eye to eye

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I have always been flummoxed by the look in the eye of a hawk or a cow or a dog or a baby or a back-from-the-battle veteran. It was a look that simply refused to play the game. It was not dead. It was simply not on a toy-story frequency. The look was inexplicable and somehow scary. What was it?

Today it occurred to me that that look I could not penetrate or somehow engage in the usual agreements was simply ... present.
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