Time is another possible subjective variable. A sight can enter the eyes, yet not really be seen until years later. Frank Conroy's memoir of a shoeshine stand in a New York subway tunnel is a perfect example. The men who worked there never seemed to focus on anything in the immediate environment. They shined the customers' shoes by feel, while gazing over their shoulders into what would have been the far distance, had they not been underground. Conroy, sixteen at the time, was impressionable enough to almost believe "that these men could see through walls, through girders, and around corners to whatever hyperspace it was where whoever it was they were waiting and watching for would finally emerge." Now he realizes that the footwear maintenance personnel had mastered the art of mind over matter. They had learned to transcend the reality of workdays spent in a dark, filthy, smelly, noisy place, doing a humble task. "They were powerful magic dancers, sorcerers almost, and thirty-five years later I can still feel the presence of their spell."
An additional variable can be provided by seeing something at one remove - in other words, it is sometimes possible to react to a sight as if one had seen it oneself, when actually one is reacting to another's description of the event. Michael Ventura writes about just such an echo in the mind's eye in the tale of. Uncle Hugo, who often described an action performed by Ventura's grandfather ("a saint") which showed his reverence for life and the creator's gifts. "Over and over again, to see Uncle Hugo would be to see my grandfather..walking in East Harlem, where they lived, seeing pieces of bread on the concrete....picking up the bread, kissing it, and carrying it until he passed a garbage can. The gesture grew enormous in my heart, as Hugo intended." Maybe Uncle Hugo only saw the grandfather do this once, and it made such an indelible mark on his psyche that he mythologized it into a frequent occurrence. Maybe Ventura only saw Uncle Hugo imitate the action once, and yet it reverberated strongly because of its compelling archetypal ring of truth. It doesn't matter, only the end result matters.
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