Jasper Johns, Flags, 1967–1968, lithograph on paper. Collection Walker Art Center. ©Jasper Johns and ULAE/VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
Have you accidentally looked into the sun or bright light, and then looked away, the image burned into your eyelids? That’s an afterimage.
Afterimage is also the name of my newsletter. In it, I share what I see, hear, and sense, and what’s stayed with me from the past week. At the time of publishing this essay, I’ve written five installments. Whether it’s describing the writing process as a type of striptease, the quality and nature of light in different cities, or the important people in our lives who appear with the frequency of a comet, the stories are eclectic. While each story varies, there is one thing they have in common: every story starts with a sensory observation.
It starts with the body.
The Hunger Strike
A friend’s baby just started daycare. A few days after starting, I received a text from her:
“The baby’s staging a hunger strike.”
I stopped breathing and froze when I read her text. My chest tightened. The language and the languaging of hunger, strike, and hunger strike was stressful to see. It’s charged. Images of strife flickered through my mind. It creates distress.
I called my friend and asked her what happened. How is the baby? Was everything okay? The baby was fine and everything was okay. I asked her to tell me what happened, with one change.
“This time, tell me exactly what happened. What would I see if the baby had been recorded on video, but I was blind and you had to give me a play-by-play?”
“The baby wasn’t eating lunch, but ate once I got there. ”
I noticed my body relaxing. I wasn’t scared anymore. I was calmly curious, but not stressed.
The Rip Current
The mind works without our consent making sense out of the data it's collected and connecting events to meaning. Afterimage is an opportunity to slow down and simply notice. It’s a practice of engaging the senses to observe what’s happening around us and inside us.
I see my mind plugging away without consent all the time. I’m taken out to sea by the current of my brain’s ready-made narrative. It happens when I don’t pay attention, just like at the beach. By the time I notice it’s happened, I’m already far from shore.
How did I get here? I’m so far away.
When I’ve been taken out far, I’m scared to think about the time it’ll take to swim back to shore. It drains me to think about having to power back to shore. How do I keep myself from getting washed so far out?
Exercise: Recording an Afterimage
At the end of the day, ask yourself:
What stays with me and lingers from the day?
Take a few rounds of deep breath before moving on to the next step. Four counts on the inhale, eight counts on the exhale.
Once you’ve identified what lingers and stays, ask yourself:
What information do my eyes and sight capture? Would another person concur?
What do my ears and hearing capture? Keep it factual. Would someone else at the table agree?
What does my sense of touch tell me?
What about taste? Smell?
What do I feel on the inside? What are the physical sensations?
Is there weight? Lightness? Tingling? A knot or tension? A heaviness? Heat?
Ask it a question. What does it tell you?
Write down your observations.
Afterimage allows space to separate what’s happening around me, and how I’m feeling about it. It helps me create a separation between the past and the present. It’s a system to disrupt the mind’s incessant and sometimes erroneous meaning-making.
In Afterimage, I separate:
Stimulation: What is happening outside of me?
Sensation/Felt Sense: What sensations do I observe in my body?
Emotion: What emotions do I feel inside of me?
Reaction: Was/Is there a reaction to this stimulus? Is the reaction to this stimulus, or something that’s not here in the present?
While Afterimage, my newsletter, is a place to share my observations, it’s not an observation log. Afterimage is a practice that allows me to become more dexterous, fluent, and empowered in my meaning-making.
I invite you to try it on for size. As you go through your week, or a day. Notice what stays with you.
Observe through your senses: What do/did I see? Hear? Sense?
Reflect on what you observe.
I still find myself taken out to sea from time to time, but it happens less and less.
Being in the practice of Afterimage gives me better control over my emotions, and how I think. This gives me relief. How and what I think impacts what I believe. What I believe impacts how I feel, what I do, and how I connect to others. Afterimage connects me to presence, self-compassion, and agency.
Afterimage gives me insight into seeing and accepting myself as I am.