When we think in chameleons, we think in tricksters, in deception and subterfuge. Our associations are not surprising, because whoever is seen by the unique eyes of a chameleon knows that he is being really observed, beyond whatever we think as normal. A chameleon has to observe better than anybody else, since to become something we need to see it first. We think that chameleons are disguise artists, but they really are the ultimate observers.
So our brother Chameleon. At first sight he would pass unnoticed in the hustle and bustle of our dojo. Unassuming, quiet, mostly reflective, he would just blend in. Ask something to brother Chameleon, though, and be prepared to be observed from one and many perspectives. There would be a frowning, and a movement of neck and shoulders, and you will know that he is thinking on what he has seen, he will be considering and reconsidering, assembling and re-assembling whatever words and images and postures were exchanged. Brother Chameleon is definitively a seer and then a thinker.
And so father Snow Monkey asked, few days back, for brother Chameleon to see each of us once again, to look at each of us, and to draw each of us. Brother Chameleon is a cartoonist in his free time. So we talked and then talked some more, about dreams and goals and roads. And brother Chameleon heard us, looked at us, with one eye, and then with the other, switching perspectives and thoughts, to finally take his pencils and markers, and illustrate our words, our hopes and some of our fears too.
The first time seeing a match of kendo -or western fencing- is to be impressed by the speed of the fencers and their strikes and cuts and stabs. Yet we are told again and again that it is not about speed, but about seeing, and feeling, each other. Only by seing her -or him- who is in front of you will you be able to time whatever you have to say when she can hear you; or if you prefer, only seeing and understanding the other will you known when to strike. Timing is of the essence, and timing is seeing.
And so I was impressed by brother Chameleon speed doing those drawings after the bare ten minutes of talk that each of us gave him. It took him less than that to recreate our words and sentences and tales in a page with a few black and white drawings. I suppose it would take me days, instead of minutes, to reproduce anything he did that night. And he didn’t do one nor two drawings, but more than ten, one for each of the attendants of that night training. What a speed I went home thinking. And then of course, it wasn’t the speed.
It wasn’t the speed at all.
