordinary eyes won’t do), then maybe you’ll see what I see. It may do you good. Or maybe not.
Judge Bill Rhea 