It's fair to be conscious of the 1st of July

The conduct of one's seeing, from the exercise of our capacity, to the character of our assimilation of information, to our consolidation and critique of opinion, has recurringly surfaced here as a matter of 'customs in common' as well as of personal ethics. The very comprehension that seeing is conduct is, we think, one of the earliest discoveries an incongruous personality will make in life; but that does not make it uncommendable.

The month of July is pivotal, of course, in the Julian calendar, and presumably everyone is cognisant of July's climax of one almost metabolic adjustment, commencing another. By coincidence, July also figures in the rapport of this page with the friend we refer to in the first person. 

Equidistantly removed from July's diurnal ex-tremes, are two dates which present watersheds internal to the page: the birth of the father of that friend, and the introduction of Laurent. Unportentously, these coincidences naturally invigorate a discussion of seeing which we are grateful to have shared, from our incongruous quadrant, with others acknowledged as Context, especially a tireless Little Augury.

It's fair to be conscious of the first day of July. A father writes in from Australia, to say he has a son who reads this page. A lady from Stinson Beach shares mementoes of her family, and a mother from the Peninsula has the charity to thank our praise of her children. How do these people see, we wonder? We admire gentillesse even before we feel it; and often we invoke the act of seeing, without saying so.

Possibly this has not been plain enough, but it is better for a picture's pertinence to be felt. We know ennui with our pictures alleges a lack of enigma, by which is meant the gesture of asking the reader to see what he wants. But we are about exerting sight; and the moment of July's arrival reminds us, as this portrait vigorously portrays, that seeing, while rewarding and obligatory, is always contingent, subject to myriad variables. He sees half on tiptoe in bare feet in a street made of dirt. Yet we feel the immense moment of this conduct and are invested in its outcome. The picture's whole structure is a paean, to conduct which becomes him.

  

iv photo Stranka

vi photo Goranjovich