Thru our eyes we see the World

My eyes are my history. They contain the archives of all my memories. Eyes wide open or shut tight, I can still see them, the faces and places I have loved, shared with people long gone -- Shanie, my first childhood love; Shereen, the girl who I really adored and would do anything for, Selena, the girl that was most suited for me; Joann, the girl that I truly loved, a more recent loss. She appears ever so often, across my vision, the movie screen of my memory, my eyeballs.

They are astonishing, these eyes of ours. They are scavengers, promiscuous; they roam everywhere, taking their pictures, sending them up the most sophisticated neural pathways to the brain, where they are processed and stored. Things loved: that father. Young, older, heartbroken. A zillion pictures.And in the foreground: a traveling companion, a dog, a sister, a lover.

We talk of love at first sight. Is there really such a thing? Both men and women attest to it, using their eyes to scan -- even inhale -- each other on first sighting. But do they see the same thing, react to the same cues? It is always said that men are more visual, more reactive to physical attributes.

And women? I don't think they are any less visually aroused.