In passing.

 

Sitting between shows once at Circular Quay in Australia I came across a very strange man.

I was sitting with my stilts on, full makeup, on a fence next to the sea resting when I saw him.

He was brightly dressed with multi-coloured patchwork trousers and a glowing green sweater.

That was just the beginning, as he walked along his eyes were constantly darting about, never at rest. His head would flick from side to side as his eyes rocketed about in their sockets.

As a pantomime I knew the Portuguese specialised in eye movements and had dabbled however if you try this exercise yourself, obviously in the privacy of your own home, you will quickly become aware how tiring it is on your eyeball muscles.

But this guy was doing it all the time.

It wasn't an involuntary twitch. It was a conscious sort of exercise he was doing.

I watched him walk towards me and thought that perhaps he had decided that if he never gave anything in the world any more than a moments notice then nothing in the world would ever give him anything but a moments notice.

It was strange. It was as if he, brightly dressed as he was, would be invisible as long as he kept moving his eyes quickly from place to place, person to person.

He was constantly muttering to himself cheerfully.

I watched him approach and waited for him to spot the stilt man staring at him, thinking one way or another I would be able to test my theory by his reaction.

He saw me and stopped in his tracks.

He couldn't stare at me [I thought] without breaking the rules but what he did was glance at me, then away at something else then back at me about 15 times in 10 seconds then surprised me by taking out a small hand held mirror and giving me a long stare, eye to eye, person to person, through it.

So what I think it was , was he feared, for some reason direct eye contact with people and so had invented a method where he defensively glanced around until he found anything or anyone of interest.

Then. using his mirror to remove himself from a direct link, he would stare at it at his leisure.

I had this theory reinforced about a week later as I was walking through a mall and saw him standing with his nose almost touching a mirrored pillar outside a shop.

With his back to the passing people he was staring unimpeded at their reflections in the pillar as they passed.