A while back, I found this post about "to be loved is to be seen"
with a quote by Marguerite Duras: "I don't know if love is a feeling, sometimes I think it's a matter of seeing." And this line captured me, but I wasn't sure why.
There's much to say about eye content breeding intimacy, but that's not it. It's not about mutual looking, only looking. As if something only exists when you look at it, and it can so easily be gone once you look away. While love, if you can call it a singular emotion, doesn't need seeing to be felt, it demands it to be understood. It wants to shift your entire focus, if to analyze it or to involve your senses in it.
So maybe "seeing" isn't entirely literal, but a matter of focus.
In Grey Is... the lighthouse is a major theme, in both text and subtext. It symbolizes many things, from loneliness to guidance to security, but I'd like to look at it as a representation of focus.
Fittingly, I used to compare focus to a flashlight, where one thing is seen clearly but everything else is shaded and almost non existent. Shifting the flashlight itself is possible, but then you have to trust that you'll remember where the object was among the darkness. The lighthouse represents this thought similarly, with a lot more nuance in story.
To White, Black needs to be in his light or else he'd lose him. If White won't pay attention, if he'll lose Black in the darkness, he doesn't know if he'll be able to find him again. This is one of the points Danial analyses- watching over Black gives White purpose. But this isn't entirely true, because it's not a sense of purpose, "Black makes me feel like I exist." as he said to Lana.
If love is a matter of seeing, what is existence? What are we beyond how others see us? Is being perceived not what makes and builds us? And if it is, what are the unloved? Unseen? Non existent.
To Black, with his memories obscured and unorganized, this focus is nearly impossible, and so he uses White's light to guide him. The truth is that he doesn't know how brightly he shines. If White assumes that any darkness from him would dim the whole world, Black assumes he can never be a light at all.
But he's looking now.
White spent chapters trying to fight his need for perfection so that things can go wrong and fix themselves. He's letting the lighthouse spotlight turn, exist in motion, and let Black sail to him on his own.
Taking a small step back from metaphors, this chapter is all about looking and love. Black's on a quest to find missing puzzle pieces of his memories and for the first time allows himself to take off the mask. A mask that protected his loved ones but obscured his view. He looks at Irina, who was there for him more than he thought. He looks at Waseem, not as a sweet kid that can do no wrong, but as someone who's aware of things around him, good and bad. He looks at Ritta and their family, the people he wanted to protect by pushing away and keeping in the dark but who want to be there for him and could only do so through White. He looks at Jad (and recognizes that he can't look back) and sees a reflection of his childhood through the eyes of someone who watched over him.
Now he's looking at White, and sees him look away. He knew this already, that White looks away when things get to close, but now he refuses, he won't let him.
A half moon in the sky, the way Black shines and the way White dims is so moon-like (Chapter 13: Page 34) and they're shattering this fragile happiness in favour of a solid ground.
There's much more that can be said here, honestly - Jad's blindness, the car lights, even about just this and going panel by panel to dissect it - but it's pretty late and I don't know how readable it is at this point lol
So got the Grey is manga today and for as far it traveled it’s in really good condition! Everything was packaged nicely. I’m so happy to have these books can’t wait to re read the beginning and see what’s new!
