When I first saw him.

The seeing is not about the biological vision, but a moment of recognition about a person, as in front of you or in the same space. It can be anywhere–a first meeting, or a date, or in a party. This visibility can be triggered by anything, from the voice or his perfume or small gesture. Actually, it doesn’t matter what makes him seeable because there is no decisive factor for each case. That moment comes without reason or definite time but suddenly make him seeable. Only that time, he arrives in your life, changes my seeing into a different angle. It is not like the romantic movie that illustrates this moment with bright sunshine or the sound of the bell. It is plain moment, something made you notice him. From that moment, the memories with him pile up and becoming accumulation in the part of life.

I have small doubt about what Foucault said “form of visibility.” As Deleuze pointed out, he is an “audiovisual” thinker. His idea about the relationship between space, knowledge, and power are related to visibility. Human’s physical interaction with spatiality creates seeable knowledge, which has been generated in different disciplines and knowledge. Yet, this visibility cannot explain the visibility of the moment of recognition in the individual relationship. My experiment started a long time ago by taking off my glasses. I cannot see clearly, his face nor his features. This restriction of the one sense, however, cannot prevent seeing him once I recognised him. Once he became seeable, vision restriction is not a huge problem to make him feelable. I can see him in the crowd, I can feel him without seeing him. Maybe, this is what Foucault wanted to assert in his book; the power of the moment of becoming seeable. The moment of the awareness.

It generated a few questions; when I could “see” him? Why I can still “see” him? When he becomes a personal relationship? About the personal relationship, when it becomes stronger than the moment of the seeable, personally, it is the moment when he got the name. Not a name of his own, but a name from me. As name becoming more personal, his feature becoming stronger inside of me. One Korean poem I love, Kim Chun Soo’s ‘Flower‘ goes

Before speaking her name
she had been nothing but a gesture.

When I spoke her name,
she came to me and became a flower.

Now who will speak my name,
one fitting this colour and fragrance of mine,
as I had spoken hers
So that I may go to her and become her flower.

We all yearn to become something.
I yearn to become an unforgettable meaning to you
And you to me

Seeable, is more to see the gesture of the form. It has no particular subjectivity until it gets its name. However, I am still questioning, how I noticed him, his form of gesture, feelable gesture, the moment of the seeable to feelable. When he was “nothing but a gesture.” It is difficult question, and I have, yet, no answer about this questions. I only can say, it is beautiful changing, beautiful my own changing, and beautiful forgetting. But I cannot figure out what happened in that moment. This visibility is strong enough to make me forget about before the seeable moment.

What happened exactly?
Why can I see you?
Why am I looking for you?
Why your gesture makes me feel?