Interesting times this 20/20 not just reserved for eye tests but something definitely challenging our way of seeing and being in the world – a kind of eye test for humanity – how proficient is our vision, our capacity to see and be in relationship with nature, with each other, with ourselves? – with me? 2020 is an eye test for our I-sight. And I’m not sure how we’re coming up in this testing – whether we’ll come through with 20/20 – 20/15 too early – 20/30 too late – but maybe too soon to say, given we’re still reading line-by-line the events of our time unfolding – we’re still in the midst of the testing – in the grand doctor’s room, blinking and straining to determine and define what it is we’re reading, line-by-line, even as it changes and is added to in the moment of our reading – we squint on, and try to focus, even as our eyes tear-up, not just at the straining to see and understand, but also at the content of what we’re perceiving – more than just random letters on the poster or screen, its contents meaningful words and imagery – the real testing – do we not only perceive, but can we really comprehend the meaning in this moment? – seems we need a whole expanded spectrum of posters or screens 20 apart or 20 behind to fully understand or realise the story – the history – of what this moment contains – for it’s all in there, from the past to here – but also there, and this is the key, I reckon, in addition to all the other seeing needed, also there is the future waiting for us to perceive and be it. In this 20/20 poster/year we find the whole course of human world history culminating, realised, like the peak of some giant mountain, or maybe some gigantic oceanic cavern, and there we are, balancing on the tip, or bottom-most bit – while from the other side the future comes rushing in, if we’re but prepared to see it, feel it, will it. Seems to me we’re placed at a threefold forking of the road – forking of our vision – as we sit here and contemplate this 20/20 poster and its meaning – one seems to be the past continued, rolling over, the letters predictable like some earlier eye chart where we speak the letters, somewhat incoherent, meaningless, without even needing to see them cos we’ve committed them – as they’ve committed us – to some kind of dumb (speechless) memory – this is, essentially, a present and future by inertia, status quo unfolded in the empty phrase displayed before our eyes some more – a kind of heading back down the mountain, resurfacing from the ocean floor. The second forking of the course of things seems to be a tearing down of everything – if we wanted to, we could do this, replacing the world poster with some mishmash of abstract thoughts about what could work or not – rearranging letters by personal flavour, saying whatever we desire, fitting what we see to whatever I might desire – a kind of blowing off the top of the mountain, volcano-like, or surfacing in bubbles from a fissure in the ocean floor, destined for the bends. The third path seems to somehow be a passing through something – through the poster, through the year, through me and you – a kind of softening of the vision, to see with all we’re given – a kind of letting the vista of the future from this point in evolution reveal itself to us – together seeing together – of pausing there, on the ocean floor, marvelling at the light that falls all the way through that water – all the way through that poster, through that mountain vista – all the way through our open seeing, open hearting, open willing – all the way through our open being, in open sight.

John Stubley