The Veil of Sunglasses

If you read my blog on Friday, you most likely know that I spent the day and night down in New York City.  The City was everything I remember it to be and more.   Let me just say this about my short foray into the chaotic realm they call Manhattan; I now have a lot to write about.  Inspiration for writing first came in the form of sunglasses, on the train to Manhattan.  The train ride of sunglasses started the inspiration for me, and that inspiration continued in force once I got to the city.  In short, I simply began thinking of why it is that so many people find it necessary to wear sunglasses on a train that has tinted windows to keep the harshest sun out.  I can understand the sunglasses on the train a little, but to continue wearing them into the bowels of Grand Central Station, through the concrete tunnels and seemingly perpetually throughout the day is perplexing.  Then there are the subways, deeper underground and darker where sunglasses continue to be a mainstay that continued my pondering.  The more I thought about the sunglasses though, the more reasons I came up with as to why people would wear them ad nauseum despite the lack of sun and brightness.  Obviously people with sensitive eyes have a very good reason for wearing sunglasses wherever they go due to the harsh fluorescent lights and what not.  Yet there can't be hundreds of people with eyes so sensitive they need to where sunglasses underground.  So I racked my brain for more explanations.  There is the potential that some of the people wearing sunglasses took way too many drugs and don't want people to see their tweaked out eyes.  Yet even then, the middle of the day is an odd time to see theses type of people out and furthermore, none of the people I saw, despite a few whacked out individuals, looked as if they were in the situation I just described. 

So with the first possible explanations not going far enough in fleshing out why so many people wore sunglasses wherever they went, I had to dig even deeper.  What I came up with was that sunglasses offered the wearers not only protection from the bright lights, but offered them 1 of 2 opportunities.  The first being the ability to secretively watch others without them knowing they were being watched.  I used to do this back in my early twenties when I took classes down in NY City and wanted to watch people go about their lives without knowing that I was watching them.  Now I just don't give a damn and watch people without my sunglasses on.  I don't really care if people know I am watching them, I just do my thing and make sure it isn't creepy.  In reality, I can't help but to watch people.  I love to watch people go about their routines, each one slightly different than the next, and how they act in different situations.  There is no better place to do this than on a train, subway, or crowded NY City landscape.  I can perfectly understand why some people would want the veil of privacy that sunglasses seemingly offer when performing this kind of watching if you will.  There is something about watching hundreds of people in such close proximity with no relation to one another go about their daily lives as if they were the only one that existed.  Each person acts slightly differently when in a crowd and to see the differences is to see the uniqueness that is humanity.  To some, it doesn't matter, to me, it is fascinating.

The flip side of having sunglasses as a veil from which to observe people is using them as a cloak of invisibility.  This would be similar to the person hyped up on drugs or extremely hungover who wants to hide their eyes from the world.  The difference is, of course, that the person seeking that cloak of invisibility is obviously not necessarily on drugs.  Some would say that the eyes of a person reveal more about that person than anything they could say, do, or otherwise express.  Knowing this, it is understandable that some people would want to hide their most expressive feature from the world.  It seems that some people don't want others to see their eyes, to catch a glimpse of who they really are, and to take something away from them.  Sunglasses offer these people protection.  With sunglasses on, it is almost impossible for the casual observer to see another person's eyes, let alone figure out what they are doing or actually looking at.  A person with sunglasses on could be sleeping, reading, pretending to read while actually watching someone else, or simply staring straight out the window.  For some people, sunglasses offer protection against the rest of the invasive world.  It keeps the world a little farther away while still being in close proximity to it.  In short, sunglasses are almost like a multi-tool.  The first obvious function is to protect the eyes of the wearer from harmful UV rays.  Beyond that, they can be used for many purposes as I described.  For me, the sole purpose is mainly to shield my eyes from the sun.  Although I must say, I can't rule out the possibility of using them as a veil from behind which I can observe the world in relative secrecy.