“I only want to be seen for who I really am,” I tell my friends. Only two out of three made it over, and I’m trying not to feel too many feelings about that fact; I’m already delicate enough after the gallery opening today.
“Good luck,” the duck-rabbit scoffs. She turns on her side partway up my stairs, though it means she’s now mashing the crown of her head—one of the crowns of her head, anyway—on each step as she goes. “When you’ve been seen as much as I have, you realize that finding someone who can live in constant ambiguity is next to impossible.”
The Zöllner illusion vibrates next to the duck-rabbit. Her lines shimmer in headachy contrast. Or what I imagine would be headachy, if I were an animal and not a building that flagrantly disobeys the laws of physics. “I can’t help but feel I’m responsible, at least in part,” she whispers, her voice nearly getting lost in the weird shapes of my stairwell. “If I’ve gotten in the way of others understanding you—”
The duck-rabbit cuts in, gently though: “That’s a cognitive distortion.” Then she turns on her side, tilts her rabbit-belly toward the ceiling. “Just because you’re made of lines doesn’t mean those lines are our lines.”
“I just feel like I’m going in circles all the time,” I tell them, as they continue doggedly trying to get their steps in on my ever-looping staircase. “Like I’m not getting anywhere with anyone I meet. They see something in me that interests them, spend a good long time trying to ‘get’ me, and then once they’re satisfied, they walk away. They never linger to think about craftsmanship, or skill, or artistic merit; it’s all about the game of looking at me. I’m tired of being a curiosity.”
The duck-rabbit leans on a railing and sighs heavily. “You’re preaching to the choir, Escher, babe. Everybody thinks of us as these cute little brain teasers.”
“It’s because they don’t see us as art,” says the Zöllner illusion, as she gives up on her walk and lies down on a landing. “They take us as a challenge. To them, we’re less people, more problem.”
The duck-rabbit grunts. “Really wishing the Kanisza triangle were here right now. He always has a different view of things.”
But I’m still thinking about what the Zöllner illusion said. Her words are so true I feel them inside me, oof, right in the stairwell. If the people viewing us don’t view us as proper art, then what hope do I have to ever be truly understood?
My friends pick themselves up once they’ve caught their breath and continue on their loop around my stairs. I’m heartened by their stick-to-itiveness, and grateful for the fact that they came over to see me today, on a day when I was feeling ultra down on myself. They’re good friends.
And shouldn’t I value their opinions more than those of a few random gallery casuals?
“Maybe—what matters most isn’t what other people think when they see us,” I say with heart, with depth, with as much brain-melting contortion as I can. If I do that, then maybe I’ll start believing it this time. “That’s their problem. If the Zöllner illusion were to shed her cross-pieces, or the duck-rabbit become just a duck, would you still be you? If the Kanisza triangle were to show up for once, would he still be the Kanisza triangle we know and love?—We should really start valuing ourselves for ourselves. Valuing our own integrity and taking that as the baseline.”
“Maybe write that conclusion down this time,” says the duck-rabbit wryly, as she slowly drags herself through her thirtieth circuit of my stairs.
“Or cross-stitch it real cute and put it up where you can see it.”
“Oh, hey, Kanisza triangle,” I say in greeting, as I realize with relief that he’s been here the entire time. “I totally didn’t see you there.”
D.A. Straith (they/them) is a nonbinary writer based in the Greater Toronto Area. They write for a day job, then at night they turn right around and write some more. Find them on Mastodon, as @dee_straith@wandering.shop, or at www.straith.ca.
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