nobody’s watching
i have a sign in my room that i made. nobody and watching are drawn blocky with pencil. watching is filled in black, or, uh, grey. because of the graphite and clay. mostly clay, the pencil was a 6B. anyway, the sign says nobody’s watching. it’s over my work table by my bookshelf. technically speaking, no other person is watching me when i’m in my apartment typing or drawing. debatably, no one is watching when i’m alone period. underneath the initial phrase i scribbled in parentheses: (so what are you going to do with that freedom?). initially when i wrote this, i had the intention to ease my tension around making art that people may see. it was to encourage indifference by the thought of being seen since attention, in most environments i’ve been in, have yielded unsavory results. the more the sign sits on my wall, the more i thought about the phrase itself. i found some other thoughts that equally apply, two of which i’ve touched on. let’s go through them.
nobody’s watching: but i am. in those moments when i’m alone and the room is quiet. i am quiet. i am still. my cat is sleeping. the a/c unit hums and blows my curtains. chinese new year when i was seventeen, my mom took me with her on some errands. we ended up on the east side of the city down st. clair at my mom’s favorite chinese spot. when i was younger, my mom would give me the money and send me in to grab the food myself. the kids weren’t allowed to have egg rolls. this time we went in together. i’d done a dna test which proved us chinese. my mom spoke to the clerk saying, she’s chinese too, tell ‘em. she bought me a back scratcher and i don’t know what it says but it and the characters hang on my wall. i notice the shadow it casts and the shadows of everything else. in this moment, nobody is watching except me. and we all have those moments; they’re beautiful. it is now. it isn’t asking anything. there’s nothing that exists besides now. everything is what it is. it’s beautiful to witness space, but it’s another thing to be immersed in it. to create art based off of it.
nobody’s watching: there’s no one breathing down my neck. i’m not being surveilled. i’m not kept but i’m keeping myself. i am free in that way. that feels good, to have personal agency and autonomy. and even if someone were to watch, none of that would change. things happen that encourage people to acquire the worldview that the world is bad and harmful, and so that person predicts the opinions others hold of them are also bad and harmful. that worldview is a gift. gifts can be rejected. what if i present a gift that includes the world being generally okay. one that involves most people minding their own affairs and generally having passive, not-so-strong feelings about you. about me. that’s a gift that had been packaged up in newspaper that i found on my doorstep. it became my most valued next to life and another chance to live it well. so if someone does see me, watch me walk, i can assume they’re not thinking horrible things about me. just like in my head, i see them, think oh, nice shirt, and move on. it isn’t very scary anymore.
nobody’s watching: you. me. what kind of person are you, am i, when no one else is around? is that the most important version of a person? who they are in the darkness? is it the most telling? when nobody’s watching? who am i when nobody’s watching? i’ll never know that you. you will not ever know that me. that you is for you and that me is for me. do i like the way i live and my habits? can i sit with myself comfortably? yes. i am existing. it’s a good time to check in. how do i feel? am i hungry? no. hey, i like me. i’m free. writing and listening to music and other things. it’s not all green grass. sometimes it rains and sometimes the turf is fake. sometimes the turf has to be fake. nobody’s watching right now. i look and see my red pen right there and my gameboy turned off over here. shapes, colors, the light cascades in. my cat crawls onto my lap. this is living.
